The Disembodied Man by Larry Maddock FREE @ REB Audio

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

REB Audio Books, for a limited time, is giving away its MP3 audio dramatization of Larry Maddock’s “romantic SF puzzler” The Disembodied Man. REB’s director of audio production, Bill Mills, sez this is all a part of an “utterly transparent scheme to entice audio book buyers to check out the other titles” from their catlaogue.

To get The Disembodied Man just click |HERE| and add it to your cart. It’ll show up as $0.00. There are some forms to fill out (be sure not to use any special characters like “#” in the address). You’ll also need to create a password, but you won’t be asked for a credit card. If all goes smoothly you’ll be given a user name and a password for this one transaction. Enter them in the space provided and poof – you’ve got your choice of three different bit-rate versions of The Disembodied Man. It’s a fast DRM-free download.

REB Audio - The Disembodied Man by Larry MaddockThe Disembodied Man
By Larry Maddock; Performed by Bill Mills and Roxanne Mills
1 MP3 Download – Approx. 31 Minutes [DRAMATIZED READING]
Publisher: REB Audio Books
Published: April 2009
Listen to a sample |MP3|
Unique SF Romance and Puzzler! From the creator of time traveling secret agent Hannibal Fortune and his sardonic, shape-changing colleague, Webley, comes one of the rarest stories in science fiction history, in an all new audio dramatization. “The Disembodied Man” was published only once, in the legendary sf pulp zine “Imagination” in the early 1950s. Off-beat and humorous like much of Maddock’s work, it is at once a unique tale of an unconventional romance and an intricate puzzler with two O’Henry-like twists, resulting in a delightfully human and touching short story. Who was the disembodied man? How had he gotten that way? Who was the mysterious woman that seemed to watch over him day and night? And could a woman, could any woman, fall in love with “the man who wasn’t there?”

Thanks Bill!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Audiobooker: Interview with LibriVox.org founder Hugh McGuire

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

LibriVoxIn celebration of LibriVox‘s 4th anniversary Mary Burkey’s Audiobooker blog has a short text interview with LibriVox.org’s founder Hugh McGuire. McGuire reports that the site now boasts “2,557 audiobooks” in its catalogue – and that they produce “60-100 books a month” making LibriVox “the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world.” Happy Birthday LibriVox! And thanks for all the audiobooks!

Posted by Jesse Willis

James Dean Palmer: The Scarifyers, Undone and Hordes Of The Things

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

James Dean Palmer's BlogJames Dean Palmer’s blog is about Ginger (a programming language), TiVo surgery, funny comp-sci final exam answers, and anything else popping into JDP’s life (mostly babies). But in between all that he also finds time to talk about the stuff he’s listening to. That brings me to a nice mini-reviewlet of three BBC Radio 7 programs that have aired over the past year or so. Writes James:

“My favorite station is BBC Radio 7 whose charter is to be an outlet for the BBC’s vast archives of audio content but they also serve a fair bit of original content as well.

One bit of original work, The Scarifyers, is particularly entertaining. Imagine The X-Files set in the 30s in the heart of London and Sculley and Mulder are replaced with an eccentric English professor and a past-his-prime police officer. Maybe it’s more Ghostbusters than X-Files. Regardless, it’s witty writing with clever acting.

I started listening to one drama on 7 called ‘Hordes of the Things‘ and have to admit I didn’t get too far before I got bored of it. It’s from many of the same people that brought Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTG) to life and there was much hope it would be the next HHGTG. That it is not but let me be bold and say that a new drama on 7 called ‘Undone‘ might just be. There’s very little similarity between Undone and Douglas Adams’ HHGTG but for some reason Undone just reminds me of the fun and imagination of HHGTG.”

All three of these shows are available over on RadioArchive.cc. The Scarifyers is also available on CD |HERE|. Hordes Of The Things is due for release on CD by BBC Audiobooks on October 8, 2009 (ISBN 9781408426234).

Posted by Jesse Willis

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Roundtable

Scott D.

SFFaudio News

Check out this roundtable, recorded at Comic-Con, with the authors of the Fate of the Jedi book series: Troy Denning, Aaron Allston, and Christie Golden. Each author has written (or is writing) 3 books in the 9 book series, all of which will be released as unabridged audio by Random House Audio. The first two are out now, and we’ve reviewed the first volume: Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston. The authors discuss the ideas of the series, how they are writing it together, and at the end of the second part, they talk about the audiobooks.


 

 
Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Worldcon 2009: Charlie Stross and Paul Krugman talk Science Fiction and economics

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ve been listening to StarShipSofa‘s Sofanauts reports on Worldcon 2009 so I knew Paul Krugman and Charles Stross were at the convention. But, what I didn’t know was that they had had a public conversation there.

Paul Krugman And Charles Stross @ Worldcon 2009

Here it is |MP3| There’s also a transcript available |TRANSCRIPT|.

[via BoingBoing]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Escape Pod X – a new podcast audio drama series

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Escape Pod XEscape Pod X is a new podcast audio drama series. Despite the title, the website indicates no affiliation with the long running Science Fiction podcast magazine “Escape Pod.” It therefore seems likely that Escape Pod X is merely using EP‘s cachet in order to ride some prestigious coat-tails in google and iTunes searches. Clever, but perhaps not clever enough. Escape Pod uses creative commons licensing, Escape Pod X is “© 2009 by Stefan Claypool. All rights reserved.”

Says Stefan Claypool:

“I am the founder and president of a performing arts ensemble called the Interstellar Broadcasting Corporation. We are a group of young adults with a shared passion for classic radio theater and contemporary audio drama. We have performed together for years under the moniker of the Middlebury Radio Theater, which remains active at Middlebury College. Since we have graduated, however, we decided to embark upon a new endeavor in the hope that we might have something else to offer the world of audio drama.”

Their first podcast episode, The Man Who Stole a Planet, is a re-working of an episode of the Mutual Broadcasting show Quiet Please. The OTR Plot spot calls this episode “One of the best of the series. ” I agree, the script is solid. This production however is not perfect. While the acting is descent, the sound effects are virtually non-existent. Music runs throughout, some of it too familiar, the mic balance is also very poor. This is near ruinous, I can’t hear one of the two actors in the piece.

Have a visit to the site, listen |MP3| to the first episode or subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EscapePodX

Posted by Jesse Willis