Free Comic Book Day THIS SATURDAY (sadly no audio comics included yet)

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

FREE COMIC BOOK DAYIt’s pretty rare we’ll talk about anything that isn’t audio related here on SFFaudio, but when I hear air jordan 4 thunder 2023 the words “FREE” and “COMICS” side by side, I’m pretty much sold on the concept. Ya, so about that…

This Saturday is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

I’ll be stopping in at my local comic shop (Hourglass Comics, in Port Moody, B.C.) on Saturday, picking up the maximum number of FREE COMICS allowable. If it plays out anything like last few FREE COMIC BOOK DAYs I’ve been to I’ll also be spending a few $$ there on some of those unfree comics too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Noircon 2008 panel on “Cybernoir”

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ll make nearly any excuse to talk about Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards’ two podcasts Behind The Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed and Out Of The Past: Investigating Film Noir. Today’s excuse comes in the form of a Noircon 2008 podcast which includes a brief mention of Blade Runner. Have a listen…

Noircon 2008 podcastPodcast Day 3: Cybernoir Panel
Panelists: Shannon Clute, Seth Harwood, and Richard Edwards
1 |M4A| – [CONVENTION PANEL]
Podcaster: Out Of The Past / Behind The Black Mask
Recorded: April 5th, 2008
Recorded as part of the Noircon 2008 Conference in Philadelphia, PA, Clute and Edwards kick things off with a discussion of how noir style and pulp publishing models seem to provide the fundamental structuring logics of emerging digital media—from blogs to podcasts, mashups to video games. Seth Harwood then relates his own experience of podcasting his first novel, JACK WAKES UP—from producing the initial audio, to embracing various new media in order to cultivate an audience and tap their enthusiasm and skills to promote his work. Finally, all three panelists consider how pulp-logic productions in these various media are likely to change the ways books are published and marketed. This special edition podcast includes all Power Point slides from the panel, synchronized with the audio, for your viewing pleasure. Moreover, there are embedded links at the bottom of the images, which allow you to surf related links while listening. The podcast is optimized for iTunes, and will run on any machine that has iTunes installed.

Posted by Jesse Willis

100% FREE STAR WARS MP3 AUDIOBOOK

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Star Wars - Legacy Of The Force - Book 1 - BetrayalRandom House Audio is promoting their upcoming “Legacy Of The Force” audiobook “Invincible” (due out May 13th) by giving away the first audiobook in the series FREE! STAR WARS – Legacy Of The Force – Betrayal is a zipped folder MP3 AUDIOBOOK! This is only going to be free for a limited time, so start downloading now!

Download the entire audiobook HERE. And we’ve got the details and the cover art below.



Star Wars - Legacy Of The Force (Book 1) - BetrayalStar Wars – Legacy Of The Force – Betrayal
By Aaron Allston; Read by Marc Thompson
85 Zipped MP3 Files – 6 Hours 10 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: February 2007
ISBN: 0739356895
“Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, has unified the Jedi order into a cohesive group of powerful knights. But as the new era begins, honor and duty will collide with friendship and blood ties. The Skywalker and Solo clans find themselves on opposing sides of an explosive conflict, with potentially devastating repercussions for both families, for the Jedi order, and for the entire galaxy. A mission to uncover an illegal missile factory on the planet Adumar ends in a violent ambush from which Jedi Knight Jacen Solo and his protégé and cousin, Ben Skywalker, narrowly escape. It’s the most alarming evidence yet that sparks of political unrest are threatening to ignite a total rebellion.”

This is the first book in the “Legacy Of The Force” series, which is set approximately 40 years after the events of the original 1977 Star Wars movie.

By the way, this audiobook was previously released Audible.com as a promotion for 2007 ComicCon attendees, that version had DRM, this one is naked MP3.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother out today

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Cory Doctorow’s got a shiny looking official website for his new commercial audiobook. Little Brother comes out today!

Sez Cory…

“My deal with Random House is that they’re absolutely not allowed to sell the book with DRM on it, which, sadly, means that Audible (the largest audiobook store in the world) won’t carry it — they insist on selling books with DRM, even when authors and publishers don’t want it.”

Listening Library (a division of Random House) has retailer deal with Zipidee, and here’s their Little Brother widget (it won’t show up in the RSS feed so click through to see it):

Link to purchase and download this audiobook without Flash interaction

And…

“The audiobook comes with my own sampling license: once you own it, you’re free to take up to 30 minutes’ worth of material from it and remix and then redistribute it as much as you like, provided that you do so on a noncommercial basis, make sure that it’s clear that this is a remix and not the original, and make sure that you tell people where to find the original. This is in addition to all the fair use remixing that you’re allowed to do without my permission (of course!).”

Posted by Jesse Willis

Audible.com PRESS RELEASE details: More CLASSIC SFF is coming

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Audible FrontiersMere days after we brought you the stories of Audible’s new big Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobook push, we received an official press release with plenty of details you’ll dig! Here are the new facts:

“…We [Audible.com] are also making a concerted effort to bring all-time classics to the listening audience. The Hugo-winning THE BIG TIME by Fritz Leiber is already in the store. Roger Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT and THIS IMMORTAL are currently in production. So, too, is Fritz Leiber’s entire LANKHMAR series, featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. And there are more classics to come.”

And this…

“Very soon, we’ll be introducing the first set of titles we’re producing in partnership with HarperCollins’ Eos line: the ACORNA’S CHILDREN series by Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough; STAR STRIKE, the first book in Ian Douglas’ INHERITANCE trilogy; BAD MONKEYS by Matt Ruff, and HUNTER’S RUN by George RR Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham.

Also, via our ongoing partnership with Harlequin, we’ve been producing more and more fantasy & paranormal romance titles, by Maria V. Snyder, C. E. Murphy, and others.”

And there’s still more:

“In the near future, we’ll also be bringing a number of great series into audio by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, David Eddings, Dave Duncan, and more.”

Further…

“Also each month, we’ll have an exclusive guest essay by a leading SF&F writer. This column will also serve to highlight a list of titles available at Audible. It will also give us an opportunity to promote titles by the guest columnist. Our lead-off columnist is Ben Bova. In the coming months, our Guest Editors will include Robert J. Sawyer, Kevin J. Anderson, and more.”

And that’s the long and the short of the new information. A lot of people hate DRM with a passion of a burning sun (I’m one of them), and so hearing that so many choice titles are going to be made available exclusively on Audible (which is totally into DRM) is a mixed blessing. The good news is that most every, if not every title on Audible.com is able to be burned to CD.

Clear your schedules folks, we’ve got lots of listening to do!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – Joe Haldeman and Robert J. Sawyer

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Hot out of the microphones and into SFFaudio’s Audible Accounts, two Science Fiction titles from Audible Frontiers…

First up, a Joe Haldeman story that I first heard about on Prisoners Of Gravity, which is always a source for good Science Fiction!

The Hemingway Hoax by Joe HaldemanThe Hemingway Hoax
By Joe Haldeman; Read by Eric Michael Summerer
Audible Download – 4 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
The hoax proposed to John Baird by a two-bit con man in a seedy Key West bar was shady but potentially profitable. With little left to lose, the struggling, middle-aged Hemingway scholar agreed to forge a manuscript and pass it off as Papa’s lost masterpiece. But Baird never realized his actions would shatter the history of his own Earth – and others. And now the unsuspecting academic is trapped out of time – propelled through a series of grim parallel worlds and pursued by an interdimensional hitman with a literary license to kill.

Intelligent design and creationism versus the fossil record, it should be a slam-dunk, until the alien arrives…

Calculating God by Robert J. SawyerCalculating God
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 12 Hours and 4 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
An alien walks into a museum and asks if he can see a paleontologist. But the arachnid ET hasn’t come aboard a rowboat with the Pope and Stephen Hawking (although His Holiness does request an audience later). Landing at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the spacefarer, Hollus, asks to compare notes on mass extinctions with resident dino-scientist Thomas Jericho. A shocked Jericho finds that not only does life exist on other planets, but that every civilization in the galaxy has experienced extinction events at precisely the same time. Armed with that disconcerting information (and a little help from a grand unifying theory), the alien informs Jericho, almost dismissively, that the primary goal of modern science is to discover why God has behaved as he has and to determine his methods. BONUS AUDIO: Author Robert J. Sawyer explains how the creationism vs. evolution debate informed the writing of Calculating God.

Posted by Jesse Willis