Lawrence Block, Otto Penzler, and others talk about Donald Westlake in this ad for some Westlake ebooks.
[via The Violent World Of Parker]
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Skull by Philip K. Dick
The first time I read Philip K. Dick’s The Skull, it took me a couple of attempts to really get into it. But with PKD you out to give it a couple of good attempts. So I kept trying. Reading along with the text helped, and after about 150 words or so I could manage the story without the extra textual assistance. I guess this is one of those stories that doesn’t translate to audio that well. That said, once I did get into it it I did find it worthwhile. The Skull is a time travel story that makes a nice companion piece to Michael Moorcock’s Behold The Man. It’s about a future criminal who goes on a mission to kill a religious revolutionary from the 1960s.
The Skull
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen. But he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger’s skull under his arm. From If Worlds of Science Fiction, September 1952.
|ETEXT| Wikisource
|ETEXT| Gutenberg
|PDF| Made from the publication in IF.
Recently a friend pointed out a 1962 French short film, done in photomontage style, called La Jetée. It’s nicely comparable and totally French:
[Thanks Mel!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Dog And The Horse by Voltaire
One of the earliest detectives in history, or at least the history of literature, is Zadig. Zadig is the main character of Voltaire’s philosophical novel Zadig; Or The Book Of Fate – An Oriental History. I stumbled across it’s existence while reading an old issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in which one chapter was featured under the title The Dog And The Horse. The brief editorial introduction, and some further researches on my own, assert that Zadig in this chapter may have been the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s C. August Dupin!
I can sort of see it too, for The Dog And The Horse shows a kind of giant first step in an evolutionary process of the detective – seeing his marriage turn sour Zadig turns to the study of nature for his joy. A kind of passionate interest in the world is necessary for both the scientific detective and the more Sherlockian sort of detective.
The story is damn funny too.
The Dog And The Horse
By Voltaire; Read by Lucy Burgoyne
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 31, 2008
First published in 1747.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Golgotha Dancers by Manly Wade Wellman
Here’s a spooky tale that’s set, in part, in an art museum. It’s read by our old friend Gregg Margarite.
The Golgotha Dancers
By Manly Wade Wellman; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 8, 2010
A curious and terrifying story about an artist who sold his soul that he might paint a living picture. First published in Weird Tales, October 1937.
|ETEXT|
Here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Weird Tales.
Here is the description of Arnold Böcklin’s The Isle Of The Dead, the painting conspicuous for its absence in the story:
“I started down, relishing in advance the impression Böcklin’s picture would make with its high brown rocks and black poplars, its midnight sky and gloomy film of sea, its single white figure erect in the bow of the beach-nosing skiff.”
And here is the image itself:
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #167 – READALONG: At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The SFFaudio Podcast #167 – Jesse, Tamahome and David Stifel talk about At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Talked about on today’s show:
the Burroughs Guy podcast, Pellucidar, A Princess Of Mars, Burroughs was a dynamic writer, 1913, Barsoom series, the Tarzan series, the Pellucidar or Inner World series, The Land That Time Forgot, Tarzan is next, Tarzan goes to Pellucidar (Tarzan At The Earth’s Core), airships, Jules Verne, The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Journey To The Center Of The Earth, Blackstone Audio, the hollow earth, lizard people, dry humour, Dian the beautiful and her brother Dekor, Abner Perry, Robert A. Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw, the well thought through world, the iron mole, an inverted world, Burroughs well lampshades the improbabilities he presents, the moon in the center of the earth (the pendant world), how does the time work in Pellucidar, the relativity of time, the naming of characters and places in Burrough’s worlds, Thoria vs. Thuria, must get loincloths, the 1976 movie version of At The Earth’s Core, princesses, romance, pet hyenadons, saggoths to shoggoth, H.P. Lovecraft, telepathy, the Mahars’ secret, Ja the king, like Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, near instant language learning, Doug McLure, Peter Cushing, a Connecticut Yankee, the pious Perry, Perry’s theory of time, colonialism, the white man’s burden, noble savage, Kull of Atlantis and Brule The Spear Slayer (the Pict), Beyond The Black River, Hooja the Sly One (an ignoble savage), the size of Pellucidar, Ringworld by Larry Niven, the Sahara, manifest density, telegaph line through to the center of the earth, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, “my prehistoric bride”, stone age tech, dinosaurs, giant fire breathing frogs, the various animals of Pellucidar, Hell is Earth, the raw food diet, a dainty cave wife, the illustrated At The Earth’s Core, ERBZine website, the vivisection/lockpicking scene, John Carter, Prince Of Persia, Peter Jackson, Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, David Stifel’s filmography, Sleeper Cell, Minority Report, Gods And Generals, Jeffrey Shaara, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, Gettysburg, Heaven’s Gate, G Vs. E, Six Feet Under, selling Tom Cruise drugs, David’s IMDB page, Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch, Tarzan Of The Apes is next, racism, that David Stifel guy, The Land That Time Forgot, David is in George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House at Theatricum Botanicum in Los Angeles!
Posted by Jesse Willis
At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (podcast and audiobook)
SFFaudio Podcast #167, out tomorrow, is a discussion of At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs. If you’d like to prepare I’ve got the perfect audiobook version for you to check out.
It’s narrated but the wonderful David Stifel, of Marsbooks.libsyn.com. David is reading all of the public domain Barsoom books, under the collected title of “The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs“, and I’m totally loving them.
I think you’ll highly entertained by this fantastic adventure!
At The Earth’s Core
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by David Stifel
15 Podcast Episodes – Approx. 6 Hours 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Marsbooks.libsyn.com
Podcast: March 2012 – May 2012
David Innes is a man with a remarkable story to tell. He is a mining heir who financed an experimental “iron mole,” an excavating vehicle designed by his elderly inventor friend Abner Perry. In a test run, they discover the vehicle cannot be turned, and it burrows 500 miles into the Earth’s crust, emerging into the unknown interior world of Pellucidar. There David finds a land bigger than Earth’s surface, one that’s inhabited by prehistoric creatures of all geological eras, and dominated by the Mahars, a species of flying reptile both intelligent and civilized, but which enslaves and preys on the local stone-age humans.
Podcast feed: http://www.marsbooks.libsyn.com/rss
Also available, for $12.99, is the audiobook version, which omits the intros and outrous in the podcast, you can grab that HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis