NPR has a short feature (4 min.) on Underland Press and The Wovel. |Stream|
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Posted by Charles Tan
The SFFaudio Podcast #019
The SFFaudio Podcast #019 – Julie Davis (of the Forgotten Classics, StarShipSofa and Happy Catholic blog) joins us for a potassium filled show.
Talked about on today’s show:
Forgotten Classics, The Hidden Adversary, Agatha Christie, Temptation, David Brin, Recorded Books, Sundiver, Different Seasons, Stephen King, Frank Muller, Daemon, Daniel Suarez, Microsoft Zune’s 30gb brick = DRM, Librivox’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Craftlit, Craftlit podcast, Another Beowulf & Grendel, Iceland, Greenland, The Fall, Encounters At The End Of The World, Antarctica, Chicago, Dreams With Sharp Teeth coming to DVD, Harlan Ellison, Voices From The Edge, City Of Darkness, Ben Bova, A Wizard Of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin, The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, A good book badly read: IBM And The Holocaust, Edwin Black (have a listen to a sample) |MP3|, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, Tony Smith from StarShipSofa, the worst news of 2008/2009: Donald Westlake is dead. The Hunter, The Sour Lemon Score, Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr Burglar books, Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Spider Robinson, The Hook, The Ax, Humans, Samuel Holt, Grofield, Lemons Never Lie, Hard Case Crime, Somebody Owes Me Money, The Risk Profession, Tomorrow’s Crimes, Anarchaos, Theodore Bikel, Westlake’s “nephew novels”, Smoke, Ross Thomas, Dick Francis, an incomplete but wonderfully annotated bibliography of Westlake novels, My Own Worst Enemy, Money For Nothing, The Cutie, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Robert Silverberg,
Posted by Jesse Willis
Spider Robinson reads In Fading Suns And Dying Moons by John Varley and Chapter 1 of Bad News by Donald E. Westlake
Spider Robinson beat us to the punch by a few hours talking about Donald Westlake’s death on his latest podcast. As usual there’s a lot more going on in the latest show too! He reads chapter one of Bad News, one of Donald E. Westlake’s famous “Dortmunder” crime/comedy novels. And on top of all the music Spider plays there’s a complete and unabridged reading of a John Varley story too…
In Fading Suns And Dying Moons
By John Varley; Read by Spider Robinson
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Spider On The Web
Podcast: January 4th 2009
The story of an unstoppable alien invasion of Earth. Curiously the aliens look human and speak English (and every other language on Earth) and constantly reference Edwin Abbot’s Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions. Their mission? Seize all of the butterflies on the planet.
Podcast feed:
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/iTunes_feed.xml
Posted by Jesse Willis
Scott’s New Column at The Fix: Rocket Science
Over the holiday, I started a new column at The Fix Online. It’s called “Rocket Science”, where I’ll be reading and reviewing Hugo Award winners in the various short fiction categories. I started a similar thing on a short-lived blog I had called SFFreader. This one’s a bit more structured – I’ve got deadlines, and I’m going through them in a logical order. I sure enjoy doing it! The first column covers 1955 – 1956 and was posted on January 1.
The stories covered in that column were:
“The Darfstellar” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
“Allamagoosa” by Eric Frank Russell
“Exploration Team” by Murray Leinster
“The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke
I know of no audio version of “The Darfstellar“.
“Allamagoosa” can be found on audio in humbly titled anthology The Greatest Science Fiction of the 20th Century, which is available from Audible.com.
An audio version of “Exploration Team” was produced by Dercum Audio in 1986.
“The Star” was recorded by Arthur C. Clarke for Caedmon (my preferred version), and can also be found in Fantastic Audio’s Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke series of audiobooks.
Time to update our Hugo winners on audio page! Lots of titles have been produced since we put that page together.
My Audiobook Fix column will continue, but will not be a regular feature. If I’ve got some short fiction audio to talk about, I’ll write it up and get it to them, but the column won’t appear monthly.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Orthopedic Horseshoes – James Morrow, Geoffrey A. Landis, & rememberences of Hal Clement
The episode features scientist/author Diane Turnshek talking with hosts Al and Herb about fostering young writers, first conventions, and bad singing. Al interviews Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner James Morrow about epiphenomenon, really cool titles, The Philosopher’s Aprentice, and The Last Witchfinder. Herb has a chat with poet and Nebula winner Mary Turzillo, and NASA scientist and Hugo & Nebula winning author Geoffrey A. Landis; covering the nature of thought, Marvin Minsky, Joyce, Beckett, David Ives, rocket science, and fond memories of Hal Clement.
In addition, the November episode of Orthopedic Horseshoes, “It Takes Two Murders to Make a Straight Line” is available at ThinkTwice. The show features a discussion of mysteries (including SF mysteries) and mystery conventions, with guests jan howard finder speaking on Arthur Upfield’s mysteries, ethicist Dr. Gordon Snow on security and the future of detective fiction, and renowned filker and Holmes scholar Carl William Thiel on why we love Sherlock Holmes.
Posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show
Aural Noir Review of The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
This review was originally posted on Monday, November 14, 2005 on our now merged AuralNoir.com site.
The Colorado Kid
By Stephen King; Read by Jeffrey DeMunn
4 CDs – 4 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0743550404
Themes: / Mystery / Hard Case Crime / Murder / Reporters / Newspaper / Maine /
In brief, Stephen King’s latest novel is a good one, though I don’t feel it fits well into the Hard Case Crime mold. Details? Here they are:
Two old newspaper men, both approaching retirement, tell a female intern the story of a man who was found dead on the coast of the Maine island on which they live. They reveal clue after clue that they had put together along with a forensics graduate student that worked with police back when it happened. And that’s… pretty much it. No grisly private eyes, no grifters, and no real danger for the main characters, which is why I think the book is a strange fit for the Hard Case Crime line of novels.
Still, this is a short Stephen King novel reminiscent of an earlier King short novel called “The Body”, on which the film Stand by Me was based. There is much going on here between the characters. The old men are approaching retirement and are sharing their years of investigative reporting experience to the intern. The intern is eager to be accepted. The story of the investigation, the clues, the forensics – all extremely interesting in King’s hands, even though “action” is not a word that I’d use to describe it. The novel is filled with the depth of character that Stephen King is famous for, and I enjoyed it even though it was not quite what I expected.
Jeffrey DeMunn is the perfect choice to read The Colorado Kid. He read one of King’s earlier novels – Dreamcatcher – and also starred in what was easily the best Stephen King miniseries – Storm of the Century, where he got to use his excellent Maine accent. He used that accent in this reading, too, and as the island and its inhabitants are characters in themselves, DeMunn’s added authenticity was welcome and very effective. It is a gem of a performance.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson