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.
Originally published in the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Novels Magazine (on pages 118, 119, and 120) The Last War by Stanton A. Coblentz is a public domain poem that has never been reprinted.
Here it is, along with the gorgeous original art.
Thanks to Jim Moon of the Hypnobobs podcast for his wonderful reading of it.
|MP3|
Posted by Jesse Willis
Available either as and MP3 or M4B download, Blackstone Audio is offering a FREE download of Romance by Chuck Palahniuk. Sez the Blackstone Blog:
We’ve teamed up with New York Times-bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk to offer a free audio download of his short story “Romance,” read by Chuck himself and available in audio exclusively from Blackstone. Originally published in Playboy magazine, “Romance” is a twisted love story like only Chuck could tell.
You’ll need to give your name and your email address to get a link to the 22 minute short story.
I just listened to it. Its pretty funny, really sad, and horrifically frightening!
Posted by Jesse Willis
Here’s Julie Hoverson’s reading of Jack London’s A Thousand Deaths, it was the first published story that London was paid for – and it’s Science Fiction. Julie recorded it for us 113 years after it’s first publication (in May 1899) and she did it specifically for your (and my) pleasure. This is a story that really deserves to be heard (and read).
A Thousand Deaths will also be the subject of an upcoming readalong!
Thanks so much Julie!
A Thousand Deaths
By Jack London; Read by Julie Hoverson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Julie Hoverson
Provided: May 23, 2012
First published in The Black Cat, May 1899.
And here’s a print friendly |PDF|.
And to get you in the mood, check out part of one of C. Billadeau’s two gorgeous illustrations of the story:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Here’s the subject of our next podcast recording, a specially commissioned reading of Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft. The narrator is one of my very favourites, Jonathan Davis, who will be on the podcast discussing it with us!
The story itself runs 23 minutes. I think it’s the perfect balm for a hot summer day. Check it:
The unnamed protagonist, an underpaid writer of pulp magazines, lives in an oppressively hot New York city apartment. Luckily he makes friends with his convivial upstairs neighbor, who just so happens to own an air conditioner. What a cool guy!
What could possibly go wrong?
|ETEXT| at WikiSource
|PDF| made from the publication in Strange Tales of the Mysterious and Supernatural
[This recording was made possible by the generosity of readers like you]
Posted by Jesse Willis
A recent Hypnobobs podcast features two guests from The Black Dog podcast talking with host Jim Moon about the origins of ALIEN. It’s a lengthy discussion, running 2.5 hours, touching on the many filmic inspirations for the 1979 film written by Dan O’Bannon.
|MP3|
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Hypnobobs
This is the perfect excuse for me to point out something that Moon and guests didn’t – namely the original literary source, perhaps, for all the films they mention and, perhaps, for ALIEN itself. It is a 1939 short story by A.E. van Vogt entitled Black Destroyer (later assembled into a part of a fix-up novel entitled The Voyage Of The Space Beagle).
Check out the original art:
In 1974, Marvel Comics’s Worlds Unknown did an adaptation, with a cover illustrated by Gil Kane:
And then, a couple years after ALIEN was released, somebody at EERIE magazine made the connection:
Posted by Jesse Willis
First published in Tryout, November 1920, The Cats Of Ulthar is an unusual tale by H.P. Lovecraft. It reads more like an old fashioned fairy tale than any other I’ve read. The story features a young boy named Menes who loves cats. Lovecraft probably took that name from the writings of a Greek historian named Diodorus Siculus who related a tale of a legendary Egyptian pharaoh named Menes that he heard from some crocodile-god priests. Menes it was said fled from his own dogs, who attacked him, while hinting. His escape was assisted by a crocodile. But no dogs or crocodiles are mentioned in The Cats Of Ulthar.
The Cats Of Ulthar
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by James Pontolillo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 19, 2008
|ETEXT|
First published in Tryout, November 1920.
And here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Fantastic Novels, January 1951.
Posted by Jesse Willis