Day: April 11, 2011

Tantor Media: FREE AUDIOBOOK: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Tantor MediaTantor Media has another limited time FREE MP3 download! This time it is Walden by Henry David Thoreau. This classic is a weirdly philosophical autobiography with fun words like: “cosmopolite” and “hokum”. Sez Tantor:

For your free download of Walden, please log in to your account
(consumer or library)—or create one.

After you’ve got an account (no credit card required), and you’ve signed in, do a search for “walden” or CLICK HERE, the link to the zipped folder full of 20 DRM free MP3s should be at the top. Here’s a screenshot:

Tantor FREE Walden OfferIn the email I got, it said the offer was in celebration of Earth Day (April 22), perhaps that is when the offer expires. It also had this funny (and almost mystifying) quote:

“A truly good book teaches me better than to [listen to] it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by [listening], I must finish by acting.”
—Henry David Thoreau

TANTOR MEDIA - Walden by Henry David ThoreauWalden
By Henry David Thoreau; Read by Mel Foster
20 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 11.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 05/05/2008
Sample: |MP3|
Walden is the classic account of two years spent by Henry David Thoreau living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The story is detailed in its accounts of Thoreau’s day-to-day activities, observations, and undertakings to survive out in the wilderness for two years. Thoreau’s journal is an exquisite account of a man seeking a more simple life by living in harmony with nature. In today’s fast-paced consumer-driven society, the austere lifestyle endorsed by Thoreau is as relevant and refreshing as ever.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxMeanwhile … over on the Wikipedia talk page for the entry for Philip K. Dick’s Adjustment Team there is a wonderful argument going on. Part of it is over an issue called “copyfraud” (false claims of copyright designed to control works not under copyright). I suspect that it just such awesomeness that is behind so much of the awesomeness that is Wikipedia. Check this response out from a Wikipedia editor named “Refrigerator Heaven”:

Oh, to answer the section’s question. As a long-time fan of Philip K. Dick who is familiar with his main themes and not very interested in the movies based on his writings, I do think the copyright stuff is more interesting and more Dickian than the movie [The Adjustment Bureau]. Perhaps I’ll add a quote or two from him after dinner. For a parting thought I’ll leave this with a quote he used in his Hugo Award winning novel, The Man In The Hight Castle [sic]. “Things are seldom as they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Wikipedia is wonderful for its quotes alone. It was there, on the Wikipedia entry, for instance – that I learned that Adjustment Team was public domain. That’s what prompted me to tell my favourite LibriVox narrator that it was PD and that is, in part, why he recorded it for LibriVox. Thank you Gregg Margarite and thank you Wikipedia!

Soon to be collected in LibriVox’s Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #044:

LIBRIVOX - Adjustment Team by Philip K. DickAdjustment Team
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: NOT YET COLLECTED!
“Something went wrong and Ed Fletcher got mixed up in the biggest thing in his life.” First published in Orbit Science Fiction, Sept-Oct 1954, No.4.

Illustrations by Faragasso:

Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: The Adjustment Bureau by Philip K. Dick

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

I don’t think Philip K. Dick and Hollywood are writing for the same audience:

The Adjustment Bureau movie trailer: Powerful, handsome bachelor boy meets cute girl -> handsome boy loses beautiful girl -> handsome boy is chased by powerfully fedoraed men -> handsome gets beautiful back again.

The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team) audiobook: middle class schnook has quietly comfortable conversation with wife -> gets pushed around by insurance salesman -> weird shit happens -> freaks out -> runs home to his wife. PLUS: talking dog!

BRILLIANCE AUDIO - The Adjustment Bureau by Philip K. DickThe Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team)
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Phil Gigante
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: March 4, 2011
ISBN: 9781441894694
Sample |MP3|
The Adjustment Bureau is a major motion picture based on Philip K. Dick’s classic paranoid story, The Adjustment Team. This is the short story, The Adjustment Team, which asks the question – Do we control our destiny, or do unseen forces manipulate us? Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent with a normal life, until one day he leaves the house for work a few minutes later than he should have. He arrives at a terrifying, grey, ash world. Ed rushes home and tells his wife, Ruth, who goes back to the office with him. When they return, everything is normal. But he soon realizes people and objects have subtly changed. Panic-stricken, he runs to a public phone to warn the police, only to have the phone booth ascend heavenward with Fletcher inside…

Posted by Jesse Willis