SFFaudio – Page 185 – 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.

The SFFaudio Podcast #343 – READALONG: The Lord Of The Rings (Book 6 of 6) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #343 – Jesse, Julie Davis, Seth, and Maissa talk about The Lord of the Rings Book VI (“The Return Of The King”) by J.R.R. Tolkien (aka the second half of The Return Of The King).

Talked about on today’s show:
On the merits of “The Scouring of the Shire”; final volume as catharsis; on Bilbo opening up the Shire, paving the way for the scouring; the transformation of Pippin and Merry; Hobbit lust for Bilbo’s gold; rejection of wealth compared to The Hobbit; on The Hobbit as a children’s story; “Hobbits are a thing!”; humility as seeing the truth; Hobbits just need a flame to fire them up and save the Shire; Sam’s ring-bestowed vision of a giant World-Garden; core of Hobbit goodness; of the many meanings of the word “scour”–cleansing, ruining, scowling, hurrying; chronology, and just how long Saruman had to ruin the Shire; Saruman on the road, “the beggar and his dog”; debating the value of mercy; Galadriel’s gift to Sam; on the validity of visions in the mirror of Galadriel; Théoden as precedent for mercy; unexpected changes of heart; Frodo’s not a fighter, stops killings; Hobbits don’t kill one another; have Hobbits changed?; World War I monument for Hobbits, mass grave for ruffians; are there sharks in Middle Earth?; Saruman’s voice on Freeboard; even after the last battle, life goes on; Aragorn’s mercy towards the vanquished; determinism not incompatible with free will; on this concluding volume’s themes; George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien diametrically opposed in their treatment of mercy and duty; can absolute mercy work in the modern political climate?; it’s not a Catholic book; evangelizing Lord of the Rings, promoting mercy, one family at a time; Éowyn and Faramir’s romance; Tolkien is not the best battle-writer; a “book without girls” (almost); the golden moment of the world’s salvation; Éowyn’s not initially a Faramir fan; the tricky gender implications, and many happy pairings; Tolkien’s retcon of names like Eleanor; the circularity of tales and the importance of birthdays; Saruman as Dorian Gray; Jesse wants Hobbit University fanfic; the subtle frame narrative of Lord of the Rings; the thirst of the characters made Julie thirsty; is Lord of the Rings the greatest novel ever?

The Lord Of The Rings - Book 6

posted by Seth Wilson

The SFFaudio Podcast #342 – READALONG: Beyond Thirty by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #342 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and David Stifel discuss the audiobook of Beyond Thirty by Edgar Rice Burroughs (narrated by David Stifel)

Talked about on today’s show:
All-Around Magazine, 1916, a peek into 1916s subconscious, not even really a novel, a future history, reading the dispatches from the Western Front, mechanized war, how WWI was affecting consciousness, spiraling into barbarism, J.R.R. Tolkien, L. Ron Hubbard’s Final Blackout, Genesis Of The Daleks, a simple plot, a very relaxing book, a mediation, what is Burroughs’ conclusion?, boringly peaceful, excruciatingly peaceful, an American Libertarian utopia, the corrupting influence of civilization, Europe has blown itself back to the stone age, the Lusitania, the Spanish American War, Cuba, the Philippines, 175 east, 30 west, the Monroe doctrine, the Zimmerman Telegram, a moment of the American psyche captured in time, 1913-1921, push pull of expansionism and isolationism, the Japanese are the British of Asia, the Japan Russia war, the story of Pearl Harbor before Pearl Harbor, the cruiser Maine explosion, Yellow Journalism, “Screw Spain and Remember the Maine”, the novel’s premise is kind of crazy and yet…, Crime Think, historical precedent, Zheng He’s treasure ships, China, Japan, Korea, the Hermit Kingdom, Perry, global village, provincialism, American policy on Cuba, taboos end, we’ve bought into the premise, tigers and lions in England, tigers in Africa, Simba the Lioness (nee the Tigress), the Tigers and Lions and Elephants of London, the African veldt in England, a setting for a planetary romance, Beyond The Farthest Star, Caspak, Tarzan, the Mars and Venus books, the gravity shield, the airship/submarines, the narrator is extremely naive, a sequel that wasn’t written, hanging threads, being a slave, Burroughs’ subconscious is all over the page, the U.S. Civil War, Birth Of A Nation, some of the racism, they are essentially the Romans, the Asian empire, the Yellow Peril and the Black Menace, all the white women sent off to the evil emperor’s harem, what did we think of Queen Victory?, more spunk than Deja Thoris, John Carter (2012), the Tharks, a flea jumping around, we could have a Woola sequel, a Minion movie, the Ralph Bakshi Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings in a week, Beyond Thirty would make a good comic book, the literacy of the Abyssinian, our hero is from Arizona, Beyond 175 would be the sequel, recolonizing England as a sequel?, “chastened and forgiven Europe”, Buckingham the Brute, they don’t even have fathers any more, 200 years of devolution, the sunken depths, “it may as well as have been nuked”, “stay out of this mess, Europe is doomed”, died at his desk, tigers and lions sitting on the throne, “Burroughs not a symbolism guy he’s a Roddenberry guy”, the two Gene Roddenberry pilots from the 1970s, Andromeda, Planet Earth, Genesis 2, the DVDs, the Earth is going to be fine, lamenting the lack of war, worried about footpads, remember Teddy Roosevelt, Bully!, manly escapades, a pan-American peace, target practice, Voltaire’s Candide, “that Volatire guy”, Manifest Destiny and the American Wild West, Europe as the new frontier, he’s the new Columbus, interesting animals, everyone in Pan-America speaks Pan-Am (English), the cultural memory loss in Europe and the language gain in South America is kind of suspicious, Hispanic names, homogenization, L. Sprague deCamp’s Viagens Interplanetarias, Brazilian Portuguese, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, Firefly, a hidden history, a constriction, that’s my head cannon (?), antelopes all over Europe, just Africa transported north, a very relaxing book, enjoying Burroughs like a vacation, not a lot a depth, very little symbolism, its fun, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, David is speaking with the Burroughs estate, running out of public domain Burroughs, a huge stockpile of Burroughs still under copyright, not counting the mundane worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1923-1949, the Caspak series, Amtor, he built himself a rocketship, the Venus series, a tropical rainforest, a sidebar, S.M. Stirling’s re-imagining of the Mars and Venus books, red-striped tigers, bird-people, and a beautiful princess, it’s his thing, this romance thing, The Outlaw Of Torn, his take on the Three Musketeers, brute strength and manly men, Under The Moons Of Mars, from the early 1930s, Pirates Of Venus, Lost On Venus, like the first three Mars books.

Beyond Thirty - from Erb-Dom circa 1969
The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs

BEYOND THIRTY - maps from The Fantastic Worlds Of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Spring 1985

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #341 – READALONG: The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #341 – Jesse, Mr Jim Moon and Bryan Alexander talk about The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1907, the publishing order vs. the writing order, The Night Land, more realistic and tighter, why The Night Land is so rambling, there’s still a romance element, The House On The Borderland, slash fiction, Mary, Job, Leviathan, the Wikipedia entry, science fiction, the alien flora and fauna, what the fuck is going on?, is this what happened to the couple in The Voice In The Night?, H.P. Lovecraft’s assessment, a romance in both senses, The Lost World, a lost world novel, The Lost Continent (film) is based on a Dennis Wheatley novel, the technical stuff, desalination, a fun mashup of Edwardian SF, the devil people, 7 year old “fresh” pork?, long pig?, Creutzfeldt jakob disease, classic horror, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the “angler” tree, decoys to attract food, a spongy fungal horror, must have fungus and pigs, a Philip K. Dick nightmare monster, we are totally missing a scientist, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, how The House On The Borderland uses a book to tell the story, Mary Celeste, what happened to the crew?, The Horror Of Fang Rock, sample wrappers as the leaves of an unbound journal, a soft chamois, the missing pages, the intertextual thing, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates, Castle Of Otronto, Frankenstein, embedded text, Melmoth The Wanderer, As taken down very carefully by his son, James, what of the Glen Carrig itself, boat(s), why this structure, here’s evidence we’re not all liars, random authentic, why does it have two boats?, what was the boatswain’s name, what was their route?, what were they carrying?, the mighty man, for reasons of decorum…, modern nitpicky things, Edgar Allan Poe, in the year 19__, the British were the last people to figure out the novel, Moll Flanders, a neat device, omitting the names and dates and places, M.R. James, Christmas performances, a novel of extremity, like a suspense novel, by crossbow or kite, bastard children and a shipboard marriage, in fact I applaud you, such as cannibalism, seven years trapped in the weeds, a fresh ham? come on!, an enormous supply of foodstuffs, Swiss Family Robinson, you could keep the pigs going, Metro 2033, mushrooms and pigs, Russian political satire, Russian political humor, pigs will eat anything, bread, wine, ham, and cheese, the 1968 movie The Lost Continent, so many cool things happening in it, a tramp steamer from Africa to Venezuela, lithium?, explosive when wet, a proto-disaster movie, in the weed lands, a burial, mariners from all different times (conquistadors), various barques, a Hammer movie, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, Wheatley was clearly a fan of Hodgson, Uncharted Seas, a noir-ish disaster movie, like Casablanca on a ship, again Mysterious Island, they hit a hidden rock, because it is told from the father’s point of view…, not a story for the little ones, because terror is not what the children want, an unreliable narrator, something that Lovecraft does, the effect something has on a character, the description of the weed-men is left to our imagination, “he was very disturbed”, when the bosun heard that the youngest crewman had forgotten an axe, the bosun as the steady-man, make work project, PTSD, vampires, Job gets drained, a disinterment from a beachy grave, vampire bats?, “the thing that made search”, priming us, audio theatre, it would make an excellent audio drama, weird is suited to the short form, a slur of a snake, The Haunting Of Hill House, the land of loneliness, The Captain Of The Pole Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a “pocket Moby Dick”, a mini-version of The Boats Of The Glen Carrig, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket, “tekeli-li tekeli-li”, aural ghosts, weird fiction, sanity blasted, how Poe ends Pym, why do we spend so much time on that crossbow?, reality vs. an adventure story, “I went below in a massive sulk”, what if the island was the back of a creature?, a blow hole of a giant whale, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Empire Strikes Back, did the Millennium Falcon it fly up the anus?, famous last words, very nautical, in the belly of the whale, EC style comics, a shipwreck survivor in a black cave that turn out to be in the belly of a whale, a happy ending, The Ghost Pirates, how can you go wrong with ghost pirates?, Hodgson as an SF writer vs. being a fantasist, Carnaki is sometimes a debunker, Scooby Doo style villains, The Hog, an uber-demon swine entity, what is it with Hodgson and pigs?, M.R. James’ phobia of spiders, dread specters, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, the beautiful images of The Boats Of The Glen Carrig from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, how the hell is this from 1907, set in the early 1700s, what Hodgson gets wrong, a careful 18th century novel, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason And Dixon, John Fowles’ A Maggot, Stanley Kubrick, a nautical doom metal band: Ahab, a weed-man hand, the horror of inter-species sexuality, miscegenation, not The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Sargasso style, Mark Turetsky, he’s porkist not racist, Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, everything that Lovecraft hates Moore turns inside out, horror vs. love, I get to live forever, I get to live in a palace made of coral, what Randolph Carter never got, the cosmic horror vs. the cosmic awesome, the hero won, The White Ship, his fishy glory, Guantanamo Bay style concentration camps, he loves being on the Innsmouth Swim Team, crossing over to Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Historical Society’s adaptation of Dagon: The War Of The Worlds, a San Fransisco garret, seeing it live in Providence, RI, the newspaper, really obsessive, the atmosphere of war, the weed men, the devil men, claws and tentacles, evoking the alien, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs, a great visual, the biggest cone hat you’ve ever seen, into the pit of sarlacc, so many good structural ideas, what you think is a liability…, animal skin hot air balloons, a noirish touch, why it isn’t better known, She, A Million Years B.C., At The Earth’s Core, ships trapped in time, trapped in the Sargasso Sea, tramp steamer movies, Raider’s Of The Lost Ark, Tin Tin also has tramp steamers, Captain Haddock, rife for adventure, more tramp steamer stories please!, The Sargasso Of Space by Andre Norton.

Sargasso Sea

The Boats Of The Glen Carrig (Italian)
The Boats Of The Glen by William Hope Hodgson
The Boats Of The Glen illustration by Indojo

Sub-Mariner, issue 16
Once Upon A Time, Issue 91, The Sargasso Sea

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #340 – AUDIOBOOK: The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

Podcast

LibriVox The SFFaudio Podcast #340 – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson, read by Jason Mills.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (4 hours 45 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.

The Boats Of The Glen Carrig was first published in 1907.

The Boats Of The Glen-Carrig - dust-jacket
The Boats Of The Glen Carrig - illustration by Lawrence Sterne Stevens

Lawrence Sterne Stevens - The Boats Of The Glen Carrig
ad for The Boats Of The Glen Carrig from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, March 1945

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #339 – READALONG: Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #339 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
1960 novel, 1956 novella, the Goddreads reviews, Reddit, re-listening, very visual, John Mcclane at the end of Die Hard, conference room scenes, vague characters, awesome ideas, three Philip K. Dick stories that could have inspired The Terminator movies, no time travel, Doctor Futurity, Skynet, the drones (the hammers), UAV style drones vs. terminators, drone technology, there were drones in WWII, remote controlled bombers [ex. Operation Aphrodite], almost nothing “invented in SF” was actually invented in SF, infiltrators, Jesse has become a Terminator geek, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Screamers (adapted from Second Variety by Philip K. Dick), two battling computers, humans as pawns, both computers are in the same building!, proxies, the Internet is missing, Vulcan 3 is building the Internet, Skynet’s drones, Skynet doesn’t have central control, when Vulcan 3 is controlled, Vulcan 3 as a baby, creepy, at the periphery of the plot, the education sub-theme, a little red headed girl, being raised by a terminator, such a fanny show, the movies are recycling scene and catchphrases, at the school, a non-conformist school, Philip K. Dick’s kid is in school, regular school crushes creativity, meritocracy, nepotism, an unfinished thought, cronyism, technocratic government, getting through by hard work, was he an A.I. controlled by Vulcan 3, “hey the system works!”, sociological ideas, how un-Dickian this novel is, a relatively straightforward mystery, no weird obsessions (like with infidelity), the obligatory black haired girl, the president of the world comes into the world takes a little girl out of school and takes her home?, WTF?, the teacher’s okay with this?, the classroom, the concentration camp in Atlanta is a psychology camp, the conformist world in A Wrinkle In Time, Marissa learns Science Fiction, a planet of complete conformism, “you let them play an unstructured game?”, stifling of independent thought and creativity, why was the teacher killed?, reading Lolita, secretly reading forbidden books, is Philip K. Dick improving the books when he re-writes them (consensus is NO), two cults, a cult of reason and rationality, why is that rebellion group called the “Healers”, like alternative medicine, the worship of the computer, Greys, blue collars against the white collars, “we shouldn’t undervalue people just because their skills are in their hands and in their fingers”, vaxxers vs. the anti-vaxxers, back to Dr. Futurity, Vulcan 2 in the novella, piecing Vulcan 2 back together like a damaged hard-drive, the data is recovered aurally, listening to the broken thoughts of Vulcan 2, not just white noise in between the broken sentences, a groaning of ghosts, psychology, weird and interesting, absolutely NOT what anyone else does in Science Fiction, the Butlerian Jihad, because… Skynet, nobody says actually technology is really quite useful, 43% of the Earth’s resources?, the paragraph, maintaining the computer, the “lesser order of human needs”, some sort of metaphor 43 percent of calories go to the brain?, a biological parallel, making the decisions, making the policy, a subtle allusion to Plato, the greys the technician class are “guardians”, denying a brain data (big mistake), The Just City by Jo Walton, Athena sets up Plato’s Republic, automatons for physical labour, seeing the connections, The Republic, Socrates, like the old Atlanteans, the Gold the Silver and the Bronze (ditch diggers and truck drivers), the Silver (the police, functionaries, tax-collectors), the Gold (the enlightened, the philosophers), Vulcan 3 is the Gold, the T-class (experts and specialists), these books are all being suppressed (due to copyright), a pretty good title, Hammer shaped robots?, Vulcan (aka Hephaestus), the ancient Greeks and Romans, Hephaestus built a robot for Athena, the Greeks were really into automata, metal beings, the Talos of Crete, Vulcan as the wizard of metal, a Philip K. Dick conference lecture, when the Greeks thought of gods they thought of A.I. (sort of), these atoms over here have desires, intelligence in non-living things, a little bit under cooked, what about Vulcan 1?, or does it?, maybe Vulcan 1 is hiding, in a degenerate state, Deus Irae and The Last C., tactical nukes, a lot of weakness but it makes up for it, a bit of paranoia, that’s usually what causes the problem, self-preservation, when Saddam Hussein is threatened, the emotional computer, pleading only as a human could do, “We can come to an arrangement!”, shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a microcosmic version of Vulcan’s Hammer, several Star Trek episodes, The Ultimate Computer, Star Trek as a metaphor for American foreign policy, The Apple, they kill the computer that regulates their society, they killed the snake but…, vegetarians are now hunting, put some controls on this, as a metaphor for society, a rebellion against pain in the body, the mind as the government, living in a post-WWIII world, WarGames, the Russians had a battle computer called “The Dead Hand“, a dead-man’s trigger, WWIII was looming in 1956 and 1960, so good even though its not that good, Dick loves blue collar workers, Father Fields, making something out of the air-conditioner, a dropped thread, a completely weird metaphor, The Borderlands series, Scooter, a technopath, The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick, “he fixed things”, a great tagline, “I don’t got Philip K. Dick for action”, living in a disposable society, everything is disposable, is there a TV-repair shop left in North America?, modern cars, only 5.5 hours, zoning out, cool predictions, the paranoid artificial intelligence, Sam Harris and Joe Rogan, caging an A.I., setting up honey-traps, Jesse thinks that’s not going to be the issue, Neuromancer all A.I.’s have digital shotguns strapped to their heads, “the smartest man in the world”, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, worries, better as a metaphor than as a prediction, we shouldn’t be unconcerned, Colossus: The Forbin Project, it isn’t 1s and 0s on a screen, seeing inside a burned diary, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, Mike the computer (aka Mycroft Homles), what’s missing from Vulcan’s 3‘s life is a friend, kids want to know, I think you guys are liars if…, kids are going to get into everything and that’s not a bad thing, more information is better, Vulcan 2’s decision, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, you are totally welcome to prosper if you are willing and able to play a certain kind of game, the push-back is caused by the masses rejecting stability, the adventurer class, “more concerned with gain than with stability”, the phrases: “life is cheap”, big gambles, the Netflix series Narcos, communist guerrillas living in the jungle, if you are living in a corrupt society you get a lot of gamblers, the striking opening scene, “can’t you get a better picture?”, they all wear the uniform of their class, another theme, destroying stability, going back to entropy, it is kind of Philip K. Dickian after-all, undercooked or maybe overcooked, the same with Time Pawn, this is my worst book, Dean Koontz’s 1973 novel of Demon Seed has a rapey robot computer, with the rewrite of Demon Seed Koontz has mellowed out, writing for the market, even after his death, Puttering About In A Small World by Philip K. Dick, everything’s always better with a robot wife.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury

Here’s an Octobery treat for you, The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury as read by Scott Lefebvre.

Timothy feels like an outsider at his family reunion – he just doesn’t fit in; he doesn’t drink blood, he can’t fly, and isn’t immortal – not the rest of the family, which is made up of witches, vampires and werewolves.

Here’s Lawrence’s stunning illustration of The Homecoming from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1952:

Lawrence illustration of The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury

“Homecoming”, as it was first titled, was first published in Mademoiselle, October 1946, and was “plucked from the pile of unsolicited manuscripts” by Mademoiselle’s editorial assistant, Truman Capote. This came, apparently, after its rejection by Weird Tales – a market where Bradbury had often earlier seen print. Mainstream publication lead to mainstream awards, and to more mainstream publications. But, it also showed up, as did so many of Bradbury’s works as reprints in genre magazines, like Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and in more recent years even as picture book version, with illustrations by Dave Mckean.

The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury - illustrated by Dave Mckean

Posted by Jesse Willis