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.
CBC Radio One doesn’t normally have advertizing. But since 2005 one of it’s most popular programs has had advertizing as its core subject. Variously called O’Reilly on Advertizing and The Age Of Persuasion it is now called Under The Influence.
The show is a half hour documentary series about the history of advertizing. The host, Terry O’Reilly, is a marketing man and has a business that specializes in radio advertizing. This, along with the often interesting sub-subjects it tackles, makes the show incredibly slick, and fun to listen to.
In fact I’d argue that it is perhaps most accessibly listenable program ever aired on CBC Radio or ever podcast on the internet.
Check out their recent episode titled Movie Marketing, which looks at, among other things, the effect that spoilers in movie trailers have on box office receipts. |MP3|
But you better hurry because if you don’t download it now, before you have to buy it on iTunes later!
So far, audiobook publishers have been going to their usual sources to produce audio theater: Commercial voice-over studios, Industrial/educational studios or the publishers themselves. Frankly, the results are really mixed. These people aren’t audio theater people. They haven’t been listening and producing audio theater for years.
My prediction is that at some point pretty soon the audiobook publishers are going to get feedback from their listeners that there’s a whole ‘nother world of audio theater out there. It’s on community radio. It’s podcast. It’s handed back and forth on the Internet. It’s sounding better and better all the time.
The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung, “The Transformation”) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arguably the most famous of his works along with the longer works The Trial and The Castle. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a giant “monstrous vermin”.
This narration by David Barnes is really terrific! One reviewer put it this way: “Slow, dignified, fitting for Kafka.” Another this way:
“A wonderful recording … Many thanks to Mr Barnes for his wonderful reading … [a] nightmarish and chilling tale of horror and abandonment. It is one of the most powerful texts written by Kafka and quite worth listening to.”
Here are the illustrations, and a brief editorial, from the June 1953 publication of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.
The Metamorphosis
By Franz Kafka; Translated by Ian Johnston; Read by David Barnes 3 Zipped MP3 Files or M4B – Approx. 2 Hours 34 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 11, 2006
|ETEXT| “Already he had taken the alien loathesome shape … In all except the still watching mind – the vestige of a soul that still could suffer…”
Brad Lansky and the 4D-Verse
By J.D. Venne; Performed by a full cast
1.5 Hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Protophonic.net
Published: 2012
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Audio Drama / Dimensional space / Quantum entanglement / Artificial Intelligence /
Taking up where the previous Brad Lansky title ended, this drama has Brad and Alex exploring the 4D-Verse. They get split up while searching for MAMAI (an artificial intelligence), with Alex moving to a higher dimension while Brad figures how to get him back.
In a previous review I compared a Brad Lansky audio to Meatball Fulton’s Ruby series. This one comes from the same mold. It’s a aural feast from start to finish; among the richest audio you’ll hear. Another comparison leapt to mind this time: the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not only is the subject matter similar (hard SF involving alien beings), but the tone is similar. Just like Kubrick lingered on shots to allow the viewer time to experience awe, Dieter Zimmerman and crew linger with sound that creates images in the listener’s mind. This is very much a cooperative experience. Break out your best headphones and be prepared to provide imagination.
Lansky: I can’t wait to check out these places!
Alex: What? Are you crazy?
Lansky: No, just an explorer who doesn’t run away when he finds something interesting!
Dieter Zimmerman, one of the creative people behind the Brad Lansky series, was recently interviewed on Fred Greenhalgh’s Radio Drama Revival podcast. Find that episode |HERE|.
All of the Brad Lansky titles can be purchased at Protophonic.net!
The SFFaudio Podcast #150 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome, and Kristin (A.K.A Terpkristin) talk about recently arrived audiobooks, new releases and more.
Talked about on today’s show:
Scott’s recent arrivals, Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth and The Crack In Space, Futurama, Allan Kaster’s Timeless Time Travel Tales, “say that five times fast”, Jesse and Luke’s time travel podcasts Sfbrp 151 & 152, “mindblown”, Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton, “pen name?”, Theodore Sturgeon’s To Marry Medusa (A.K.A The Cosmic Rape), Tam thinks it’s random, Stephen on Goodreads liked it, Robert Silverberg’s short story Passengers is mentioned again, Gregory Bear’s Primordium (Halo: The Forerunner Saga, #2), Kristin is a recovering Halo player, Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein (1949), in the year of Pearl Harbor, a fifth column, “I got nothin”, Dieter Zimmerman’s Brad Lansky And The 4D-Verse audiodrama |READ OUR REVIEW|, good audio like Ruby, Against The Light by Dave Duncan, “here’s one for the haters”, Them Or Us(Hater, #3) by David Moody, Hater (Hater, #1), |READ OUR REVIEW|, “that review still gets comments”, Kristin thinks Gerard Doyle is a good narrator, Farewell To The Master by Harry Bates — it inspired The Day The Earth Stood Still, “is there a theremin?”, Ben Bova and Bill Pogue’s The Trikon Deception, Scott likes Bova’s Grand Tour series, Pogue was an astronaut, “how do you go to the bathroom in space?”, Jesse’s new releases, The Comedy Is Finished by Donald Westlake will be the next readalong, Audiogo sells BBC audiodrama and audiobook mp3s, a new A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs audiobook, narrated by Scott Brick, hope the movie is good, no nudity, is David Stifel (“That Burroughs Guy“) upset?, he appeared on Sffaudio 137, Tam likes Scott Brick narrating the John Corey books like Plum Island by Nelson DeMille, “wise ass detective”, Philip K. Dick’s Upon The Dull Earth And Other Stories, Jesse helped spur that into creation, now we pick random interests, The Stand by Stephen King is 47 hours, it used to be half as long, Jenny couldn’t stay awake for Insomnia, Larry Niven’s A World Out Of Time, a corpsicle, The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, revenge version of Robin Hood, Fritz Leiber, George Zebrowski space opera?, Mars Needs Books!, A Llull In The Compass, James Blaylock was a steampunk pioneer, Avram Davidson’s Rork!, Larry Correia does magic noir, Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary books seem like an older TheGirl With The Dragon Tatoo (Generation Loss and Available Dark), Lev Grossman’s review of book 2, “she’s boiling hard”, The Odyssey narrated by Gandalf, Tam wasn’t super excited by Peter F. Hamilton’s A Quantum Murder (Greg Mandel, #2), Kristen gets converted to superheroes with Wildcards #1 edited by George R.R. Martin, Heroes, Elmore Leonard’s Raylan, Justified tv show, cross breeding from book to tv, psychotic nurse, short descriptions, Elmore’s 10 rules of writing, he likes Margaret Atwood’s descriptive powers, never write ‘Suddenly’, Tam likes Jennifer Pelland’s ebook Machine, James Patrick Kelly told Jennifer “don’t take out the vomit“, you may find it ‘squicky‘, Jennifer Blood comic in one minute, Scarlet comic in one minute, chicks that kick ass, copying or transferring a consciousness, what good does a copy do me?, transporters?, Think Like A Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly (dramatized version linked here — nope it’s gone), Kristin and Jenny need to watch Star Trek, Norman Spinrad, The Doomsday Machine, a sock dipped in cement, Old Man’s War, Tam’s favorite 1st 2 chapters are in Altered Carbon, hard boiled future
CBC Radio One doesn’t normally have advertizing. But since 2005 one of it’s most popular programs has had advertizing as its core subject. Variously called O’Reilly on Advertizing and The Age Of Persuasion it is now called Under The Influence. 
The Metamorphosis
