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.
Macbeth: A Novel
By A.J. Hartley and David Hewson (adapted from the play by William Shakespeare); Read by Alan Cumming Audible Download – Approx. 9 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com
Published: June 2011 Writing directly for audio, co-authors David Hewson and Andrew Hartley have taken Shakespeare’s Macbeth and fleshed it out into a full-blown work of historical fiction. It’s an original, gritty take on one of literature’s greatest stories. The authors add inventive details and key scenes that for centuries have played out offstage, delivering new insights into the motivations and actions of almost every character. Emmy Award nominee, Audie Award winner, and experienced Shakespeare performer Alan Cumming (TV’s The Good Wife) plays it all to the hilt, complete with engrossing (and authentic) Scottish accent. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never heard it. Includes a introduction by David Hewson and an afterword by A.J. Hartley.
The SFFaudio Podcast #114 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk about recent arrivals and new releases
Talked about on today’s show: SFFaudio gets ‘slashdotted’ by Windows Weekly, get Go The F To Sleep for free (and see video), Scott’s stack of new audiobooks (2:15), The Initiate Brother by Sean Russell has a nice cover, Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, time travel with nuclear bombs, castration, Dark Mist Rising by Anna Kendall has no tattoos, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okarafor is heavy, Nnedi was on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, should we have note timestamps? (13:41?), Luke does notes like us on his new podcast, discussions are more fun than interviews, can you link to a time offset of an mp3?, youtube subtitles, search the text in podcasts (podzinger or podscope?), the Warriors anthology by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin is split up (into 3 actually), A Game of Thrones tv show, Peter Dinklage rocks as Tyrion, Warriors audiobook could be an Sffaudio Essential, Shadowchaser by Alexey Pehov is Russian fantasy, Kevin Hearne’s Hounded (cover) and Hexed, hopefully they’re fantasy, a triptych from Harry Harrison: The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues(#8), The Stainless Steel Rat Goes To Hell (#9), and The Stainless Steel Rat Joins The Circus(#10), what’s the right order??, John Barnes’s Daybreak Zero, pay attention!, Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick (vol 1 & 2), Jesse’s big paper stack (32:34), graphic novels: Locke & Key Volume 1: Welcome To Lovecraft by Joe Hill (it’s not just one issue, I was wrong), Invincible by Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead) , “his mom would see those heads being chopped off”, Fresh Ink comics review video podcast, Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword, Jesse got some nice book deals (36:14), Jolly Olde Bookstore received $12,000 worth of books, Star Science Fiction Stories #3, The Best of Henry Kuttner, 4 Philip K. Dick Ace Doubles, also finished Ex Machina (graphic novel) by Brian K. Vaughan, the series that isn’t Y: The Last Man, Runaways, The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones — interviewed on I Should Be Writing #202, some ‘dirty’ magazines, more Scott stuff (45:55), Scott on LibraryThing.com, LibraryThing Early Reviewers, The Generation Starship in Science Fiction by Simone Caroti, Heinlein generation starship novel (it’s Orphans of the Sky), Wall-E, Scott starts new releases (51:23), Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, fantasy author name and science fiction author name, “system opera”, The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon (about autism), Chicks Kick Butt anthology, no list of short story titles…again, different urban fantasy butts, Audible micro-credits?, our weekly plead to get Ted Chiang on Audible, Free Apocalypse Al, Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris gets a direct translation (before it was Polish->French->English), The Cyberiad robot short stories, wait…Jesse has more books (59:19), We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, lured by the introduction, Other Worlds, Other Gods: Adventures In Religious Science Fiction anthology edited by Mayo Mohs, perfect for Scott’s podcast, clockwork Jesus, next readalong?, Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl, “he knows which side his bread is oiled on”, Scott’s having a shootout, “big dying words”, quality of The Marching Morons and C.M. Kornbluth, Hex by Allen Steele, “why is there a hole?”, Allen Steele’s article on whatever.scalzi, what it means to finish
Here’s a vintage 1954 Murray Leinster novel that’ll make for some perfect summer listening (sorry folks on the bottom hemisphere of Earth, you’ll have to wait). Now if that’s not enough you may be interested to know that Operation: Outer Space is actually the third public domain Murray Leinster novel narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson! Check out our extensive AUTHOR PAGE for MURRAY LEINSTER to get the other two novels – and there’s lots more Leinster listening there too.
Operation: Outer Space
By Murray Leinster; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson 10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 25, 2011
|ETEXT| Jed Cochrane is about to take off on man’s first interstellar voyage. His mission: Make sure it’s good television!
Ted Chiang, perhaps the greatest living Science Fiction writer, has very little of his excellent fiction (a dozen stories, novellettes and novellas) available in the audio format. That is a bitter, bitter shame. It is my hope this post will help change that.
Lamentably, no Ted Chiang audiobooks have ever been commercially released. There are, however, several podcast sources for readings and the BBC commissioned an unabridged recording of Understand (which has been occasionally rebroadcast).
Below is a chart detailing all of Ted Chiang’s published fiction.
The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown
By Paul Malmont; Read by Christopher Lane
14 CDs – Approx. 16 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 9781455825356
Sample |MP3| In 1943, when the United States learns that Germany is on the verge of a deadly innovation that could tip the balance of the war, the government turns to an unlikely source for help: the nation’s top science fiction writers. Installed at a covert military lab within the Philadelphia Naval Yard are the most brilliant of these young visionaries. The unruly band is led by Robert Heinlein, the dashing and complicated master of the genre. His “Kamikaze Group,” which includes the ambitious genius Isaac Asimov, is tasked with transforming the wonders of science fiction into science fact and unlocking the secrets to invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control, and other astounding phenomena — and finding it harder than they ever imagined. When a German spy washes ashore near the abandoned Long Island ruins of a mysterious energy facility, the military begins to fear that the Nazis are a step ahead of Heinlein’s group. Now the oddball team, joined by old friends from the Pulp Era including L. Ron Hubbard (court-martialed for attacking Mexico), must race to catch up. The answers they seek may be locked in the legendary War of Currents, which was fought decades earlier between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. As the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion of America grows more and more possible, events are set in motion that just may revolutionize the future — or destroy it — while forcing the writers to challenge the limits of talent, imagination, love, destiny, and even reality itself. Blazing at breathtaking speed from forgotten tunnels deep beneath Manhattan to top-secret battles in the North Pacific, and careening from truth to pulp and back again, The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown is a sweeping, romantic epic — a page-turning rocket ship ride through the history of the future.
Macbeth: A Novel
Here’s a vintage 1954 Murray Leinster novel that’ll make for some perfect summer listening (sorry folks on the bottom hemisphere of Earth, you’ll have to wait). Now if that’s not enough you may be interested to know that Operation: Outer Space is actually the third public domain Murray Leinster novel narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson! Check out our extensive AUTHOR PAGE for 
New on Escape Pod: 
– Tower Of Babylon – Omni, November 1990 – novelette
– Understand – Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1991 – BBC Radio 7 – occasionally rebroadcast on BBCR7, read by Rashan Stone, novelette 