Review of Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes by Harlan Ellison

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

We’re in the home stretch now… Pick up the ball, and throw it to Who.

Audiobook - Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes by Harlan EllisonPretty Maggie Moneyeyes
Contained in The Voice from the Edge, Volume 3: Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes
By Harlan Ellison; Read by Harlan Ellison
1 Hour – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010
Themes: / Fantasy / Ghosts / Gambling / Slot Machines /

Why don’t more narrators read stories like Harlan Ellison reads stories? I would say that the insistence with which he reads has to do with the fact that he’s delivering his own material, but he won an Audie Award for his narration of a Ben Bova story a while back. So he pours the same personality – and that’s what the quality really is; a personal one, like he’s right there with you – he pours the same personality into stories other than his own. I would therefore love to hear him read an anthology of his favorite stories from other writers.

But the story at hand is “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes”, a sharp tale about a guy near the end of his luck who pulls the handle on a dollar slot machine and wins the jackpot. Then pulls the handle and wins again. Impossible, you say? Maybe. Maybe not.

I love the fact that after the story Ellison talks about writing it. And that’s an interesting story, too.

Visit the Blackstone Audio website for an audio sample from another of the stories in the Voice from the Edge, Vol. 3 collection.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

LibriVox: Jock of the Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxHere’s a fun, and approximately antipodean, compliment to Jack London’s stupendous novel The Call Of The Wild. Set in 1880s South Africa, it is a set of semi-fictional stories about an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier named Jock. According to a book called National Character In South African Children’s Literature it was none other than Rudyard Kipling who persuaded James Percy Fitzpatrick to collect his Jock tales in book form. Now that is quite a provenance!

LIBRIVOX - Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy FitzpatrickJock Of The Bushveld
By Sir Percy Fitzpatrick; Read by various
28 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 12 Hours 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Publisher: March 19, 2010
Jock of the Bushveld is a true story by South African author Sir Percy Fitzpatrick when he worked as a storeman, prospector’s assistant, journalist and ox-wagon transport-rider. The book tells of Fitzpatrick’s travels with his dog, Jock, during the 1880s. Jock was saved by Fitzpatrick from being drowned in a bucket for being the runt of the litter. Jock was very loyal towards Percy, and brave. Jock was an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3952

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Rastignac The Devil by Philip José Farmer

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxI get the sense that Rastignac The Devil is a satire, using the furniture of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. But I feel really embarrassed about not knowing what is going on, sub-textually, in this interesting, but baffling, novella by Philip José Farmer. Is it all an allegorical satire of some event in 17th century France?

A couple of other notes. Mike Resnick’s Starship series has a character named “Slick.” Slick is an alien with a sentient symbiotic skin (called a “gorib”). Rastignac The Devil has aliens and humans with just such a similar concept – very cool! Gregg Margarite, the narrator, does a very good job with the abundance of French words.

Anyway, like I said, I liked the story, thought it was weirdly cool, but don’t feel like I’ve understood it at all. Could someone fill me in?

LIBRIVOX - Rastignac The Devil by Philip Jose FarmerRastignac The Devil
By Philip José Farmer; Read by Gregg Margarite
2 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 19, 2010
Here is high fidelity fiction at Philip José Farmer’s story-telling best. It’s a vibrant, distractingly different tale of three centuries into the future. And as you read you’ll have a vague, uneasy feeling that it’s all taking place somewhere in the unexplored parts of the universe, even today. From Fantastic Universe May 1954.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4158

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Barry Eads (aka KiltedDragon)]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: David Wellington

Scott D.

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Horror Audiobook - 13 Bullets by David Wellington13 Bullets: A Vampire Tale
By David Wellington; Read by Bernadette Dunne
10.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

Arkeley nailed the last vampire, in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise.

When a state trooper named Laura Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment. Who else? He’s been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don’t: that there is one left. In an abandoned asylum, she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can.

Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the Fed has made it plain that there is only one way out. The worst thing, though, is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can’t guess…a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won’t say…a reason she has to find out—or die trying.

Now there are only thirteen bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only thirteen bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned.
 
 
Horror Audiobook - Frostbite by David WellingtonFrostbite: A Werewolf Tale
By David Wellington; Read by Tai Simmons
8 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

There’s one sound a woman doesn’t want to hear when she’s lost and alone in the Arctic wilderness: a howl. When a strange wolf’s teeth slash Cheyenne’s ankle to the bone, her old life ends, and she becomes the very monster that has haunted her nightmares for years. Worse, the only one who can understand what Chey has become is the man—or wolf—who’s doomed her to this fate. He also wants to chop her head off with an axe. Yet as the line between human and beast blurs, so too does the distinction between hunter and hunted, for Chey is more than just the victim she appears to be. But once she’s within killing range, she may find that—even for a werewolf—it’s not always easy to go for the jugular.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

NPR: Blade Runner – Dreams of Electric Sheep

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

There’s an old NPR/WNYC piece on Blade Runner that casts the fear of Nexus 6 androids on Earth as a kind of allegory for racism and slavery. Perhaps we could coin a term for this. How about, “The Plastic Peril”? Although that sounds a bit too much like a reference to Autons.

Dreams Of Electric Sheep
By Phillip Martin
June 29, 2007
25 years ago this week, Blade Runner debuted in American theaters. It was set in a Los Angeles of the future, but its portrayals of race and racism had plenty of resonance in 1982. Reporterlooks back on a classic of cyborgian social criticism.

|MP3|

[via HuffDuffer and Adactio]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Identity Theft by Robert J. Sawyer

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

Beginning the fourth week of this SFFaudio 7th Anniversary Story-a-Day Celebration! Be careful out there…

Science Fiction Audiobook - Identity Theft by Robert J. SawyerIdentity Theft
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Anthony Heald
2 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010
ISBN: 9781441716729
Themes: / Science Fiction / Robots / Consciousness / Mystery / Detectives /

This is a great story. It originally appeared in Down These Dark Spaceways, and anthology edited by Mike Resnick and published by the Science Fiction Book Club. This version is read by Anthony Heald, a terrific narrator who was once the voice of choice for the Star Wars universe. He reads with energy and verve, great characterization and accents as needed.

Sawyer has said before that he feels that science fiction has more in common with the mystery genre than it does the fantasy genre, and this isn’t the first time he’s written an effective science fiction mystery. In the future Mars he presents, people can trade their bodies in for artificial ones, providing long life and more reliable body parts. The process requires making a copy of a person’s conscious mind, and imprinting that copy into the brain of the new body.

Like in many Sawyer stories, many of the implications of such a world are explored. What happens to the originals? What about unauthorized copies? In addition, there is a very interesting human settlement on Mars, and some fossil finding there. “Identity Theft” is a very entertaining novella, very well presented.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson