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.
I don’t think Philip K. Dick and Hollywood are writing for the same audience:
The Adjustment Bureau movie trailer: Powerful, handsome bachelor boy meets cute girl -> handsome boy loses beautiful girl -> handsome boy is chased by powerfully fedoraed men -> handsome gets beautiful back again.
The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team) audiobook: middle class schnook has quietly comfortable conversation with wife -> gets pushed around by insurance salesman -> weird shit happens -> freaks out -> runs home to his wife. PLUS: talking dog!
The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team)
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Phil Gigante
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: March 4, 2011
ISBN: 9781441894694
Sample |MP3| The Adjustment Bureau is a major motion picture based on Philip K. Dick’s classic paranoid story, The Adjustment Team. This is the short story, The Adjustment Team, which asks the question – Do we control our destiny, or do unseen forces manipulate us? Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent with a normal life, until one day he leaves the house for work a few minutes later than he should have. He arrives at a terrifying, grey, ash world. Ed rushes home and tells his wife, Ruth, who goes back to the office with him. When they return, everything is normal. But he soon realizes people and objects have subtly changed. Panic-stricken, he runs to a public phone to warn the police, only to have the phone booth ascend heavenward with Fletcher inside…
The SFFaudio Podcast #103 – Scott, Jesse, Eric S. Rabkin and Luke Burrage talk about FOOD in Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is rather unpleasantly like being drunk.
Talked about on today’s show:
Luke’s got a twelve hour hunger, fairy tales, Fantasy, food sharing is coming to know the alien, what food is served in a Canadian restaurant?, Kwakiutl vs. Kwakwaka’wakw, pemmican, voyageurs, THE YELLOW PERIL podcast (The SFFaudio Podcast #051), Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein’s creation was a vegetarian, Paradise Lost, Genesis, Cain vs. Abel, Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, the three stages of eating: veggies -> meat -> people, aliens, crazy vs. odd, inedia (fasting), breatharianism, Scott Pilgrim, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, inspired by spirits, Neuromancer, communion, puns, Foods of the Gods: Eating And The Eaten In Fantasy And Science Fiction (Proceedings Of The J. Lloyd Eaton Conference On Science Fiction And Fantasy Lite) edited by Eric S. Rabkin, Gary Westfahl and George Edgar Slusser, more puns, The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem, consuming books, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Michael Kandel, The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells, evolution and food, food in pill form, Tang, Firefly, Science Fiction: prediction of the future vs. sign of the future, jetpacks, capsulized food is symbolic, lembas is super-power bread, energy drinks, food as a representation of our relationships with our bodies, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, yet more puns, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, food and pretty dresses, baking and bread have deep roots, Voyage To The Moon by Cyrano de Bergerac, no one ever sees a baker eating, food imagery, the centrality of bread in SFF only matches that of religion, the bread yes – the blood no, Osiris, Egypt, Greece, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, List of races and species in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the babel fish, “it’s not the babel worm”, fish as a symbol, Pythagoras, professor smackdown, Tower Of Babel, food and sexuality, urban romance, Eat Prey Love, “man does not live by bread alone” vs. “forbidden fruit”, bread as technology, breadfruit, the garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge vs. the tree of immortality vs. the rubber tree, Trantor, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Coruscant, Star Wars, Sam Parkhill, The Off Season by Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, the best hot dog stand on Mars, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, the national food of America is the hot dog, the hot dog is the symbol of America, Manhattan, “hot dog stands all the way down”, meat paste, man as food, To Serve Man by Damon Knight, Alien, The Logic Of Fantasy by John Huntington, cannibalism, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut, The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch, The Screwfly Solution by James Triptree Jr., Beyond Lies The Wub by Philip K. Dick, further punning, vat grown meat, breeding animals to be less intelligent, a very meaty topic, Caviar by Theodore Sturgeon, vegetarianism, Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton, Luke is on the wrong side of meat history, being as unnatural as possible is what makes us human, a continuing journey towards humanity (marching on our stomachs?), social animals, mothers make food for you – witches make food of you, choosing not to eat meat vs. choosing to be monogamous, dolphin eating habits (are they porpoiseful eaters?), eating dolphin is out of line (for Luke), exploring the possibilities of empathy, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, empathy vs. compassion, Technovelgy.com’s entry on food, an overly inclusive notion of what constitutes invention, CBC Spark, visiscreens and visiplates, Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback, Minding Tomorrow by Luke Burrage, Technovelgy needs more wiki, Wikipedia is endlessly useful, automated restaurant, The Food Of The Gods by H.G. Wells, food has functions beyond just sustaining our bodies, George Birdseye, Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, coffee, sharing meals via Skype.
One of the goals that I set myself with SFFaudio was to always add a picture to a post. That’s a tough job sometimes. Like right now for instance – I’m working on a post about CBS Radio Workshop. Because it was a radio show, rather than a TV show, there are no screengrabs to be found. I could make something up, of course, and have done so – more often than I’d like – but the ideal would be to find something to ground that art. I want it for whatever logo or typeface they included mostly because there would be more historicity to it than whatever I can slap together. Somebody in the CBS Radio Workshop publicity department, for instance, probably did up some print advertising at some point. That art would be in a magazine or newspaper somewhere – but finding that magazine or newspaper can be pretty tough. This is ever my problem.
These days, when I do a Google Image search for whatever it is I’m looking for, I too often find myself looking at some art that I made. To solve this problem I plan on archiving some of the finds I make – for my own future reference (and for anyone else too). In doing this publicly I am asking for your help.
Does anybody have a scan of an advertisement for the CBS Radio Workshop?
Here’s my fist contribution (from the Spring 1957 issue of Space Science Fiction) three full page advertisements for:
“The Fine Art Of Eating” with Vincent Price
“Sportopics” with Russ Hodges
“The Windup” featuring Private Eye, Ed Noon with Chester Morris
“American Agent” with Lee Bowman
“Our Heritage” with Westbrook Van Voorhis
“Gag Bag” with Peter Donald
“The Frightened” with Boris Karloff
“Your Economy” with T.H. Mitchell, L.L. B., PH.D.
“This Age Of Ours” with Quentin Reynolds
X Minus One ad from the April 1956 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction:
Here’s an X Minus One advertizement that appeared in Galaxy magazine’s May 1956 issue:
Here’s an X Minus One advertizement that appeared in Galaxy magazine’s February 1958 issue:
Here’s an ad, perhaps the very first, for X Minus One that appeared in the September 1955 issue of Astounding:
Here’s an ad for X Minus One that appeared in the September 1955 issue of Astounding:
Here’s an ad for X Minus One that appeared in the November 1955 issue of Astounding:
An X Minus One advertizement from Astounding’s January 1956 issue:
X Minus One is “BACK ON THE AIR” – from Galaxy, August 1957:
Here’s an ad for The Shadow radio show that appeared in the January 1954 issue of Astounding:
Ad for The Shadow from Astounding August 1952:
An ad for The Shadow from Astounding January 1952:
Ad for The Shadow radio show from Astounding January 1953:
Here’s a familiar looking ad (it uses art recycled from The Shadow) for Nick Carter, Master Detective on the Mutual Network:
Stay Tuned For Terror – illustration by Dolgov from Weird Tales, September 1945:
Dimension X ad from Astounding Science Fiction’s August 1951 issue:
I talked to Ben Aaronovitch about his paperbook novel, Rivers Of London, back in SFFaudio Podcast #086. The audiobook, exclusive to Audible, is now available!
Rivers of London
By Ben Aaronovitch; Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith Audible Download – Approx. 9 Hours 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited
Published: April 8, 2011
Provider: Audible.com
Sample |MP3| My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit – we do paperwork so real coppers don’t have to – and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly valuable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I’m a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden… and there’s something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it’s falling to me to bring order out of chaos – or die trying.
First published in the June 12, 1920 issue of Argosy, The Mad Planet was eventually to become one third of Murray Leinster’s fix-up novel The Forgotten Planet. But there were plenty of standalone republications too. It was, for instance, in the November 1926 issue of Amazing Stories – where it was published with this introduction by Hugo Gernsback:
It ran with this art (by Frank R. Paul):
Super Science and Fantastic Stories, December 1944:
Fantastic Novels Magazine, November 1948:
And now available as a LibriVox audiobook:
The Mad Planet
By Murray Leinster; Read by Roger Melin 4 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 6, 2011
|ETEXT| It is 30,000 years following dramatically changed climate conditions on earth which had let massive amounts of carbon dioxide belch from the interior of the planet into the atmosphere. Over the millenia this would have quite devastating effects on life as it had once been known. Much of the human and animal population would not survive the climate change, and indeed those few humans who did survive knew nothing of all which their predecessors had learned and built. Indeed, they knew not even of their existence. On the other hand insects and fungi would flourish over time. And so those few remaining humans were unknowingly at the very beginning of the building of a tribal society, which at the time of the story of Burl simply meant food and survival. And so it was Burl who chose to travel beyond his small tribal community in an effort to hunt for something new and different to hopefully impress Saya, the young female of his tribe to whom he felt a peculiar attraction. The Mad Planet is Burl’s adventure.
Create an original video promoting audiobooks – expressing your vision in 3 minutes or less – and you could win up to $5000 in cold hard cash! We’re looking for a video to go viral showing audiobooks to be fun and engaging, that may use the “Get Caught Listening” approach – and we’ll use it to promote our audiobooks industry. Our judges will select 10 finalists from all entries received by May 15, 2011, then the top 3 Fan Favorites will win: $5000 cash prize, $2500 cash prize, $1000 cash prize. More prizes are available, too!
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The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team)
