Tag: 19th century

New Releases

Jesse Willis

New Releases

Smoky Mountain Horrors by Weston OchseSmoky Mountain Horrors
By Weston Ochse; Read by Weston Ochse
Audible Download – 4 Hours 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Kanigit Media / Audible.com
Published: May 11, 2009
Set mostly in Appalachian country, backwood characters will leave you laughing in pain and gasping in horror. You will learn something new about Weston’s horrific mountain tales every time you listen. They are not for the feint of heart. A collection of short horror stories. Two of the stories available for free HERE.

Tantor - The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian by Robert E. HowardThe Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian (Book One in the Conan of Cimmeria Series)
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Todd McLaren
14 CDs or 2 MP3-CDs – 16 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: June 11th, 2009
ISBN: 9781400112234 (cd) , 9781400162239 (mp3-cd)
Thirteen of Robert E. Howard’s legendary stories starring Conan the barbarian, a swordsman who cuts a swath across the lands of the Hyborian Age, facing powerful sorcerers, deadly creatures, and ruthless armies of thieves and reavers.

Haze
By L.E. Modesitt, Jr.; Read by William Dufris
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 11 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: June 25th, 2009
ISBN: 9781400112913 (cd), 9781400162918 (mp3-cd)
A war is about to start between planets in this new science fiction novel by the bestselling author of the Recluce series.

Red Seas Under Red Skies (Book 2 of the Gentleman Bastard series)
By Scott Lynch; Read by Michael Page
20 CDs or 3 MP3-CDs – 25 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: June 4th, 2009
ISBN: 9781400110520 (cd), 9781400160525 (mp3-cd)
In The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch took us on an adrenaline-fueled adventure with con artist extraordinaire Locke Lamora. Now Lynch brings back his outrageous hero for a caper so death-defying, nothing short of a miracle will pull it off.

From Recorded Books’ SCI-FI AUDIO imprint (First quarter 2009 new releases on CD)…

Rollback
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by George K.Wilson
9 CDs – 10 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781436186506
Dr. Sarah Halifax earned worldwide fame for deciphering the first alien message received on Earth. Now nearing the end of her days, she learns that, at long last, the reply has come.

Shaman’s Crossing (Book One of The Soldier Son Trilogy)
By Robin Hobb; Read by
16 CDs – 18.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4361-7968-3
Nevare Burvelle was born to be a
soldier in the Gernian army. But as Nevare’s career takes off, his worldview alters considerably. Corruption and nepotism reign, and now Nevare questions his own ideals, wondering why he continues fighting for the empire.

Fifty Degrees Below
By Kim Stanley Robinson; Read by Richard Ferrone
15 CDs – 18 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4361-8634-6
When the Gulf Stream stalls, dangerously low temperatures grip the Eastern Seaboard and Western Europe. While multinational corporations attempt to exploit the disaster, humankind’s only hope may be a desperate move to dump millions of tons of salt into the ocean.

Mean Streets
By various; Read by various
9 CDs – 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4361-9217-0
Featuring New York Times best-selling authors Jim Butcher and Simon R. Green, and national best-selling authors Kat Richardson and Thomas E. Sniegoski, Mean Streets offers four novellas from the hottest names in contemporary paranormal suspense. Running the gamut from demons and werewolves to zombies and black magic, these whodunits crackle with otherworldly secrets, making for a noir collection with an extra set of fangs.

Fool’s Experiment
By Edward M. Lerner; Read by George K.Wilson
10 CDs – 11.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781436164849
As a NASA engineer, critically acclaimed author Edward M. Lerner developed a background in science and technology perfectly suited to his fast-paced SF thrillers. In Fools’ Experiments, the military-industrial complex unwittingly unleashes a devastating threat to humanity after government programmers experiment with viruses and worms. But what escapes is no ordinary computer virus, and when the deadly artificial life-form reaches the Internet, humanity’s very existence is at stake.

From Recorded Books’ SCI-FI AUDIO imprint (Second quarter 2009 new releases on CD)…

Forest Mage (Book Two of the Soldier Son Trilogy)
By Robin Hobb; Read by John Keating
22 CDs – 19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781436179706
Nevare Burvelle has survived major combat and is making a quick recovery from a disease plaguing his fellows in the King’s army. He also believes he is free from the Speck magic that held him under its sway. Now traveling home to rendezvous with his fiancée, Nevare suffers haunting visions and soon realizes that malicious magic still resides within him—and is intent on destroying everything he holds dear.

Brightness Reef
By David Brin; Read by George K.Wilson
20 CDs – 17 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781436179744
Persecuted refugees from six separate alien races have migrated to the idyllic planet Jijo. And despite their incredible diversity, the inhabitants live together in blissful harmony. However, settlement on Jijo is illegal—and it’s only a matter of time before the residents of this forbidden paradise are discovered by the galactic powers-that-be.

Iron Sunrise
By Charles Stross; Read by George Guidall
11 CDs – 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781440710575
PlanetMoscow is vaporized by an unnatural star explosion, prompting those who escaped to counterattack the likely culprit—planet New Dresden of the neighboring system.
But New Dresden wasn’t to blame, and as worlds go to war, an unseen enemy labors to destroy the universe itself.

Counting Heads
By David Marusek; Read by Kevin R. Free
13 CDs – 14 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4361-8640-7
The debut novel from highly regarded short-story author David Marusek, Counting Heads pushes the limits of the genre. Life in the year 2134 is nearly perfect, with nanotechnology and medical science granting people near immortality. But when Sam Harger is flagged as a terrorist, his powerful wife dies in a plane crash, and his daughter’s cryogenically frozen head becomes a sought-after prize, Sam must fight to save the human race from a secret cabal.

The Fabulous Riverboat (Riverworld Saga, Book 2)
By Philip José Farmer; Read by
10 CDs – 12 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4361-8636-0
The Fabulous Riverboat tells of a world where all of humanity has been mysteriously resurrected on the banks of one mighty river. Samuel Clemens (a.k.a.MarkTwain) is tasked with finding a fallen meteorite and using its ore to build a massive riverboat. But in order to succeed, he’ll have to outwit some of history’s most nefarious villains.

Into Looking Glass
By John Ringo; Read by L.J. Ganser
10 CDs – 12 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books / Sci-Fi Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781440710612
When a subatomic physics experiment causes a massive explosion, interdimensional gateways open in Florida—and aliens pour out. Some intend to bring Earth to its knees. Others seem willing to help, but will annihilate the planet if Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Robert Miller can’t stop the menace from spreading.

And from Recorded Books’ new “Mystery” imprint…

The Somnambulist
By Jonathan Barnes; Read by John Curless
9 CDs – 11 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books Mystery
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978143618066-5
Set amidst Victorian London’s seamy, fog-shrouded underworld. Meet Edward Moon, an illusionist and detective who operates solely with the aid of his hulking, mute sidekick.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Little Book by Selden Edwards

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

The Little Book by Selden EdwardsThe Little Book
By Selden Edwards; Read by Jeff Woodman
13 CDs – 15 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: Aug 2008
ISBN: 9780143143512
Themes: / Fantasy / Time Travel / Vienna / 19th Century / Philosophy /

The Little Book is the extraordinary tale of Wheeler Burden, California-exiled heir of the famous Boston banking Burdens, philosopher, student of history, legend’s son, rock idol, writer, lover of women, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero. In 1988 he is forty-seven, living in San Francisco. Suddenly he is—still his modern self—wandering in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: fin de siècle Vienna. It is 1897, precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.

The genre aspects of this novel are not, well, novel. At least to the genre-savvy. Like Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the method of time travel is irrelevant. What’s important and interesting is the interaction of Selden Edwards’s fictional characters with their forebears and with historical characters, most notably Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain.

Wheeler Burden has lengthy discussions with Freud, seeming to shape in some way the later ideas that Freud published. He also spends a great deal of time with his own father, who was also in the past for an unknown reason. Since Wheeler’s father had died during World War II, this was an opportunity to get to know each other. Add a very beautiful grandmother, and one can almost hear Freud furiously scribbling notes in the background.

Jeff Woodman is a terrific narrator. He performs accents in a completely believable (and completely understandable) manner. Also notable is his performance of female characters, which is subtle and effective. I’m looking forward to hearing more of his audiobooks.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #013

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #013 – We’ve got an absolutely unique interview with the incredibly cool Mister Ron from the Mister Ron’s Basement podcast! Mister Ron has a podcast devoted to humorous fiction from the 19th and early 20th century.

In the interview we talked about Mister Ron’s podcast, H.G. Wells, Sherlock Holmes spoofs, August Derleth, Solar Pons, O. Henry, Stephen Leacock, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Bud Grace, Piranha Club, Stanley Huntley, A Journey To The Sun, Pfaff’s Beer Cellar, Mortimer Thomson, podcasting, archive.org.

Also talked about on today’s show:
Audiobooks, The Little Book, Selden Edwards, The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman, time travel, James P. Hogan, Thrice Upon A Time, movies, what’s right with Frequency, what’s right and wrong with the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie, and what’s worrisome about the new Star Trek movie trailer and finally what’s playing this week on BBC7.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mister Ron’s Basement: A Journey To The Sun & The Ghost Exstinguisher

misterron

SFFaudio Online Audio

Podcast - Mister Ron's BasementMister Ron, from Mister Ron’s Basement Podcast has a couple of vintage spoofs of SF and Fantasy for us. Ron writes:

“it turns out that Stanley Huntley must have had a passion for spoofing Jules Verne. Just a few months after he had put A Trip to the South Pole in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1880, he went after Around the World in Eighty Days with the story A Journey to the Sun by Jules Verne, Jr. It features the English Baronet Sir Fillemup Frog, who bets his friends that he can climb up to the Sun. It’s a silly, but fun story.”


A Journey to the Sun
By Jules Verne, Jr. (aka Stanley Huntley); Read by Mister Ron
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: November 17th 2008
Also up from the basement, from 1905, what may be the original ghost-busting story…

The Ghost-Extinguisher
By Gelett Burgess; Read by Mister Ron
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: October 2008
A scientist discovers perfects the Japanese technique for disabling ghosts and putting them in jars.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #012 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #012 – Our sickest show yet. How sick? Well, I’d like Stanley Kubrick to direct the next Conan movie. We also talk about the SFFaudio Challenge #3, which is not as bad as Red Sonja (1985).

Talked about on today’s show:
Fallout 3 has a built-in radio drama (The Adventures Of Daring Dashwood), The Little Book, Selden Edwards, time travel, The Book Of Lies, Brad Meltzer, Nelson DeMille, The Border, The Third SFFaudio Challenge, Muureen O’Brien, Maria Lectrix Podcast, The Risk Profession, Donald E. Westlake, Spider Robinson, John D. MacDonald, Travis McGee, John Varley, The Persistence Of Vision, Scott Brick, Aural Noir, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Frederic Brown, The Fabulous Clipjoint, H. Beam Piper, Murder In The Gunroom, Galaxy Press, Elantris, Brandon Sanderson, Dennis Stocks, LibriVox, Masters Of Space, E.E. “Doc” Smith, E. Everett Evans, R.J. Davis, BSAP’s Queen Of The Black Coast, Robert E. Howard, Bill Hollweg, Stevie Farnaby, Brian Murphy, The Silver Key, Brett Ratner’s new Conan movie, HBO’s new A Song Of Ice And Fire show.

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE LISTENS Review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Seth

Review

Free Listens BlogThe Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Source: Librivox
25 Zipped MP3s
Length: 5 hr, 43 min UNABRIDGED
Reader: Nichole Doolin

The book: A young lady, charmed by a young gentleman in London, agrees to take up a job as a governess to his orphaned niece and nephew. After arriving at the country estate where the children live, the governess begins to see figures around the estate that do not seem to fit with any of the servants currently living there. She learns from other servants that the former governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, Peter Quint, died mysteriously shortly before she was hired. Are the figures she has been seeing the ghosts of this couple or is it all in her mind?

James keeps up this ambiguity throughout the book, constructing dialogues and events that seem diabolical under one viewpoint and another perfectly innocent by another. The book is told from the 1st person perspective of the governess. This narrator is the only one who seems to notice the ghosts and their effects on the children, but we as readers are not sure we can trust this young lady. The degree to which James draws out the governess’s decent into horror is a bit frustrating at times, but really, this is a short book and a classic in psychology.

Rating:  7/10

The reader: Ms. Doolin sounds like a professional. Her reading is polished, using pauses and inflection to great effect. I found it interesting to compare the voice of the narrator from the first chapters where she is bright and innocent to the later where you can hear the suspicion in her voice.  The other characters are not given full-fledged voices, but Ms. Doolin alters her diction and pitch enough to let us know who is talking. The recording is clean and noiseless.

Posted by Seth