Category: Online Audio

The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I could be wrong but I bet The Boarded Window is the second most popular Ambrose Bierce short story assigned in American schools (with the first being An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge).

The Boarded Window is super short (less than 2,000 words), leaves out the usual controversial themes Bierce went for, and is a good ghost story too.

LibriVoxThe Boarded Window
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Joseph Langley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 28, 2009
First published in the San Francisco Examiner, July 14, 1889.

Here’s a “Special English” adaptation. Designed for ESL students this version is read at a slower pace, with a simplified vocabulary.

Voice Of AmericaThe Boarded Window
Adapted by Lawan Davis from the story by Ambrose Bierce; Read by Shep O’Neal
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Voice Of America
Published: 2009
“A man in the deep woods deals with the death of his wife.”

Here’s a |PDF|.

And finally here’s an 1978 video adaptation for the International Instructional Television Cooperative:

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Watcher by R.H. Benson

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

E.F. Benson, A.C. Benson, and R.H. Benson were three brothers, all writers. They wrote weird fiction, Science Fiction and ghost stories.

R.H. Benson, the youngest of the three, started off as a clergyman in the Church of England, but later switched to the Roman Catholic Church and became an assistant to the Pope. An interesting choice since his biological father had been the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This short story of his, The Watcher, is somewhat difficult to classify. Reading it, it sounds like it could almost have been a true story – but it’s from a collection of fifteen stories depicting a fictional priest’s supernatural experiences.

I think it’s an allegory.

But the question is … an allegory for what?

Find out for yourself with Peter Yearsley’s fun reading of it…

LibriVoxThe Watcher
By R.H. Benson; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 7, 2007
A face in a bush takes delight in the death of a thrush. First published in 1903.

And here’s a |PDF|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Ash Tree by M.R. James

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

“If any of [my stories] succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained.” – M.R. James

The Ash Tree - illustration by George Chastain (from Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, December 1981)

I’m just beginning to get into M.R. James so I’m not sure quite what to make of his stories yet. To me The Ash Tree felt restrained, subtle, and it was “pleasantly uncomfortable” to be sure – but is that enough?

I haven’t hit a story of his that has grabbed me the way Guy de Mapassaunt’s The Horla has or the way William Hope Hodgson’s The Voice In The Night has.

Maybe ghost stories just need to have something other than haunting to draw me in.

LibriVoxThe Ash Tree
By M.R. James; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 7th, 2006
A damp Suffolk house, with a curious ash tree growing close to it, may have been cursed by a woman once executed for witchcraft. First published in Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary, 1904.

Posted by Jesse Willis

19 Nocturne Boulevard: H.P. Lovecraft’s The Temple AUDIO DRAMA

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Discussed in our latest podcast, and one of the best adaptations of a Lovecraft story I have heard, here is Julie Hoverson’s audio drama of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Temple.

19 Nocturne Boulevard - The Temple19 Nocturne Boulevard – The Temple
By Julie Hoverson; Adapted from the story by H.P. Lovecraft; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 34 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: 19 Nocturne Boulevard
Podcast: April 19, 2011
The crew of a WWI U-boat finds that some danger runs…. very deep. First published in Weird Tales, September 1925.

Cast:
Cap. Karl Heinrich … Rick Lewis
Lt. Keinze … Julie Hoverson
Shawn Connor … crewman
Bryan Hendricksen … crewman

Music by Kevin MacLeod
Cover by Brett Coulstock

Posted by Jesse Willis

Five Free Favourites #16: The 5 first H.P. Lovecraft episodes of The SFFaudio Podcast

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Five of my favourite SFFaudio podcasts are five of our H.P. Lovecraft episodes. I think they’re some of the best podcasts we’ve ever recorded.

Five Free Favourites

1. The SFFaudio PodcastSFFaudio Podcast #126 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Statement Of Randolph Carter by H.P. Lovecraft – featuring a reading by the incomparable Wayne June (from the essential Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 3) – participants in the discussion include: Participants Scott, Tamahome, Jenny, Mr. Jim Moon and myself.

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2. The SFFaudio PodcastSFFaudio Podcast #138 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Crawling Chaos by Winifred V. Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft – featuring a reading specially recorded for us by the voice of Lovecraft the incredible Wayne June! – participants in the discussion included myself, Tamahome, Mr. Jim Moon and Wayne June himself!

|MP3|

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3. The SFFaudio PodcastSFFaudio Podcast #147 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft – specially recorded by Mr. Jim Moon, of the incredibly awesome Hypnobobs Podcast – participants in the discussion included me, Tamahome, Wayne June, Mr. Jim Moon, and Mirko Stauch.

|MP3|

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4. The SFFaudio PodcastSFFaudio Podcast #168 – AUDIOBOOK: Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft – specially commissioned for SFFaudio and read by one of the best audiobook narrators in the artform, Jonathan Davis!

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5. The SFFaudio PodcastSFFaudio Podcast #174 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Temple by H.P. Lovecraft – recorded, ably, by a first time narrator Mirko Stauch! The discussion which follows included myself, Julie Hoverson, and Mirko too!

|MP3|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber

It took me two attempts to get into this Fritz Leiber audiobook. Part of the issue was that the first person protagonist is female and the audiobook’s narrator is male. Phil Chenevert, the narrator, is a talented voice actor but he still sounded male. This bothered me all the way up to chapter four when I had my growning indignity balloon deflated by this choice paragraph:

I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, “Come to my woman’s breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.” Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a little more often, and girls play boys too.

Despite my loss of that criticism, I am still not fully satisfied with the story. Like The Big Time |READ OUR REVIEW| before it, No Great Magic is well written fluff – with not even the shape of a plot beginning until the very end.

It may just be that No Great Magic, and perhaps a good deal of other time travel related SF, are of a kind of “cozy” Science Fiction story that I just don’t fully embrace.

Still, the first person narration by the amnesiac heroine and Chenevert’s narrative skill make No Great Magic worth checking out – and perhaps your tastes and my tastes will differ.

Chenevert, incidentally, put it this way in a LibriVox forum post:

“I hope you have been involved in the theater somewhere in your past or present because this story smells heavily of greasepaint.”

LibriVoxNo Great Magic
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Phil Chenevert
8 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 27, 2012
|ETEXT|
They were a traveling group of Shakespearean players; perfectly harmless, right? wrong. For one thing, why did they have spacemen costumes in their wardrobes,right next to caveman ones? Why was the girl in charge of backstage suffering from amnesia and agoraphobia? No Great Magic is needed to perform the plays they put on, but sometimes great science. No matter where, or when. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1963.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/6656

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Here’s a |PDF| with the original illustrations from Galaxy.

Illustrations by Nodel:

No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel
No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel
No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel

[Thanks also to DaveC]

Posted by Jesse Willis