First review of The SFFaudio Podcast – in the blue spotlight

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

AzureScapeThe first external review of our SFFaudio Podcast is available for your education and exhaltation! Penned Seth Wilson, an SFF audio connoisseur of the blind kind, on a blog called AzureScape.net, it’s full of high praise for me (and tangentially for Scott too – though that’s got to be a highly secondary issue). He also rated me us at 5 stars on iTunes, natch.

Thanks Seth, you have great taste!

And, be sure to check out Seth’s review of the audiobook version of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem over on AzureScape too!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Maria Lectrix Podcast: Code Three by Rick Raphael – a HUGO nominee

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Maria Lectrix Podcast has more fiction content than the of other leading podcasts brands.

Clinical studies show that brushing your teeth while listening to a Maria Lectrix podcast prevents tooth decay and improves brain function.

In fact, 4 out of 5 lab-coated scientists agree that it’s public domain blend of humor and intelligence widens your smile while improving neuronal activity.*

Seriously though, Maureeen O’Brien, the ML podmistress/narrator of Maria Lectrix, has some of the best SF stories that ever get podcast. Here’s the latest, Code Three by Rick Raphael, it was originally published in the February 1963 issue of Analog. It promises to be a real contender for best SF story podcast in Autumn 2008. Want evidence? Here’s some: Code Three was nominated for a 1964 Hugo award! Here’s more: This story was later expanded to novel length!

Science Fiction Short Story Audiobook - Code Three by Rick RaphaelCode Three
By Rick Raphael; Read by Maureen O’Brien
7 MP3s – Approx. 3 Hours 4 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: September – October 2008
“Code Three” is one of those speculative, gadget-filled, slice of life stories that some people will like and others find boring. I think it’s a rather interesting look at what someone in the early sixties thought that highways and law enforcement might be like in the eighties and nineties, if normal passenger cars had kept getting more powerful engines.
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3|
Part 7 |MP3|

*4 out of 5 un-lab-coated scientists are also in agreement, with the study, but the general public don’t trust their opinions as much

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #007

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #007 is so lucky! We’re super hoop-jumping, in this deadly to DRM show – we’re unspooling fences and digging ditches – working around the work-arounds – so, the long and the short:

Scott: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

Jesse: No it isn’t.

Topics discussed include:
Golden Age Comic Book Stories, Argosy magazine covers, Pellucidar, At The Earth’s Core, Edgar Rice Burroughs, LibriVox, A Princess Of Mars, multiple narrators, Ender’s Game, Stephen King, The Dark Tower, Frank Muller, George Guidall, Criminal Minds, Peter Coyote, Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy, more new LibriVox titles, The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole, The Last Man, Mary Shelley, The Wood Beyond the World, William Morris, Cori Samuel, On The Beach, Nevil Shute, The 2nd SFFaudio Challenge, Julie D., A House-Boat On The Styx, John Kendrick Bangs, Mur Lafferty, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, public libraries, NetLibrary.net, Recorded Books, DRM, overdrive.com, Bill C-61, blank media and iPod levies, what makes DRM evil, Blackstone Audio‘s solution, MP3-CD players, the proper settings for blog RSS feeds, “people will never pay for something they can get for free”, donation models, the Liaden book model, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox Fantasy: A House-Boat On The Styx by John Kendrick Bangs

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxHere’s a cool title that I’d never heard of before LibriVox catalogued it. It sounds like a fore-runner to Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld novels! The author, John Kendrick Bangs, is not a well known name today, but in his time, the late 19th century, he was the go to guy for a kind of weird Fantasy that takes it’s name from the man himself. Bangsian Fantasy, sounds like a combination of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Mur Lafferty to me. Also, check out his short story Ghosts That Have Haunted Me, which was cataloged less that a month ago.

LibriVox Fantasy Audiobook - A House-Boat On The Styx by John Kendrick BangsA House-Boat On The Styx
By John Kendrick Bangs; Read by various
12 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 10th, 2008
Everyone who has ever died is in Hades! The novel begins when Charon, the ferryman with a monopoly on the business of transporting the dead across the river Styx, spots a mysterious houseboat on a bank of the Styx, where one’s never been before. There, various historical and mythological figures meet and discuss their lives and life in general.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/a-house-boat-on-the-styx-by-john-kendrick-bangs.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Another day, another FREE LibriVox Science Fiction Audiobook! Here’s the first in the ERB’s “Pellucidar” series, the second for which is already available (in a single voiced narration). This is the 10th ERB title to be completed for LibriVox. Nice!

LibriVox Science Fiction Audiobook - At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice BurroughsAt The Earth’s Core
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by various
16 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11th 2008
This is the first book in the Pellucidar series. Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an “iron mole” to burrow 500 miles into the earth’s crust.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/at-the-earths-core-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Orson Scott Card Selects #6 – Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Orson Scott Card Selects (presented by Audible.com)
Orson Scott Card’s October essay is available over on Audible.com. His subject this month is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Sirens Of Titan!

“The job that science fiction is supposed to make us rethink reality, make us live in a different universe”

You can check it out on the site itself, or simply listen direct |MP3|. Sirens Of Titan is literary fiction using SF set-dressing – Card promises we’ll love it, even when we hate it.

Posted by Jesse Willis