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.
I know of at least a couple of people who will be very interested to hear this interview with Alden Bell. Here’s the official description:
This is a special edition of If You’re Just Joining Us. Over the next month or so, I’ll be interviewing all of the other nominees of the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award. My first is Alden Bell, which is actually the pen name of Joshua Gaylord. His book, The Reapers Are the Angels, is a zombie apocalypse set in a fallen America. We talked about zombies, bonding with his dad, teaching, prep school, his pen name, and being nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a three century old account of a series of fantastic voyages, is the subject of an upcoming SFFaudio Readalong!
In preparation for the occasion I’ve scoured my shelves for all their Gulliverian content. There, amongst other things, I found an elderly, but undated, ex-elementary school library book that my grandmother had culled from her old school in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Sadly, a short caveat in it declares:
“This text is complete except for the omission of one or two unsuitable passages.”
So, with that, I won’t use it as my primary textual reference with an audiobook edition. The good news is that despite it’s omissions it contains more than a dozen striking illustrations by George Morrow. I have scanned them all and added them to this post (below).
For those who’d like to follow along with our readalong, check out either the recently posted Audible.com edition (as read by David Hyde Pierce) or use this handy FREE edition from LibriVox!
Gulliver’s Travels
By Jonathan Swift; Read by Lizzie Driver 40 Zipped MP3 Files, 1 |M4B| or Podcast – Approx. 11 Hours 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 30, 2007 Gulliver’s Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World”, is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the “travellers’ tales” literary sub-genre. It is widely considered Swift’s magnum opus and is his most celebrated work, as well as one of the indisputable classics of English literature.
Following up on the last FREE Bill Pronzini/Nameless Detective audiobook released by Audio Go (formerly BBC Audiobooks America, formerly Chivers Audio) comes this follow up Nameless Detective tale by Bill Pronzini…
The Ghosts Of Ragged-Ass Gulch (A Nameless Detective Mystery)
By Bill Pronzini; Read by Nick Sullivan
2 MP3 Files – Approx. 1 Hour 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioGo / NamelessDetective.com
Published: February 2011 Ravaged by time and abandoned by the people who once flocked there in search of golden nuggets, Ragged-Ass Gulch is a ghost town. What’s left is a small proud, and close pack of people whop aren’t looking for change. But change seems to be afoot as several mysterious fires plague the town. That’s where the Nameless Detective comes in…
The Radio Times has a picked a new play set to air on February 4th, 2010 in BBC Radio 4’s Afternoon Play slot. It’ll be a curious dramatization of the real life collaboration between Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler while working on the screen adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity!
This will be part of a series of BBC Radio dramatisations of all Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels. Toby Stephens will be playing Philip Marlowe throughout (see more details at the bottom of this post).
Double Jeopardy
By Stephen Wyatt; Directed by Claire Grove; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – Approx. 1 Hour [RADIO DRAMA] In 1944 Raymond Chandler (Patrick Stewart) and Billy Wilder (Adrian Scarborough) work on a screen adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder is a 36-year-old German Jewish émigré just making his name as a director and Raymond Chandler is a reformed alcoholic with a developing reputation as a novelist – but absolutely no experience of writing for the movies.
Other Raymond Chandler treats airing on BBC Radio 4 include:
Feature: A Coat, A Hat and A Gun
11.30am-noon, Thursday 3 February 2011 Harriett Gilbert presents a reappraisal of the life and legacy of the man from Upper Norwood who invented the private investigator as we know him. “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.” Philip Marlowe has become the archetypal American detective anti-hero, yet his creator was educated at English public school, took the Civil Service exam and started a career in the Admiralty. With contributions from writer Sarah Dunant, Professor John Sutherland, David Thomson, and David Fine. Producer Rebecca Stratford.
Saturday Play: The Big Sleep
Saturday 5 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm Philip Marlowe (Toby Stephens) becomes entangled with the Sternwood family – respectable sister with gambling addiction (Kelly Burke), younger sister with drink/drug problem (Leah Brotherhead) and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures. Robin Brooks; director Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: The Lady In The Lake
Saturday 12 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm Derace Kingsley (Sam Dale), a wealthy businessman, hires Philip Marlowe to find his estranged wife Crystal. Kingsley fears that rich, reckless Crystal may have got herself into a scandal and the last place she was known to have been was a resort called Little Fawn Lake. Dramatised by Stephen Wyatt; director Claire Grove.
Saturday Play: Farewell My Lovely
Saturday 19 February 2011, 2.30-4.00pm When Philip Marlowe sees a huge, loudly dressed man casually throwing a bouncer out onto the the pavement as he goes into a bar, he knows it’s time to walk away, so he follows him inside. The big guy is Moose Molloy (Richard Ridings), recently released from an eight-year prison sentence and now on the hunt for his old sweetheart, a red-haired nightclub singer named Velma Valento. Marlowe follows a trail which includes a stick-up, blackmail, an irresistible blonde, a psychic, drugs and murder, and it leads him all the way to the top of a corrupt state of California. Dramatised by Robin Brooks; director Mary Peate.
Saturday Play: Playback
Saturday 26 February 2.30-3.30pm Philip Marlowe is hired to tail the mysterious Betty Mayfield (Sarah Goldberg) all the way to the seaside town of Esmerelda, without knowing why or the identity of his employer. It’s not long before he realises that he’s not the only one on the trail, and that he too is being watched. Director Sasha Yevtushenko; producer Claire Grove.
And coming up later in 2011: The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Little Sister, and Poodle Springs.
There’s a fascinating conversation between Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming available over on BBC Archives. It was first broadcast on the BBC “Third Program” on July 10th, 1958. In it the two famed authors, and friends, discuss each others novels in depth. But before you head on over there, consider this |MP3| first. It is a repeat broadcast, from 1988, that includes an informative introduction that the BBC Archives version lacks.
Here’s the official BBC Archives description:
Fleming and Chandler talk about protagonists James Bond and Philip Marlowe in this conversation between two masters of their genre. They discuss heroes and villains, the relationship between author and character and the differences between the English and American thriller. Fleming contrasts the domestic ‘tea and muffins’ school of detective story with the American private eye tradition and Chandler guides Fleming through the modus operandi of a mafia hit while marvelling at the speed with which his fellow author turns out the latest Bond adventure.
Here’s another David Dodge radio drama, Plunder of the Sun, produced in the USA this time, and much older (having been produced the same year the novel came out). This time the setting is South America, rather than Cote D’Azur. Hard Case Crime has the reprint, but there’s currently no audiobook edition. Here’s the premise:
Al Colby, a “tough-guy adventurer” and private investigator, accepts a job from a South American antiques dealer. The dealer wants an ancient relic smuggled into Peru. Colby’s assignment is to carry the piece aboard an American ship sailing from the Chlean port of Valparaíso to Callao, in Peru. But the dealer has a serious heart condition and is soon found dead aboard the ship. What is the mysterious corded object that Colby carries? And how does it connect to the Incan empire? Who is the ruthless antagonist who wants it? A perilous journey across Lake Titicaca in Bolivia is all that stands between Colby and a lost Incan treasure of incalculable value!
Escape – Plunder Of The Sun
Based on the novel by David Dodge; Adapted by John Dunke; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3|* Approx. 30 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: November 8, 1949
Based on the novel, first published in 1949.
*there’s a minute or so missing from the MP3 (it’s been accidently replaced with a minute or so from some other radio drama)
Produced and directed by William N. Robson
Cast:
Paul Frees …. Al Colby
Gerald Mohr …. Jefferson
Lucille Meredith …. Ana Luz
Harry Bartell
Charlie Lung
Tony Barrett
The 1953 film version, starring Glenn Ford, moves the action from South America to Mexico, and turns Incan treasure into Aztec treasure.
I know of at least a couple of people who will be very interested to hear this interview with Alden Bell. Here’s the official description:
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a three century old account of a series of fantastic voyages, is the subject of an upcoming SFFaudio Readalong!
The Ghosts Of Ragged-Ass Gulch (A Nameless Detective Mystery)
