Category: Online Audio

KFAI Sound Affects: A Radio Playground schedule

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Sound Affects: A Radio PlaygroundJerry Stearns of Great Northern Audio Theatre and the long running radio drama showcase Sound Affects: A Radio Playground, has planned out an compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy audio drama plan for the coming quarter.

Here’s the schedule:

Aug. 16 – Jokes In Space – this year’s Mark Time Radio Show. “Sci-fi sketch comedy from Great Northern Audio Theatre.”

Aug. 23 – Ruby: Tired of the Green Menace – the FIRST Ruby show from ZBS (she’s still called Ruby Tuesday).

Aug. 30 – Earth Abides based on the novel by George Stewart. From the “Escape” series in 1950. “One of the best post-holocaust stories ever.”

Sept. 6, 13, 20 – Anne Manx and the Empress Blair Project – the latest from Radio Repertory Company of America, with Claudia Christian.

Oct. 8 & 11 – The Radio Arcade – an “obscure 4-part series from the 80’s about the special games in the arcade’s back room.”

Sound Affects: A Radio Playground airs Sundays in at 9:30 PM on KFAI, 90.3 FM and 106.7 FM, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Online streaming is available at KFAI.org.

The first episode on the schedule is the 2009 Mark Time Awards show, titled Jokes In Space, it was recorded at Convergence 2009. It is available as an |MP3|. Am I the only one who’d kill for a regular Sound Affects podcast feed?

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Disembodied Man by Larry Maddock FREE @ REB Audio

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

REB Audio Books, for a limited time, is giving away its MP3 audio dramatization of Larry Maddock’s “romantic SF puzzler” The Disembodied Man. REB’s director of audio production, Bill Mills, sez this is all a part of an “utterly transparent scheme to entice audio book buyers to check out the other titles” from their catlaogue.

To get The Disembodied Man just click |HERE| and add it to your cart. It’ll show up as $0.00. There are some forms to fill out (be sure not to use any special characters like “#” in the address). You’ll also need to create a password, but you won’t be asked for a credit card. If all goes smoothly you’ll be given a user name and a password for this one transaction. Enter them in the space provided and poof – you’ve got your choice of three different bit-rate versions of The Disembodied Man. It’s a fast DRM-free download.

REB Audio - The Disembodied Man by Larry MaddockThe Disembodied Man
By Larry Maddock; Performed by Bill Mills and Roxanne Mills
1 MP3 Download – Approx. 31 Minutes [DRAMATIZED READING]
Publisher: REB Audio Books
Published: April 2009
Listen to a sample |MP3|
Unique SF Romance and Puzzler! From the creator of time traveling secret agent Hannibal Fortune and his sardonic, shape-changing colleague, Webley, comes one of the rarest stories in science fiction history, in an all new audio dramatization. “The Disembodied Man” was published only once, in the legendary sf pulp zine “Imagination” in the early 1950s. Off-beat and humorous like much of Maddock’s work, it is at once a unique tale of an unconventional romance and an intricate puzzler with two O’Henry-like twists, resulting in a delightfully human and touching short story. Who was the disembodied man? How had he gotten that way? Who was the mysterious woman that seemed to watch over him day and night? And could a woman, could any woman, fall in love with “the man who wasn’t there?”

Thanks Bill!

Posted by Jesse Willis

James Dean Palmer: The Scarifyers, Undone and Hordes Of The Things

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

James Dean Palmer's BlogJames Dean Palmer’s blog is about Ginger (a programming language), TiVo surgery, funny comp-sci final exam answers, and anything else popping into JDP’s life (mostly babies). But in between all that he also finds time to talk about the stuff he’s listening to. That brings me to a nice mini-reviewlet of three BBC Radio 7 programs that have aired over the past year or so. Writes James:

“My favorite station is BBC Radio 7 whose charter is to be an outlet for the BBC’s vast archives of audio content but they also serve a fair bit of original content as well.

One bit of original work, The Scarifyers, is particularly entertaining. Imagine The X-Files set in the 30s in the heart of London and Sculley and Mulder are replaced with an eccentric English professor and a past-his-prime police officer. Maybe it’s more Ghostbusters than X-Files. Regardless, it’s witty writing with clever acting.

I started listening to one drama on 7 called ‘Hordes of the Things‘ and have to admit I didn’t get too far before I got bored of it. It’s from many of the same people that brought Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTG) to life and there was much hope it would be the next HHGTG. That it is not but let me be bold and say that a new drama on 7 called ‘Undone‘ might just be. There’s very little similarity between Undone and Douglas Adams’ HHGTG but for some reason Undone just reminds me of the fun and imagination of HHGTG.”

All three of these shows are available over on RadioArchive.cc. The Scarifyers is also available on CD |HERE|. Hordes Of The Things is due for release on CD by BBC Audiobooks on October 8, 2009 (ISBN 9781408426234).

Posted by Jesse Willis

Worldcon 2009: Charlie Stross and Paul Krugman talk Science Fiction and economics

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ve been listening to StarShipSofa‘s Sofanauts reports on Worldcon 2009 so I knew Paul Krugman and Charles Stross were at the convention. But, what I didn’t know was that they had had a public conversation there.

Paul Krugman And Charles Stross @ Worldcon 2009

Here it is |MP3| There’s also a transcript available |TRANSCRIPT|.

[via BoingBoing]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Escape Pod X – a new podcast audio drama series

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Escape Pod XEscape Pod X is a new podcast audio drama series. Despite the title, the website indicates no affiliation with the long running Science Fiction podcast magazine “Escape Pod.” It therefore seems likely that Escape Pod X is merely using EP‘s cachet in order to ride some prestigious coat-tails in google and iTunes searches. Clever, but perhaps not clever enough. Escape Pod uses creative commons licensing, Escape Pod X is “© 2009 by Stefan Claypool. All rights reserved.”

Says Stefan Claypool:

“I am the founder and president of a performing arts ensemble called the Interstellar Broadcasting Corporation. We are a group of young adults with a shared passion for classic radio theater and contemporary audio drama. We have performed together for years under the moniker of the Middlebury Radio Theater, which remains active at Middlebury College. Since we have graduated, however, we decided to embark upon a new endeavor in the hope that we might have something else to offer the world of audio drama.”

Their first podcast episode, The Man Who Stole a Planet, is a re-working of an episode of the Mutual Broadcasting show Quiet Please. The OTR Plot spot calls this episode “One of the best of the series. ” I agree, the script is solid. This production however is not perfect. While the acting is descent, the sound effects are virtually non-existent. Music runs throughout, some of it too familiar, the mic balance is also very poor. This is near ruinous, I can’t hear one of the two actors in the piece.

Have a visit to the site, listen |MP3| to the first episode or subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EscapePodX

Posted by Jesse Willis

Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast and Red Nails available again

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The first ever audio dramatization of Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast is available again!

Conan: The Uncopyrighted - Robert E. Howard fiction in the PUBLIC DOMAIN

Broken Sea Audio Productions’ fan produced programs were non-commercial, released for free, and 100% legal (being derived from public domain stories) had been unavailable for several months due to the “false copyright notice and we turn-off your internet” provisions of New Zealand’s copyright legislation. This is the same anti-judicial oversight provisions that anti-circumvention DRM lobbyists in Canada are asking for in the current Canadian Copyright Consultations.

But now two of the three Howard-dervied stories are available other than on Broken Sea’s website. Some fan seems to have uploaded two of the three BSAP Howard productions to the Archive.org servers. And a PirateBay.org search turns up a torrent version of the audio drama. It seems to me that given Archive.org’s size it will be better able to fight off any false claims of copyright ownership over the original stories than was BSAP, but I’m not 100% sure. The torrented audio drama is probably even more bulletproof. But I’d recommend that if you haven’t already you get them both earlier rather than later.

Broken Sea Audio Productions AUDIO DRAMA - Queen Of The Black Coast based on the story by Robert E. Howard (original art by John Bucema and Ernie Chan)Queen Of The Black Coast
Based on the story by Robert E Howard; Performed by a full cast
7 MP3s – Approx. 3 Hours 30 Mintues [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Broken Sea Audio Productions
Podcast: June 2008 to December 2008
Provider: Archive.org
|READ OUR REVIEW|

Audiobook - Red Nails by Robert E. HowardRed Nails – A Tale Of Conan
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Mark Kalita
7 MP3s – Approx. 3.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Broken Sea Audio Productions
Published: December 2007 – January 2008
Provider: Archive.org
“Red Nails, a tale featuring the legendary Conan the Barbarian, was written by Robert E. Howard and began its written serialization in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales. This thrilling audio novella begins with pirate-adventuress Valeria of the Red Brotherhood on the run after slaying a notable brigand. She is followed by Conan and the two soon fight their way to a great, walled city inhabited by two warring peoples. The adventure seekers soon find themselves embroiled in the feud and mayhem ensues as the city’s rulers make unholy plans for the mighty Cimmerian and his feisty female companion. Listen now as an ancient evil returns from oblivion and a wicked sorceress seeks to gain immortality at the cost of our Hyborian heroes!”

[Thanks internet!]

Posted by Jesse Willis