Month: November 2012

LibriVox: The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

SFFaudio Online Audio

If I had to name the one story that’s influenced my reading, and thinking, most in last couple of years I’d name The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. It possesses my mind like a dark and deep tunnel running through my imaginative landscape – if you haven’t heard it yet you should. Below you’ll find my preferred version, but there are more readings, and adaptations HERE – and we did a whole podcast about it, that’s HERE.

One new thing though is this |PDF| which I made from a scan of an issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries – it features the 1911 George Allan England translation.

LibriVoxThe Horla
By Guy de Maupassant; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 11, 2009
First published in Gil Blas; Oct 26, 1886.

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

Posted by Jesse Willis

Night on Mispec Moor by Larry Niven

SFFaudio Online Audio

It’s hard to imagine what SFFaudio was reporting on before podcasting started in earnest, around 2005, but we somehow managed pretty well. One such show, which I’ve posted about several times over the years, is Hour25. We don’t report on it much anymore. But to say that Hour25 has podfaded is to get things very wrong – Hour25 had never been podcast and it is still, only just barely, available in MP3 format.

But, Hour25 has had great content, and among the best of it is this recording done for Halloween 2001. I wrote about Night On Mispec Moor by Larry Niven |READ OUR REVIEW| back in 2004. I still like it. It has everything, it’s Military SF, plays out like sword-and-sorcery, technically it’s Science Fiction, but it feels more like fantasy and horror – and it has zombies that don’t suck!

Hour 25Night On Mispec Moor
By Larry Niven; Read by Warren James
Intro |MP3| Part 1 |MP3|, Part 2 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Hour25Online.com
Created: October 31, 2001
Tomás Vatch is an “outworld mercenary” who finds himself a lone survivor of his routed army. After fleeing into a moor, his pursuers suddenly stop, they dare not follow him into “Mispec” at night.

And to spice it up all the more, check out these beautiful George Barr illustrations from the first publication in Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction, August 1974:

Night On Mispek Moor - illustration by George Barr
Night On Mispek Moor - illustration by George Barr
Night On Mispek Moor - illustration by George Barr

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Ideal Girl by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

One of Robert E. Howard’s first publications here is The Ideal Girl.

The Ideal Girl by Robert E. Howard

Here’s the text:

“In the first place, she should be at least six feet tall and weigh about two hundred pounds, so she could take in washing or coal heaving at wharfs, while I took a vacation. As beauty is apt to make a woman vain, she should have a face that resembled a female crocodile with hippopotamus ancestors. As to hair, eyes and so on, I have no especial preference, but if she squinted with one ye and goggled with the other, it would be all right. Also, she should have a strong Swedish accent.”

And here’s a reading by John Feaster |MP3|

First published in The Tattler (the newspaper of Brownwood High School), January 6, 1925.

Posted by Jesse Willis