News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column has a couple of interesting interviews:
Charles Stross and his latest book, Halting State: MP3 |Part 1| |Part 2|
Jeremy Lassen of Nightshade Books and the best books of 2007: MP3 |Part 1| |Part 2|
Posted by Charles Tan
Belinda Webb of Guardian Unlimited talks about her New Year’s resolution of listening to audio books in her latest column:
The audiobook is perfect for the time impaired. In 2005 and 2006 the UK audiobook market was worth a whopping £71.4m. Audiobooks can seem rather expensive considering they use no paper and don’t have to rely on expensive warehouse storage and distribution, but, for me, it will still work out cheaper than the combined cost of a gym fee and my book-buying habit – and it will do much more for my own sense of achievement.
Posted by Charles Tan
On December 21, 2007, the Guardian Unlimited‘s book club featured Philip Pullman as the author talked about His Dark Materials trilogy and discussed topics like Milton and morality. Get the |MP3| here. Subscribe to the podcast feed for it via this url:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/podcast/0,,329524190,00.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
Over at Lakeshore, Jay Lake along with other writers Kate Schaefer, Edd Vick, and Kara Dalkey hosts a panel for Foolscap IX in which they talk about how workshops have had an impact on them and how it may or may not help writers. Here’s the |MP3|
Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:
http://www.jlake.com/podcasts/lakeshore_audio.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
CBC Radio One is re-broadcasting the first episode of the first season of its Science Fiction / Comedy radio drama series Canadia: 2056 today! Tune in Wednesday, January 2nd 2008 at 11:05PM (this episode will repeat on Friday January 4th at 11:30AM). Don’t know how to hear the show? If you’re in Canada, tune your radio to the appointed station at the appointed time. If you’re outside of Canada or just want to time shift a bit, click on over to the Streaming Radio Map for CBC Radio One.
If you didn’t hear Canadia: 2056‘s first season the first time around do please tune in, you’ll be glad you did. Still a bit skeptical? Check out the Wikipedia entry for the show. Or have a listen to the three promos HERE.
Here’s my intro to show #1:
Episode 1: Getting the replacement parts to leave Earth orbit is harder than getting episodes of the hot TV series Foxy Chalet (”the best Canadian show the Americans ever made”).
UPDATE: Someone asked how to “time-shift listen”, if we ignore Newfoundland (sorry Newfoundland) time zones are pretty easy to figure out across Canada. Just subtract 1 hour as you head West across Canada from the East coast. If you are in New York, NY you’re in the same Time Zone as Toronto, ONT (EST). If you’re in Los Angeles, CA, you’re in the same time zone as Vancouver, BC (PTZ). And of course you need to pick the city appropriate to your time-shifted choice on the Streaming Radio Map to hear it…
Listening Times And Places For The Eastern Time Zone (Ex. NEW YORK, NY):
12:05PM on the HALIFAX CBC RADIO ONE station (ATLANTIC TIME ZONE)
11:05PM on the Toronto CBC RADIO ONE station (EASTERN TIME ZONE)
10:05PM on the Winnipeg CBC Radio ONE station (CENTRAL TIME ZONE)
9:05PM on the Calgary CBC RADIO ONE station (MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE)
8:05PM on the Vancouver CBC RADIO ONE station (PACIFIC TIME ZONE)
Listening Times And Places For The Central Time Zone (Ex. MINNEAPOLIS, MN):
9:05PM on the HALIFAX CBC RADIO ONE station (ATLANTIC TIME ZONE)
10:05PM on the Toronto CBC RADIO ONE station (EASTERN TIME ZONE)
11:05PM on the Winnipeg CBC Radio ONE station (CENTRAL TIME ZONE)
12:05PM on the Calgary CBC RADIO ONE station (MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE)
1:05PM on the Vancouver CBC RADIO ONE station (PACIFIC TIME ZONE)
Listening Times And Places For The Mountain Time Zone (Ex. SALT LAKE CITY, UT):
8:05PM on the HALIFAX CBC RADIO ONE station (ATLANTIC TIME ZONE)
9:05PM on the Toronto CBC RADIO ONE station (EASTERN TIME ZONE)
10:05PM on the Winnipeg CBC Radio ONE station (CENTRAL TIME ZONE)
11:05PM on the Calgary CBC RADIO ONE station (MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE)
12:05PM on the Vancouver CBC RADIO ONE station (PACIFIC TIME ZONE)
Listening Times And Places For The Pacific Time Zone (Ex. LOS ANGELES, CA):
7:05PM on the HALIFAX CBC RADIO ONE station (ATLANTIC TIME ZONE)
8:05PM on the Toronto CBC RADIO ONE station (EASTERN TIME ZONE)
9:05PM on the Winnipeg CBC Radio ONE station (CENTRAL TIME ZONE)
10:05PM on the Calgary CBC RADIO ONE station (MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE)
11:05PM on the Vancouver CBC RADIO ONE station (PACIFIC TIME ZONE)
Posted by Jesse Willis
P.S. Free The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al!
Master of Space and Time
By Rudy V. B. Rucker; Read by Scott Grunden
5 CDs – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207709
Themes: / Science Fiction / Humor / Physics / Quantum Mechanics / Alternate Universe / Time Travel / Robots /
“Madcap inventor Harry Gerber is hopeless when it comes to surviving in the real world. So he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe.”
Joe Fletcher has a 9-to-precisely-5 job at Softtech, a crappy software company in New Jersey. He hates his job, so much so he’s programmed a piece of software to alert him to the precise nano-second of the completion of his requisite 40 hours a week. On one particular Friday in the futuristic 1990s Joe hoofs it out to the company parking lot for the commute home only to find his former partner, Harry Gerber, an “out-of-it” genius inventor waiting for him. Joe hadn’t seen Gerber, his former partner in their bankrupt engineering firm, in more than a year so he’s rather surprised to see a two-inch tall Harry sitting on the steering wheel of his 1956 Buick. In fact, after closer inspection there are a whole swarm of tiny Harrys in the Buick. Some are standing on the gearshift, others are running around on the dashboard, each is smaller than the next. The Harrys tell Joe about the machine that they will assemble on Saturday that will make them both masters of space and time by Sunday afternoon. Most important for Joe, Harry and his girlfriend, the improbably named Sondra Tupperware, they’ll need to get some red gluons – a kind of subatomic particle found only below the “Planck threshold.” The “blunzer” – the device in question, will grant them the ability to do absolutely anything by just mentally manipulating the very nature of reality – and they know it will work since it already has!
Rudy Rucker is playing with old Heinleinian tropes to good comic effect in Master Of Space And Time. On offer is an homage to The Puppet Masters and I Will Fear No Evil, the former being an alien invasion by brain slugs, the latter being about a man who gets the ultimate in transgendered wishes. There’s lots of original material here too, the writing is Hard SF-lite with lots of physics for undergraduates. It comes off as a comic version of the ultimate power fantasy, or as an SF take on the old “three wishes” tales. One other bit of fun, the chapter names are all either self-referential or jokey. On the net there seems to be quite a bit of controversy about the religious and sexual aspects of the book. I found it hard to understand why that would be – the accusations of ‘homophobia’ and a ‘high-handed, anti-christian’ attitude seem pretty insubstantial, at least based on the content of the novel I was listening to. The whole caper is fun, unpredictable and fast moving. It makes for a breezy listen – it won’t blow your mind, but it will entertain.
In Master Of Space And Time narrator Scott Grunden has some of the funniest lines ever read in an audiobook. At one point early in the novel he’s performing the sounds of a ginormous iguana-cum-Godzilla, (WHEEEENK-WHEEEENK- WHEEEENK! GUH-ROOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO!) the scene goes on an on. Another treat, at the point at which Joe is switched bodily into his idea of the most sexy woman in the world Grunden changes his voice even when his cadence doesn’t. It pleases the heck out of me that Blackstone is venturing a little farther back in time for many of its new Science Fiction additions. Master Of Space And Time was first published in the 1984, I had no clue it even existed until this audiobook edition came out. Look for a film version of Master Of Space And Time sometime in 2009 with a screenplay by Daniel Clowes of Ghost World fame.
Posted by Jesse Willis