The SFFaudio Podcast #160 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #160 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Brian Murphy (of The Silver Key and Black Gate) talk about Red Nails by Robert E. Howard (read by Gregg Margarite for LibriVox). The audiobook runs 3 Hours 21 minutes and the discussion begins after that.

Talked about on today’s show:
Comics, the comic adaptation of Red Nails, Conan Saga, Savage Tales, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Storyteller, Wolverine, the REH Comics Yahoo! Group, Beyond The Black River, Tower Of The Elephant, Karl Edward Wagner, Queen Of The Black Coast, grimness, pirates, torture, lesbianism, happy endings, “so much for that decades old gang war”, it’s Red Nails is like a Tom Baker Doctor Who serial, haunted city, a feud culture, Tolkemec’s laser, “if it bleeds we can kill it”, Conan the chauvinist, Valeria kicks ass, is the story told from Valeria’s POV?, it begins like a mystery, the “dragon” is a dinosaur (sort of), Techotl, writer shorthand, Star Trek (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield), Techotl is Gollum-like, Red Nails as a gang war, why didn’t they all get rickets and starve, Howard was the original locavore, a roofed city vs. a domed city, Hatfields vs. McCoys, the black pillar of vengeance, ConanRedNails.com, HBO can do no wrong, copyright vs. trademark, Dark Horse’s Chronicles Of Conan #4, colour and colouring, Howard as a stylist, Book X of The Odyssey, The Land of the Lotus Eaters, The Dark Man: The Journal Of Robert E. Howard Studies, using digital copies to research (control-f), Aztec, Toltecs, cannibalism, Jack London, Harold Lamb, William Morris, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, sword and sorcery, horror, The Black Stone, Worms Of The Earth by Robert E. Howard, Tantor Media’s tantalizing collection Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, condemn Howard’s racism praise his writing, Orson Scott Card, Al Harron of The Blog That Time Forgot, Apparition In The Prize Ring by Robert E. Howard, Ace Jessel, Solomon Kane, what will we do after?, just an average weekend with laser beams, the gonzo ending of Red Nails, BrokenSea’s The Queen Of The Black Coast audio drama, Bill Hollweg, legal trouble, Sherlock Holmes, Disney’s John Carter vs. Dynamite Entertainment‘s Warlord Of Mars.

Red Nails - interior fold out art by Ken Kelly

Red Nails - Ending - art by Barry Windsor-Smith

Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

Red Nails illustration by Margaret Brundage from Weird Tales, July 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, July 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, August September 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, October 1936

Red Nails by Robert E. Howard - illustration by George Barr

Red Nails - illustration by George Barr

George Barr ILLUSTRATION for Red Nails

Valeria by Geoffrey Isherwood (in the style of Barry Windsor Smith)

Red Nails - illustrated by Gregory Manchess

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Mountain Man by Robert E. Howard

Jesse Willis

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Robert E. Howard’s Breckinridge Elkins stories are humorous tall tales about a mighty naive but mighty muscled country boy. This one, the very first, starts off a little like Winnie The Pooh, but fear not, all Howard’s usual themes are in there. There’s a bit of a difference though, even though you’ve got a barbaric he-man battling civilized folk the story differs from a CONAN tale in that it’s set in the then contemporary world (1934) and also because it’s told in first person by an unreliable narrator.

The audiobook’s narrator, RK Wilcox, on the other hand, is a very reliable narrator, as you’ll hear in this solid reading of Mountain Man.

Mountain Man by Robert E. Howard

LibriVoxMountain Man
By Robert E. Howard; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 25, 2008
|ETEXT|
Introducing the famous Breckinridge Elkins of Hardrock County, suh-the first and foremost What-a-Man of 1934! He was raised on b’ar meat and panther milk – and strong men hunt a hideout when it’s his night to howl! First published in Action Stories, March-April 1934.

Here’s a |PDF| from the original publication in Action Stories.

Posted by Jesse Willis

National Endowment for the Arts: Big Read: A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

National Endowment for the Arts: Big ReadThe National Endowment for the Arts presents a complied interview piece on Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard Of Earthsea.

Contributors include Michael Chabon, Kelly Link, Orson Scott Card, Walter Mosley, R.L. Stine and Le Guin herself!

|MP3|

Subscribe via the podcast feed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/neabigread

Posted by Jesse Willis

City Of Dreams: The Damned Are Playing At Godzilla Tonight on YouTube

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

SEEING EAR THEATRE - J. Michael Straczynski's City Of Dreams

You’ve heard rumors of the City of Dreams. It’s existence has been officially denied, although unconfirmed reports have placed it beneath the ruins of Machu Pichu in South America. Others say it’s in Arkham, Massachusetts, or hidden in a secret network of tunnels under Moscow.

But we’re here to tell you the truth. Do you want to know where the City of Dreams is?

It’s on YouTube! Yes, the wondrous Twilight Zone-esque series written by J. Michael Straczynski and produced as a part of The Seeing Ear Theatre is available on YouTube. Here’s the first episode:

Episode 1 – The Damned Are Playing At Godzilla Tonight

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 3 of 3:

The dark, ominous tale of the bigoted owner of a small nightclub in the City of Dreams who faces a new sound, and a band that just won’t quit…on either side of the grave.

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Cast:
Steve Buscemi
Kevin Conway
Christopher Burns
Kevin Daniels
Beth Glover
J.R. Horne
Ezra Knight

[via J. Michael Straczynski’s Twitter feed]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Guardian Short Stories Podcast: My Dream Of Flying To Wake Island by J.G. Ballard

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Willliam Boyd explains his love of J.G. Ballard’s short story My Dream Of Flying To Wake Island:

In the short history of the short story – not much longer than 150 years – very few writers have completely redefined the form. Chekhov, pre-eminently, but also Hemingway and Borges. JG Ballard has to be added to this exclusive list, in my opinion. Ballard’s models for his haunting stories are closer to art and music, it seems to me, than to literature. These are fictions inspired by the paintings of De Chirico and Max Ernst, which summon up the mesmerising ostinatos of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Character and narrative are secondary – image and symbol dominate with a surreal and hypnotic intensity, and the language reflects this. Ballardian tropes – empty swimming pools, abandoned resorts, psychotic astronauts, damaged doctors, the alluring nihilism of consumer society and so forth – are unmistakably and uniquely his. “My Dream of Flying to Wake Island” is a true Ballardian classic.

This is a story you can listen to again and again.

Guardian Short Stories PodcastMy Dream Of Flying To Wake Island
By J.G. Ballard; Read by William Boyd
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Guardian Short Stories Podcast
Podcast: December 11, 2010
First published in Ambit #60 (Autumn, 1974).

Posted by Jesse Willis