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.
Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan spend an hour with Alastair Reynolds, talking science fiction. The conversation is focused, no awards are mentioned, and they talk a lot of about Alastair’s inspiration, Arthur C. Clarke, as well as his upcoming novel, Blue Remembered Earth (it’s on Wikipedia already).
Rss feed: http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/feed/
|MP3|
Posted by Tamahome
Eerie was a comics magazine, by Warren Publishing, that ran from 1966 to 1983. It was a (mostly) black-and-white magazine that featured original and adapted stories. Unlike most contemporary comics of its era it didn’t submit the Comics Code Authority so its stories could feature nudity, blood, and plenty of other gruesome goodness.
Below you’ll find some of the many ads for spoken word record albums that ran in the mag. The only one I’ve ever come across myself was the audio drama adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea |READ OUR REVIEW|.
I’ve received dozens of emails over the years asking about this edition of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. If you’ve got some of the records below, or know of others from similar magazine ads, please leave comments!
Eerie magazine ad from 1975 – “SUPER ADVENTURE RECORD ALBUMS” and “12 EVIL EDGAR ALLAN POE RECORDS!”:
EERIE 1979 – “Fantastical LP Record Albums”:
Eerie 1967 – “An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends”:
Eerie 1968 – “Wild, New Adventure LP Records”:
Eerie magazine ad from 1966 – “Now You Can Hear Your Favorite Monsters”:
Eerie magazine ad from 1966 – “Famous Monsters Speak”:
Posted by Jesse Willis
I’ve created a |PDF| from the printing in the December 1926 issue of Amazing Stories.
I’ve created a |PDF| from the printing in the October 1933 issue of Amazing Stories.
In his introductory essay “Expanding The Lens“, found in to the story in The Road To Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh To Wells, editor James Gunn writes:
“[The Diamond Lens] is the first known story in which another world is perceived through a microscope… [this story] opened up another world, not just for readers, but for writers as well.” Gunn goes on to praise O’Brien’s “realistic treatment of the fantastic” and says that “‘The Diamond Lens‘” may be the first modern science-fiction story.”
LibriVox narrator Corrina Schultz describes The Diamond Lens this way:
“This story has a bit of everything – obsessive scientist, psychic medium contacting the dead, clever murder cover-up, racism, creepy stalker, college student shirking his studies, the painful results of pursuing forbidden knowledge, the noble savage…”
Atop those words I myself can heap a few other attractors:
1. The Diamond Lens is bizarre in both plot and focus, with episodic like writing <-Weird for a short story. 2. It has the sensibility of a foreign culture <-The 19th century attitude toward seances is pretty fucking foreign! 3. The protagonist is a mad microscopist. <-Perhaps he was demented by the illicit lure of science? 4. The story features a brutal killing. <-With a whackjob of added racism to complicate matters! 5. It has a noir ending. <-My favourite kind. As you may have guessed I quite enjoyed The Diamond Lens.
Stories like Harl Vincent’s Microcosmic Buccaneers (1929), Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God (1941) and both Sunken Universe (1942) and Surface Tension (1952) by James Blish all stem from the microscopic pioneering of The Diamond Lens. Whereas the theme, of an alien female object of adoration in an unreachable land, also brings to mind a mighty parallel with Jack Williamson’s The Green Girl (1930). And one final note, a quick read of the Wikipedia entry for Fitz James O’Brien makes me think some of the tale is autobiographical!
The Diamond Lens
By Fitz James O’Brien; Read by Corinna Schultz
1 |MP3| – Approx. 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox
Published: FORTHCOMING
A scientist, having invented a powerful microscope, discovers a beautiful female living in a microscopic world inside a drop of water. First published in the January 1858 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
The Diamond Lens
Based on the story by Fitz-James O’Brien; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: MBS, NBC, ABC
Broadcast: December 31, 1944
Provider: Archive.org
Posted by Jesse Willis
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
– David Hume (Of The Standard Of Taste)
We tend to forget. Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series seemed fresh and original when it came out a couple years ago. But that’s because we’d forgotten about Charles Beaumont and The Beautiful People. Westerfeld wrote four novels exploring territory that Charles Beaumont pioneered. It’s short story that packs a helluva punch. Imagine a world when everyone around you says that you are ugly, that you’re fat. that you’re unhealthy, that you’re self image is completely wrong, and most importantly that you’ve got to change because social position will be completely untenable.
Now imagine that world – our world – just a few years in the future. A world in which everyone wears a mask on all the days before and after October 31st.
Pure horror.
The Beautiful People has stuff to say about beauty and ugliness, the proper place of women, the value of book reading, as wells as the passing fads of sleeping and eating.
Here is a |PDF| version.
The Beautiful People
By Charles Beaumont; Read by Julie Davis
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Forgotten Classics
Podcast: October 2011
|ETEXT|
Mary was a misfit. She didn’t want to be beautiful. And she wasted time doing mad things—like eating and sleeping. First published in the September 1952 issue of If Worlds of Science Fiction.
The Twilight Zone adapted The Beautiful People into an episode entitled Number 12 Looks Just Like You.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Last weekend saw the re-broadcast of first episode (of four parts) of the 1996 BBC’s radio dramatisation of The Eagle Of The Ninth, that’s Rosemary Sutcliffe’s excellent YA novel. It was recently turned into a pretty good film (The Eagle). If you’re a fan of Henry Treece, as I am, you’ll probably also like Sutcliffe. The next three parts will air on subsequent weekends. I hope to collect them all over on RadioArchive.cc when it completes. Based on the first episode, listenable HERE, you may want to do the same. Sadly no unabridged version of the audiobook currently exists.
The Eagle Of The Ninth
Based on the novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe; Dramatised by Sean Damer; Performed by a full cast
4 (half-hour) Broadcasts – Approx. 2 Hours [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 Extra
Broadcast: Sunday October 23, 2011 (and the subsequent three Sundays)
Can Marcus recover his father’s reputation and the lost Eagle from his legion in Rosemary Sutcliffe’s children’s adventure set during the Roman occupation of Britain?
Cast:
Tom Smith
Mark Coleman
Produced by Hamish Wilson
Here’s the trailer for the recent movie version:
Posted by Jesse Willis
The BBC is not noted for programming that specifically celebrates Halloween. There is, however, a new production of the Ray Bradbury classic Something Wicked This Way Comes (a full cast radio production), which is one thing that is wickedly coming this way this weekend:
The Saturday Play – Something Wicked This Way Comes
Adapted from the novel by Ray Bradbury; Dramatised by Diana Griffiths; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – Approx. 1 Hour [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Saturday October 29, 2011 (14:30-15:30)
Set in 1960’s Illinois this gem of modern Gothic literature is the memorable story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, and the evil that grips their small Midwestern town with the arrival of a “dark carnival” one Autumn midnight. These two innocents, both aged 13, (Will is born one minute before Halloween, and Jim one minute after) save the souls of the town (as well as their own). This is a vivid variation on the eternal theme of the fight between Good and Evil. A thrilling, chilling, richly kaleidoscopic sound world ensues; a shimmering mirror maze that reflects your older or younger self, depending on your desires, and a magic carousel that plays Chopin’s Funeral March forwards – with each rotation you gain a year, and rotating backwards – you get younger.
Cast:
Will … Theo Gregory
Jim … Josef Lindsay
Charlie … Henry Goodman
Mr. Dark … Kenneth Cranham
Mr. Coogar/Lightening rod salesman … Gerard McDermott
Miss Foley … Barbara Barnes
Dust Witch … Buffy Davis
Robert … Taran Stanzler
Young Miss Foley … Amelia Clarkson
JED … Ethan Brooke
Composer … David Paul Jones
Sound … Paul Cargill
Produced/Directed by Pauline Harris
[Thanks Roy]
Posted by Jesse Willis