SFFaudio Challenge meets a challenger who is releasing a Lester del Rey audiobook

SFFaudio News

Meta SFFaudio - SFFaudio Contest - Make audiobook win an audiobookI’ve got big Big BIG news! It appears we may very soon have a winner in the SFFaudio ‘make an audiobook, win an audiobook’ challenge!

I was contacted late last night by Steven H. Wilson, author and narrator of the recently reviewed Taken Liberty – A Tale From The Artiber Chronicles. Steven said:

“I’ve recorded all of [Lester] del Rey’s BADGE OF INFAMY, and the first five chapters have been uploaded to podiobooks.com.”

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey |Gutenberg Project| was one of the novels on the challenge!

If you don’t recall, back in mid November I challenged anyone to turn any one of a number of previously unreleased public domain novels into an unabridged single voiced audiobook. As an incentive, I offered a BRAND NEW unabridged audiobook to the first person to complete and release one.

If as I suspect, Steven is the first complete the challenge and meet the requirements of it, he’ll be the winner of his choice of one of three BRAND NEW unabridged audiobooks from Blackstone Audiobooks (For those curious, these audiobooks were purchased by me – and were not given away as a promotion by Blackstone). Basically now that he’s finished recording it, all Steven needs to do is get Badge Of Infamy out there, either on Podiobooks, as he said, as a commercial release or wherever he’d like – just so long as I can verify its completeness he’ll win his choice of one of these:

Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick

Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Animal Farm by George Orwell

But, if you areCURRENTLY, or were PLANNING, on making your own novel based on the challenge you can still let me know. I’d like to know what you’re doing! And, we might even be able to scrounge up a BRAND NEW commerical audiobook for you too! SFFaudio wants you to make Speculative Fiction audiobooks, and we aren’t above out-and-out bribery to make it happen.

In the meantime, look forward to seeing this logo or one similar up on podiobooks.com very soon:

Author for Variant Frequencies Podcast Lands Screenplay Deal

SFF Audio News

Podcast - Variant FrequenciesMatt Wallace, Parsec-Award winning author for the Variant Frequencies podcast, had some bragging to do on MySpace:

I can safely announce that one of my stories, which originally appeared on the Variant Frequencies podcast, has been optioned by an Australian producer. What’s more, I’ve signed on to adapt it into a feature-length screenplay myself for his production company.”

[snip]

This is a huge gig for me, creatively and professionally. It’s hardly a million dollar studio deal, but it’s certainly 300 times more than I’ve been paid for any of my other stuff. And it’s a shot, however slim, to break into an industry I honestly never thought I’d have access to. I have no idea if the thing will ever sell, much less be made into an actual movie; I’m dealing with an independent producer here. But so far he’s delivered on everything he said he would. If he can deliver the contacts, who knows? The one thing I do know about Australian filmmakers is that they’re resourceful bastards.”

Congratulations Matt!

Check out more of Matt’s stories in the Failed Cities Monologues, which can be found on Podiobooks.com.

http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/book.php?ID=110

iTunes Features Podiobooks

News

iTunes Features Podiobooks

The iTunes Podcast directory main page has a nice big button of Podiobooks up today!

Podiobooks, the premier service for serialized audiobooks via podcast now has 74 programs listed in iTunes! Subscribers to their podcast feeds receive a new chapter or episode at a pace of their own choosing. Check out one or more of their more than three dozen Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobooks today!

Dirk Maggs and BBC Audiobooks UK to venture into Podcasting in 2007

SFFaudio News

Podcast - Perfectly Normal ProductionsThis should raise an interested eyebrow! It seems that BBC Audiobooks (UK), has made a deal with Radio Drama legend Dirk Maggs, and crew at the newly formed Perfectly Normal Productions to create “compelling, high quality audio entertainment for bite-size delivery direct to home computers, portable media players and mobile phones.” In other words, podcasts!

Dirk Maggs sez: “Podcasting should be so much more than a platform for stand up comedy and audio diarists. Video on a handheld devices will never rival the storytelling experience of a big screen. But we can fill the gap. In our hands mobile entertainment bypasses the optic nerve and hotwires the imagination, with a widescreen experience you can enjoy anywhere – in the car, the train, or on the sofa with your eyes shut.”

Perfectly Normal Productions‘ initial focus will be on original material by leading Science Fiction and graphic novel authors of today, mixed with “much-loved titles including cult British comic characters” such as The Steel Claw. Also resurrected in a new series of tongue-in-cheek adventures will be the legendary British detective Sexton Blake, featuring Simon Jones, the star of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

The releases are planned to start sometime in 2007.

FULL CAST AUDIO tells us to expect Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, Robert A. Heinlein and Kenneth Opel AUDIOBOOKS!

Audiobook Publisher - Full Cast AudioDaniel Bostick, producer director and actor at Full Cast Audio tells us…

“The following recordings are coming down the pipline in the next few of months:

THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS by Tamora Pierce (December 2006)
PRINCESS ACADEMY by Shannon Hale (January 2007)
THE STAR BEAST by Robert A. Heinlein (1st quarter 2007)

For trivia fans: Fantasy Author Tamora Pierce and her husband Timothy Liebe will play cameo voice roles in PRINCESS ACADEMY.

Breaking news: We are in the casting stage of SKYBREAKER, Kenneth Oppel’s sequel to AIRBORN [SFFaudio Review Forthcoming]. It will record in February 07 for release later in the year.

We’re also considering participation in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial in Kansas City next summer.”

Cool stuff.

Slice Of SciFi chosen SCI-FI Channel "Site Of The Week"

SFFaudio News

Podcast - Slice Of Sci-FiSlice of SciFi , the most popular of all the Farpoint Media podcasts (it also airs on XM Satellite in the USA) has been chosen as SCI FI Weekly‘s Site of the Week! Congrats to Michael, Summer, Evo, Joe, Sam and the rest of the Slice crew. It was about time – so say we all.

Personally I’m going to be listening to shows #83 and #84 today, featuring interviews with Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) from Battlestar Galactica, and FilmFax magazine editor Michael Stein! If you haven’t already subscribed, now is the time.

You too can subscribe, via this feed:

http://sliceofscifi.com/podcast.xml