Thursday, September 15, 2011

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a very cool find, the most modern radio dramatization adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla yet! This 19th century classic of Science Fiction and Horror is made grand as a radio drama! The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre’s version is more than 40 minutes long, which gives the plot enough time to truly develop the story.

As with so many authors who become famous, this adaptation blurs the distinction between the unnamed protagonist of the original short story and the author himself. The afflicted man, thus, is Guy de Maupassant himself! The adaptation take quite a few other liberties with the story, adding a few telephone conversations, moving scenes around and changing the focus slightly. There is major fire, but unlike the original short story the fire is not of the protagonist’s home. As with all CBS Radio Mystery Theater productions there is a narrator, but as with all the ones I’ve heard, it isn’t a crutch for the storytelling. I heartily recommend this production.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a direct link to an MP3 file anywhere online but it is available on Archive.org as a part of a fifty |Zipped File| collection. Actually, all 1,399 episodes of the terrific series (!) are available THERE too. And for more information on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater check out this site (it has a very handy searchable database).

CBS Radio Mystery Theater – The Horla
Based on the story by Guy de Maupassant; Adapted by Sam Dann; Performed by a full cast
Zipped MP3 File (with many others) – Approx. 43 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS
Broadcast: February 22, 1974
A man becomes obsessed with a ship in the harbor he is convinced harbors a terrible evil that is the doom of mankind.

Cast:
Paul Hecht
Bryna Raeburn
Robert Dryden
Dan Ocko

[Thanks Bill!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir: New Releases

Hey, you know who we haven’t talked about for a long time? HighBridge Audio! Here is the Fall 2011 HighBridge Audio catalogue |PDF|

There’s plenty of cool stuff in there and on their website. And while I’m very dubious of the enhanced audio track featured in the preview clip |MP3| of their upcoming audiobook of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, I have very high hopes for Highbridge Audio’s production of this gem (it’s slated for release at the end of November):

Dancing Aztecs
By Donald E. Westlake; Read by Brian Holsopple
MP3 Download – Approx. 12 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Published: November 29, 2011
Specialist in the scam, the con, and the rip-off, Jerry Manelli is running around New York hot on the trail of a priest—a thousand-year-old, two-foot-tall, ugly, misshapen, dancing Aztec priest made of solid gold, with eyes of pure emeralds, worth a million dollars. Somebody stole it from its museum home in South America and smuggled it through U.S. Customs in a shipment of plastic imitations. But the wrong one got delivered, and the million dollar statue, mixed with the fifteen copies, is somewhere in New York. Jerry Manelli is searching for it, as are Wall Street financiers, New Jersey union thugs, Manhattan aristocrats, college professors and PR men, liberated women and unliberated wives, tough guys and conmen, and sharpshooters of every kind. From Harlem to Greenwich Village, from Long Island to Connecticut, the motley group races in and around New York in this comic adventure of the 1970s.