Octavia Butler 1947-2006 Science fiction has lost…

Octavia Butler 1947-2006

Science fiction has lost one of its most precious voices this weekend. Octavia Butler’s body of work is outstanding, and she will be missed.

On audio, Recorded Books has three of her best titles; Kindred, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents.

An obituary can be found at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. From that obit: “Butler’s work wasn’t preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre’s artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion, and human nature.”

Star Wars Fanworks

Online Audio

Star Wars Fanworks LogoHey, are you’re a fan of the Dragon Page Wingin’ It‘s TD-0013? If so be sure to make quick Bantha tracks over to the hard-slogginest audio fan fic site on the net – Star Wars Fanworks. This is probably a site you’ve never heard of before, and that’s understandable, SWF’s focus is quite targetted, it exists for one purpose – the promotion and admiration of fan created Star Wars audio.

In many ways StarWarsFanworks.com is to Star Wars what SFFaudio.com is to Science Fiction and Fantasy audio literature in general. Both sites are passionately dedicated to an obscure branch of audio goodness. Our younger brother was created in June of 2003 (SFFaudio was birthed in March of 2003) since then they’ve been gathering together every fan created Star Wars dramatization the net’s got. It is clearly a labour only achievable by mastery of The Force – by clicking on over you’ll find links to fan created audio of nearly every kind – there are parodies, straight audio dramas, and non-fiction Star Wars audio too – heck they even have terrific details on the officially licenced Star Wars audio dramas. Check them out!

Hey cool! Yog Radio has posted a 7 Minute bloope…

Online Audio

Yog Radio PodcastHey cool! Yog Radio has posted a 7 Minute blooper reel for the upcoming podcast recording of the H.P. Lovecraft short story The Music Of Erich Zann you can dowload it directly HERE.

Our friends at AssistiveMedia.org have been offe…

Online Audio

Assistive MediaOur friends at AssistiveMedia.org have been offering online audio to persons with disabilities since 1998, unfortunately the website doesn’t currently offer easy access to their terrific resources (regrettably the promised podcast feed dedicated to Science Fiction hasn’t materialized yet either). In an effort to make the unnavigable navigable we are compiling a collection of the best SF&F related links for you to enjoy:

Science:
The Quantum Physics Of Time Travel
By David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood; Read by Chris Purchis
38 Minutes | RealAudio |
Copyright © Scientific American 1994
“Common sense may rule out such excursions–but the laws of physics do not.”

Artificial Intelligence And Human Nature
By Charles T. Rubin; Read by Vi Benner
40 minutes | MP3 | RealAudio | [UNABRIDGED]
Copyright © 2003, The New Atlantis

Essay:
The Fisherwoman’s Daughter
By Ursula K. LeGuin; Read by Melissa Stewart
63 minutes | RealAudio | [UNABRIDGED]
copyright © 1990, The New York Times Book Review

Science Fiction:
Nemesis
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Ken Phifer
37 Minutes | MP3 | RealAudio | [UNABRIDGED]

Technical Error
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by David Zinn
37 Minutes | RealAudio | [UNABRIDGED]

Travel By Wire
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by David Zinn
11 minutes | RealAudio | [UNABRIDGED]

Enjoy!

SFFaudio’s got another big scoop for you. There’…

Online Audio

SFFaudio’s got another big scoop for you. There’s a new podcast novel that’s just launched and it taps into a multiplicity of great SF ideas – politics, technology, bio-ethics, cloning and memory replication. Intrigued? Check it out…

Podcast Novel / PODIOBOOK / 7th Son7th Son, Book One: Descent
By J.C. Hutchins; Read by J. C. Hutchins
24 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com / JCHutchins.net
Published: Commenced February 2006

7th Son, Book One: Descent is the story of seven men, all strangers, who’ve been gathered together following the assassination of the president of the United States. Though they’ve never met before they seem to have something very important in common, namely identical childhood memories! It seems they were the progeny of a covert human cloning experiment – now, brought together for the first time since their creation, all seven of these “John Michael Smiths” are tasked with tracking down the assassin who murdered the president. Something they are uniquely equiped to do because their target is the man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha.

I got a sneak pre-hear of the first five chapters and I can attest this is no pale replication of any SF thriler you’ve heard before. Hutchins’ prose is lucent, his ideas original 7th Son, Book One: Descent blends the verve of Philip K. Dick with the slick modern storytelling techniques of Lincoln Child.

You can subscirbe to the podcast directly using this XML feed:

http://www.jchutchins.net/7thSonPodcast.xml

Or you can subscribe through the terrific Podiobooks.com service for a more customizable delivery schedule.