Edgar Allan Poe all over BBC7 this week

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 7 - BBC7 It’s a busy week over on BBC7 with FIVE whole Poe programs playing! All this is in celebration of Poe’s 200th birthday. If Poe were alive today he’d be a rich man, not because any of his writings are still in copyright, but rather because he’d be able to rake in dough just by doing dramatic readings of his own work. But, since he isn’t still alive [as far as YOU know] we’ll just make do with these…

The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe
In this imaginative and mysterious drama by Christopher Cook, one of Poe’s own early creations, the detective C. Auguste Dupin investigates the bizarre and strange death of the writer. First broadcast in 1988, it stars John Moffatt and Kerry Shale and is directed by John Powell.
Sunday at 10am and 8pm

The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling short story was first published in 1842. Read by David Horovitch, it is the tale of the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. The story was abridged by Richard Hamilton and directed by Emma Harding.
Sunday at 11am and 9pm

The Tell-tale Heart
In another of Poe’s atmospheric short stories, a man coldly calculates and commits what he believes is the perfect murder. When he is confronted by members of the constabulary, will his own heart incriminate him? Directed and produced by Clive Stanhope for CSA Word, this classic example of Gothic fiction is read by Richard Pasco.
Sunday at 11.15am and 9.15am

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold Bug
Set in 1838, this is Poe’s story of piracy, slavery and a treasure hunt. It was dramatised by Gregory Evans and first broadcast in 2001. Starring Clarke Peters, John Sharlan, Rhashan Stone and William Hootkins, it is directed by Ned Chaillet.
Saturday at 6pm and Midnight

The Fall of the House of Usher
Our final Edgar Allan Poe offering is read by Sean Barrett. A man’s descent into madness seems bound to the house of his ancestors. It is a Radio 7 commission and was first broadcast in 2003.
Thursday and Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30pm

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Collected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. Weinbaum

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxAvailable now from LibriVox and narrator Gregg Margarite comes the Collected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. Weinbaum. Gregg has a smoky voice and a terrific recording setup – this makes this collection a super-solid listen! Start with the first story A Martian Odyssey which is Weinbaum’s most famous tale. It’s a classic of alien human interaction. Isaac Asimov says of it and of Weinbaum:

“With this single story [A Martian Odyssey], Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world’s best living science fiction writer, and at once almost every writer in the field tried to imitate him.”

It is also argued that this is the first story to satisfy Astounding editor John W. Campbell’s famous challenge:

“Write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man.”

LibriVox Science Fiction - Collected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. WeinbaumCollected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. Weinbaum
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
6 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 33 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13, 2009
Stanley G. Weinbaum is best known for his short story A Martian Odyssey which has been influencing Science Fiction since it was first published in 1934. Weinbaum is considered the first writer to contrive an alien who thought as well as a human, but not like a human. A Martian Odyssey and its sequel are presented here as well as other Weinbaum gems including three stories featuring the egomaniacal physicist Haskel van Manderpootz and his former student, playboy Dixon Wells.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/collected-public-domain-works-of-stanley-g-weinbaum-by-stanley-g-weinbaum.xml

Individual stories:

1.
A Martian Odyssey
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Early in the twenty-first century, nearly twenty years after the invention of atomic power and ten years after the first lunar landing, the four-man crew of the Ares has landed on Mars in the Mare Cimmerium. A week after the landing, Dick Jarvis, the ship’s American chemist, sets out south in an auxiliary rocket to photograph the landscape. Eight hundred miles out, the engine on Jarvis’ rocket gives out, and he crash-lands into one of the Thyle regions. Rather than sit and wait for rescue, Jarvis decides to walk back north to the Ares.

2.
Valley of Dreams
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A sequel to A Martian Odyssey – Two weeks before the Ares is scheduled to leave Mars, Captain Harrison sends Dick Jarvis and French biologist “Frenchy” Leroy to retrieve the film Jarvis took before his auxiliary rocket crashed into the Thyle highlands the week before. Along the way, the Earthmen stop at the city of the cart creatures and the site of the pyramid building creature for Leroy to take some samples. After picking up the film canisters from the crashed rocket at Thyle II, the two men fly east to Thyle I to look for signs of the birdlike Martian, Tweel.

3.
The Worlds Of If
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

4.
The Ideal
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

5.
The Point of View
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

6.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Forgotten Classics: The Aliens by Murray Leinster

SFFaudio Online Audio

Forgotten ClassicsFor folks who haven’t experienced it, now’s a great time to jump in to the FORGOTTEN CLASSICS podcast!

Here’s why, Julie talks about:

Viking Dawn by Henry Treece!
Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore (LibriVox)!
-Audiobooks vs. “real books”!
-Paperbook Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman vs. the Lenny Henry read audiobook of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman!
-a podcast highlight of Mark Douglas Nelson’s SciPodBooks podcast!
Space Tug by Murray Leinster!
Space Viking by H. Beam Piper!
The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer!

The Third Annual SFFaudio ChallengeOh and didn’t I mention? She’s also, with the latest show, finished her reading of The Aliens by Murray Leinster (which was one of our Third Annual SFFaudio Challenge titles!

Exclamation point folks, exclamation POINT!

Forgotten Classics presents… The Aliens by Murray LeinsterThe Aliens
By Murray Leinster; Read by Julie Davis
2 MP3s – 2 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Forgotten Classics
Podcast: January 2009
First published in Astounding SF’s August, 1959 issue.
The human race was expanding through the galaxy … and so, they knew, were the Aliens. When two expanding empires meet … war is inevitable. Or is it …?

Part 1 |MP3| and Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForgottenClassics

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Ender In Exile by Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Review

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott CardEnder in Exile
By Orson Scott Card; Read by David Birney, Cassandra Campbell, Emily Janice Card, Orson Scott Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Kirby Heyborne, Don Leslie, Stefan Rudnicki, and Mirron Willis
12 CDs – Approx. 14 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781427205124
Themes: / Science Fiction / Colonization / Starships / Religion / Politics / War / Aliens /

Over the last six years or so, Orson Scott Card has had nearly everything he’s written published as an audiobook. His writing is particularly suited to audio; his style is dramatic, clear, and driven by conversations, both internal and external. Card’s storytelling ability is also first rate.

The other half of an audiobook is its presentation, and here Card’s audiobooks also excel. In the Ender and Ender’s Shadow series of audiobooks, Stefan Rudnicki has led a talented crew of narrators in expert productions. Ender in Exile is the ninth novel written in the universe started by Ender’s Game, and all of them have been produced in a similar manner – with multiple narrators that change with shifts in the point of view of the story.

The entire novel takes place between the last two chapters of Ender’s Game. I’ll try not to spoil Ender’s Game for those who haven’t read it, but the main events of that book have finished, and the teenaged Ender Wiggin can not stay on Earth for various and interesting reasons. He is put on a colony ship, and much of the book takes place there. The conflict for him is not over. He’s distrusted by powerful adults, and because of his fame he distrusts the motives of everyone else. He’s still very much alone.

You’d think after four novels about Ender Wiggin that there wouldn’t be anything else to say about him. But Ender in Exile is one of the best novels in the series, mostly because of the insight it provides into the most interesting aspect of Ender Wiggin’s life: his transformation from Battle School student to Speaker for the Dead.

An atypical aspect of this novel is that it is really a sequel to two books: Ender’s Game and Shadow of the Giant. Because of the relativistic effects of space travel, three of the four Shadow novels take place while Ender is en route to his colony. Some of the things that happen in those books affect events in this one.

Despite all that, this book can be read standalone, though a good experience is made even better by knowing the whole story.

And, a bonus mini-review from DanielsonKid: It was very good, but I wouldn’t call it one of his best.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson