News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Have you ever thought of trying to perform some Science Fiction or Fantasy audio yourself? Good news! The Time Traveler Show podcast is seeking narrators to read some short stories for upcoming shows!
Click HERE to read all the details. Upcoming stories include:
The Apotheosis Of Ki by Miriam Allen DeFord
The Gun by Philip K. Dick
Mousetrap by Andre Norton
Ladies and Gentle – wait. Is this thing on? tap tap tap. There we go. Ladies and Gentlemen, SFFaudio is proud to announce the winners of the 2006 Mark Time and Ogle Awards! The awards were given this past weekend at CONvergence (a con I have GOT to get to one of these years), and here they are:
Mark Time Awards for Science Fiction Audio Theater
GOLD
Anne Manx on Amazonia
Radio Repertory Company of America
Angelo Panetta, producer. Written by Larry Weiner.
Check out the SFFaudio review of this one here. Great stuff.
SILVER
Steve the Second
CBC Radio A & E
Joe Mahoney, producer. Written by Matt Watts.
HONORABLE MENTION
Strawberry Automatic
Apex Audio Theatre
Richard Sellers, producer. Written by T. Ray Gordon.
And the Ogle Awards for Fantasy/Horror Audio Theater
A tie for the GOLD!
The Confessions of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde
Willamette Radio Workshop
Sam A. Mowry, producer. Written by William S. Gregory.
AND
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Colonial Radio Theatre On the Air
Jerry Robbins, producer/writer.
SILVER
A Long Vacation
Northwest Folklore
Birke Duncan, producer. Written by Garrett Vance & Birke Duncan.
Find out more about the awards and the Science Fiction Audio Hall of Fame at Great Nothern Audio! And, as always, you purchase a lot of these over at The Lodestone Catalog.
Thanks to Jerry Stearns for keeping us up to date!
The stars are aligning and they portend a great coming from beyond the ether. Check your sanity level, fill your lungs and let out a cleansing scream – – yes chums, there is a disturbing truth we are happy to reveal (a little shantak has whispered in my ear) . There is a mighty and terrible Horror Fiction podcast soon to surface! I am proud to say we’ve brought you the first sigil, make of it what you will…
Interested cultists can apply for paying positions by following THIS link.
J.C. Hutchins‘ podiobook 7th Son, Book One: Descent is doing a clever crossover with Scott Sigler‘s lastest podcast novel Infection. This is the first time in the podcast history where two fiction podcasts have shared scenes! I’d guess that a mutual cross-pollination of listeners is the general idea but J.C. informs me there’ll be some rewards for some careful listeners of both shows…
To participate, you must listen to both novels and deduce the six “cross-over scenes” – there are three in Sigler’s, and three in Hutchins’. Prizes include…
To play, subscribe to both podcasts, read the rules for the contest, listen, deduce and win!
The Time Traveler Show is a new podcast that will appear from the mists of time every other week. Each show will contain a complete unabridged short story and an interview.
“The emphasis of the show,” says the mysterious Time Traveler, “is on the nexus of Speculative Fiction and Audio. We’ll be interviewing not only authors of the genre but the audiobook professionals who are producing some of the most interesting audiobooks and sound dramas in the industry.” The podcast will reintroduce a new generation of listeners to many classic science fiction stories from the 1930’s through the 1960’s.
The podcast can be found at www.timetravelershow.com, or by searching for “Time Traveler Show” at iTunes.
The first installment consists of an interview with Matthew Wayne Selznick and the story “Warm” by Robert Sheckley read by Matthew.
Robert Sheckley? Yeah, baby! This one is going on my subscribe list immediately.
For better or for worse iTunes and iPods go together like two nesting spoons and with so many people getting iPods these days an audiobook company can not afford to ignore the trend. Independent providers like Podiobooks.com, TellTaleWeekly.org, and Fictionwise.com all have files that will work on iPods too – but frankly only the extremely savvy audiobook readers out there have even heard of any of them. If you want to generate a sizable listenership, you really need to be listed on either audible.com or iTunes. But just knowing this doesn’t mean your problems are over. The sad fact is that iTunes has contracted to get all of it’s audiobook content from audible.com – you cannot get around this exclusive contract if you produce auidobooks. Worse, audible.com gets nearly all of its content from only a few big publishers – that wasn’t always the case, but they really have some weird corporate thing going on there these days. So, if you can’t break into audible.com you’re stuck without iTunes distribution and therefore most iPods won’t ever have your audiobooks on them. But there’s a little loophole that you should know about, an indie music record label is releasing “spoken word” albums on iTunes!
Conquer The World Records* is releasing what amount to audiobooks in everything but the actual name “audiobooks.” The first fiction author to take advantage of this scheme is the world’s savviest podcast novelist Scott Sigler. His first podiobook EarthCore is available for $9.99 through Conquer The World’s “spoken word” album release on iTunes. Do a search in the music store for “Scott Sigler” in the artist category.
EarthCore
By Scott Sigler; Read by Scott Sigler
20 Files – Approx 15 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: ScottSigler.net / Conquer The World Records
Released: 2006
PRODUCT #: CTW – 32
Priced at: $9.99 USD on iTunes
Even better, two great Science Fiction shorts from Deuce Audio, SFFaudio’s co-editor Scott Danielson’s own audiobook company, are available now on iTunes:
Shed Skin
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Stephen Hoye
3 Files – Approx 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Deuce Audio / Conquer The World Records
Released: 2006 – AVAILABLE NOW
PRODUCT #: CTW – 37
Priced at: $2.99 USD on iTunes
Do a search in the artist field with the search term “Robert J. Sawyer”
The Retrieval Artist
By Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
5 Files – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Deuce Audio / Conquer The World Records
Released: 2006 – AVAILABLE NOW
PRODUCT #: CTW – 38
Priced at: $4.99 USD on iTunes
Do a search in the artist field with the search term “Kristine Kathryn Rusch”
Conquer the World will soon follow with a some other interesting titles:
Bang! A Love Story by Anthony Mora
A World of Assassins by Neil Davies
Johnnie and the Demon Queen by Erick “Fox” Braun
Controlled Chaos by Michael S. London.
And finally, SF author and Fordham University professor Paul Levinson has signed a deal to produce an exclusive release, entitled Spun Dreams, is currently under production (with Levinson performing it himself). The work is a collection of his short stories. The release will retail for $9.99 USD.
Enjoy folks!
*warning this is a slow loading myspace domain
UPDATE: SFFaudio contributor Esther rightly points out that there is an interesting iLounge about the iTunes/audible.com situation here:
http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?p=878912&#post878912
She also particularily draws our attention to the “Audible Cranks It Up” article link and the “September 2005 issue of Publishing Trends” and their article on audiobooks. The PDF file contains the details of the terms of the audible.com agreement with iTunes (which runs through 2007 but which Apple can terminate given 6 months’ notice). Esther seems better informed on this issue than myself and was surprised to hear that Audible was “no longer working with small publishers” – I should point out that this last point is my personal anecdotal observation and is not drawn from any detailed study comparing the audible.com acquisitions from a few years back to the audible.com catalogue of today. I think however that I can say this, in the Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobook category of audible.com there are more small publishers with publication dates in the year 2000 than their are in 2006. Given the number and quality of new audiobook companies producing Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror audio today I think I am justified in my position of saying audible.com’s current catalogue restrictions are detrimental to SFFaudio listeners.
Posted by Jesse Willis