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.
New podcasts of note:
Spaceship Radio
OTR, Old Time Radio, mostly from the 1950s, mostly X-Minus One. Besides the radio dramas the show’s host Andy Dome has started a wiki project to create new radio dramatizations.
YogRadio
A lengthy British podcast from Yog-Sothoth.com that mostly focuses on the Call Of Cthulhu role playing game. Their promo is absolutely hilarious!
Posted by Jesse Willis
Escape Pod, the AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME podcast magazine is doing a way cool promotion to celebrate their first half-year of continous publication! They’re offering all past donaters of $20.00 USD or more a FREE CD-MP3 of the first half-year’s worth of short stories, flash fiction and more! That’s 26 Weeks of Science Fiction and Fantasy audio goodness. What’s more, your donation will help to create even more stories! 
The disc is a numbered limited edition of 200, if you haven’t already donated to Escape Pod (which actually pays its authors for its fiction), do so in amount of $20.00 USD or more by PayPal and you’ll be able to get one too! But maybe you’ve listened to every show and don’t want to hear them all again? Crazy, but possible I suppose. Well that’s still no problem, have the disc outfitted with a custom note of your choosing, up to 60 characters in length. It makes a great gift!
While we are apt to shun most video based interviews as unnecessarily gauche we always make an exception for the good folks at Fast Forward: Contemporary Science Fiction a monthly 30 minute television series about Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. They’ve just done an exciting interview with George R.R. Martin! Martin chats about his latest Song Of Ice And Fire series novel A Feast for Crows. An audio only interview can be dound HERE.
Saturday the 26th of November 2005 sees a brand new unabridged reading of an H.P. Lovecraft story on BBC7’s The Seventh Dimension:
The Tomb
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Ryan McCluskey
STREAMING AUDIO – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7
Broadcast: Nov 26th 2005 [available on the Listen Again service for 6 days following]
Jervas Dudley inmate of an insane asylum describes the sinister events leading up to his incarceration. He tells of how he became obsessed with the tomb of a long-dead family of aristocrats and how his obsession tipped him over into madness when he entered their tomb and spent a night lying in an empty coffin.
House Of Bones
By Robert Silverberg; Read by Jared Doreck
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612431
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time Travel / Prehistory /
Another stunning audio achievement from Infinivox! House Of Bones is a unique time-travel story that imbues a deep sense of satisfaction on nearly every level. A top shelf reading by a dynamic reader, a dynamite story and an elegant production combine to make pure aural delight! House Of Bones is a modest tale, recounting the unfortunate fate of the world’s first and perhaps last time traveler. After a misguided test run he’s become trapped 20,000 years in our past, unequipped for survival his future is uncertain. What’s worse he’s surrounded by people so primitive they don’t even have a written language. So primitive they take in his unworthy and skilless self and accept him into their society. This glimpse of what life might have been like for Cro-Magnon man in the late Pleistocene epoch shows us precisely why we can’t judge a society by it’s lack of tool based technology. Silverberg skillfully extrapolates a fascinating working culture out of what little modern archaeologists and paleoanthropolgists know of these people, our ancestors and creates in the process something to think about when using words like “primitive”. House Of Bones is kind of a mirror image of Isaac Asimov’s The Ugly Little Boy. And like that tale this one is a keeper.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Granny, A Ghost Story of the North Carolina Mountains
By Steven Wilson, performed by Prometheus Radio Theatre
1 CD – 30 minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Prometheus Radio Theatre
Published: 2004
Themes: / Ghosts / Southern History /
“If the Lord spares my life, I’ll be back here Saturday,” Granny had said when she left. The Lord didn’t spare her life, but Granny still came back. What unfinished business kept her from her rest? Her twelve-year-old granddaughter, Hannah, was determined to find out. Based on a true story.
According to Steven Wilson, the director, Granny, A Ghost Story of the North Carolina Mountains is based on a story that his grandmother swore “to her dying day” was true. In fact, as a bonus at the end of the radio show, Mr. Wilson shares a clip of his grandmother telling the tale.
Listening to it, I could understand why it kept him awake at nights as a child. Sadly, that sense of creeping chill was not translated to this production. While Steven Wilson and Ethan Wilson turn in creditable performances and Cindy Woods does a nice job as the young Hannah, the rest of the cast are as stiff in their reads as if this were their first time in front of a microphone.
As if in an attempt to compensate for the lackluster performances, the foley effects are so loud that they at times almost overwhelm the dialogue. The show is filled with footsteps, creaking rocking chairs, and an unending parade of insect life which do nothing to enhance any of the action. Indeed, most of the time it was a distraction. At one point, Papa and Hannah were talking and I had to strain to understand what was happening and finally realized that Papa had stirred the fire, walked across the room and sat in the world’s creakiest rocking chair. None of which had anything to do with the story, or the dramatic tension in the scene; it was foley for the sake of foley.
There are some nicely eerie moments, such as when the family first hears the ghost of Granny crooning “Amazing Grace” in the chimney. I wish the rest of the show were half as effective.
Posted by Mary Robinette Kowal