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.
The Sci Phi Show, has a very cool interview with Courtney Brown, who is rightly famous on this site for his excellent Science Fiction and Politics university course (it is podcast).
Download the interview direct |MP3| or subscribe to The Sci Phi Show podcast feed via this url:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSciPhiShow
A new radio program, “That Sci-fi Show” premieres tomorrow (Friday night), September 14th at 10pm, EDT in the USA on WWNN-AM 1470 in Florida. This is a two hour program from the creator of Sci-fi Overdrive, Joey Donovan. Listeners outside of Florida can listen via the Streaming Audio feed on the station’s website. No word on whether this show will be podcast.
That Sci-fi Show will feature “news on developments in the
entertainment industry in regards to science fiction, fantasy, comics, collectibles, role playing games, Japanese animation, genre conventions, and also on news of spaceflight and hard science.” Live interviews will allow listeners to call in with questions (1-888-565-1470).
For more information on That Sci-fi Show, or to book guests, contact Joey Donovan at [email protected] or call 561-752-6986
Eifelheim
By Michael Flynn; Read by Anthony Heald
2 MP3-CDs – 17.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 1433206129
Themes: / Science Fiction / Philosophy / Religion / Catholicism / Aliens / Physics / First Contact / Black Death /
“Eifelheim” is a novel that’s not in a hurry. It’s a multiple course meal that offers helpings of philosophy, science, and religion at a leisurely pace that’s refreshing in today’s hurry-up climate. It was also a Hugo nominee for Best Novel of 2007.
The novel takes place in two times. In “Now”, two live-in scientists discuss and compare their findings on seemingly different subjects. One of them is investigating the absence of people in Eifelheim, a German town whose population disappeared during the 14th century. According to calculations of population patterns, this is a mathematical anomaly. The other scientist, a physicist, is trying to figure out why the speed of light is slowing down. That these two things are related is part of the story.
In the 14th century, a parish priest named Father Deitrich, who is dealing with the beginnings of the Black Death in his area, experiences first contact with an alien race that appears in his town of Eifelheim. Father Deitrich is a smart, compassionate priest, and, as he considers the aliens God’s children, he befriends them and cares for them as he can.
The focus occasionally switches back to the two scientists from “now”, who have conversations that shed light on the happenings in Eifelheim in the past. The main charm of this novel for me was the realistic portrayal of this honorable priest, and his culture. It portrays a medieval religion that was considered the source of all knowledge, and as such, the priest’s logical reasoning makes for compelling listening. To readers who enjoy philosophy and speculative science, and the history of both, it would be hard to find a modern novel more interesting.
Author Michael Flynn provides historical and physics notes at the end of the novel, and thanks should go out to Blackstone Audio for including them here in the audiobook. Narrator Anthony Heald does a tremendous job with the narration. He’s an excellent match with the material, handling accents and characters with unobtrusive skill. Choices he made with the alien voices were particularly effective.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Plant People
By Johnny Ray Barnes Jr. and Marty M. Engle; Multicast recording
2 CDs – 2 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423308508
Themes: / Science fiction / Alien Invasion / Intelligent plants /
Rachel Pearson is a loner. Her only close friend, Tess, now lives in another city, and her life is measured in the days and hours between phone calls. One afternoon, as she is exploring the house under construction in a wooded lot near her home, she spies a strange plant from which something large has hatched, and its smell lures her to the edge of disaster. Two months later, the house is completed and a new family with teenaged children moves in. But strange things begin to happen around them, and Rachel wonders if they aren’t more than just odd people. Could they be something else entirely, something inhuman, with dark designs for mankind?
Plant People has a spunky heroine with a delightful upper-Midwestern twang, and an entertaining little dash-about plot that is short and mindlessly fun. Even the prose mostly soars, though not without frequent bumps. The worst occur during action sequences, when phrases like “…and just at that moment, what should I find but…” appear with distracting frequency. But it also borrows a little too heavily from classic works like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Day Of The Triffids, and strips the borrowed elements from their deeper subtext. On the whole, Plant People is like a sugar-free chocolate meringue: Briefly enjoyable, but ultimately empty of even the calories it took to chew.
[Editor’s Note: Plant People was originally written as part of the “Strange Matter” series (created by Marty M. Engle and Johnny Ray Barnes Jr.). The series takes place in the fictional town of Fairfield. Stories in the series generally center on the children attending Fairfield Middle School who encounter paranormal situations.]
Posted by Kurt Dietz
LibriVox, that massive library of public domain audiobooks, has just catalogued its first public domain reading of the first Tarzan novel, Tarzan Of The Apes. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan is arguably the most enduring pulp fiction character in history. Its on its digital shelves now, go get it in a zipped download, by individual file or even easier for portable listening via the podcast feed. This audiobook/podiobook, completely narrated by the savagely swashbuckling reader, Mark F. Smith, who previously performed Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island. Details follow…
Tarzan Of The Apes
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Mark F. Smith
28 zipped MP3s or podcast – 9 Hours 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: Sept. 7th 2007
The exciting, if improbable, story of an English lord, left by the death of his stranded parents in the hands of a motherly African ape who raises him as her own. Although he is aware that he is different from the apes of his tribe, who are neither white nor hairless, he nevertheless regards them as his “people.” When older, larger, stronger apes decide that he an undesirable to be killed or expelled from the tribe, it is fortunate that Tarzan has learned the use of primitive weapons.
You can get the entire novel in podcast form, via this handy url:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/tarzan-of-the-apes.xml
Two more new arrivals!
The Aftermath: Book Four of The Asteroid Wars
By Ben Bova; Read by Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Stephen Hoye, and Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2007
The final volume of The Asteroid Wars – superior hard SF!
Princess Academy
By Shannon Hale; Read by a Full Cast
8 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Full Cast Audio
Published: 2007
A 2006 Newbery Honor Book. Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl (also produced by Full Cast Audio) was an Audie Award winner last year.