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.
Ensuring their eternal damnation, hosts Tony and Ciaran stray from their regularly righteous path of Science Fiction author inquisition and instead hotly illuminate the subject of “Religious Themes” in Science Fiction on this week’s show. You can yourself download the damnable show directly |MP3| or should you so choose, subscribe to podcast and begin your own eternal damnation, via this feed:
http://starshipsofa.libsyn.com/rss
Not even a week ago we told you that James Patrick Kelly had recently started a for pay podcast with Audible.com, but that hasn’t stopped him from giving away his fiction in the form of audio. Quite the contrary! Jim has just started podcasting his 1989 novel Look Into The Sun through his venerable Free Reads podcast…
Here is the first |MP3| of the novel (27 Minutes), but don’t stop there, subscribe to the Free Reads podcast and get the whole novel:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/freereads
Thanks so much Jim!
BBC7’s The Seventh Dimension have two specially commissioned treats this week:
Doctor Who: Human Resources – An Eighth Doctor Adventure
2 Parts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday at 6pm and 12am (UK Time)
Part one of a new two-part adventure of the vagabond Time Lord, look for part two next Sunday. The doctor’s companion Lucie has been headhunted by a respectable blue-chip firm in Telford, and the doctor confronts a terrifying enemy. Stars Paul McGann produced by Big Finish Productions.
Pattern Recognition
By William Gibson; Read by Lorelei King
5 Part reading – [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30am (UK Time)
Cayce Pollard is a coolhunter. Her gifts are an innate ability in pattern recognition, a skill essential in trendspotting, and a unique allergy to, and therefore an ability to identify, winning logos. These gifts make her an indispensable tool for multinational marketing magnates.
Both programs and all their parts are re-listenable via BBC7’s time-shifting “Listen Again” feature.
This Is Our 1,000th Post!
Mark Nelson, the prolific narrator who has already completed 2 Novels for our Make An Audiobook Challenge has written in to say he’s completed yet another Science Fiction audiobook! This one is the short story collection that he’d told us about back in late January. Mark has assembled, from various public domain H. Beam Piper tales, a collection he’s calling Five Sci-Fi Short Stories by H. Beam Piper . The collection includes:
–The Answer (this one was on our 1st Challenge list – it first appeared in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, December, 1959)
–Temple Trouble (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1951)
–Police Operation (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1948)
–Flight From Tomorrow (A novelette from the pages of Future combined with Science Fiction Stories magazine, the September/October 1950 issue)
–Graveyard Of Dreams (from Galaxy Magazine‘s February 1958 issue)
Five Sci-Fi Short Stories By H. Beam Piper
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Mark Nelson
9 MP3 Files or 1 Zipped File of MP3s – Approx. 5 Hour 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: February 2007
Stories Included:
1. The Answer |MP3|
2. Temple Trouble |Part 1 MP3|Part 2 MP3|
3. Flight From Tomorrow |MP3|
4. Police Operation |Part 1 MP3|Part 2 MP3|Part 3 MP3|
5. Graveyard Of Dreams |MP3|
Mark also reports that he’s got a story in a multi-contributor short horror collection (it is still going through proofing). Mark’s entry is The Beast With Five Fingers by William F. Harvey.
Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul Book II – Exiles
By Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz; Read by Richard Poe
9 CDs – 10.5 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1419315129
Themes: / Science Fiction / Star Trek / Vulcans / Romulans /
This is an excellent book. It is the second in a trilogy, the first one being Exodus and the next one being Epiphany. Recorded Books has published the first two in unabridged format, read by Star Trek actor Richard Poe (he played Gul Evek on TNG, DS9 & Voyager). I expect them to release the third when it is appears in print next year.
Exiles tells the story of the Vulcans who departed their planet because of an impending nuclear holocaust and traveled across space to find a new home on the planets of Romulus and Remus, two thousand years before the Dominion War and the Romulan struggle against the Watraii.
Intertwined with that story is the 24th century mission of the U.S.S. Alliance. Her hastily assembled task force includes Spock, Saavik, Scotty, and Data. In Exodus, the Romulan world was threatened by a race called the Watraii, and here our heroes attempt to infiltrate their homeworld to rescue a prisoner and a revered Romulan artifact. Not much is known about the Watraii, other than they claim owning the planets Romulus and Remus before the Exiles colonized them.
Richard Poe again does an excellent job narrating. He depicts the individual characters well, giving them emotion and even breathlessness to characters who are sick. Data and Spock are given their familiar speech cadences, and appropriate accents are given to Scotty and other characters. A first-rate Trek novel, very well written, and very well read.
