adventure – Page 23

April & May New Releases

Friday, May 2, 2008Monday, May 5, 2008 Jesse Willis

New Releases

Two years after the first book, comes “book 2” of one of the first podcast novels…

Max Quick 2: The Two Travelers
By Mark Jeffrey; Read by Mark Jeffrey
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: April 2008 – ????
Five quiet years have passed in Starland, California since the the time of the Pocket. But when a crazed old man shows up with a warning, Max, Casey, Ian and Sasha suddenly find themselves on the run. Max and Ian go through an Arch back to 1912, where a mysterious Machine is under construction that seems connected to Max’s unremembered secret. Meanwhile, Casey and Sasha follow the old man to the strange town of Arturo Gyp. But there is more afoot than meets the eye: the enemies of Mr. E – the nefarious Archons – are abroad. And when Max is at last eye-to-eye with his secret, he realizes nothing will ever be the same again…

Only available as a commercial MP3 download…

Little Brother
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Kirby Heyborne
MP3 Download – 11 Hours 54 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio / Listening Library
Published: April 2008
ISBN: 9780739372869
Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Audio comics! Fully dramatized…

Justice League of America: Exterminators
By Christopher Golden; Performed by a full cast
5 CDs, 1 MP3-CD or WMA Download – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Graphic Audio
Published: May 2008
ISBN: 1599504448
Superman. Batman. Wonder Woman. The Flash. Green Lantern. They are the World’s Greatest Super Heroes, fighting endlessly against corruption and injustice. Each of them is a formidable opponent of evil, but banded together their powers are unmatched. Ever ready, they stand united as the — JUSTICE LEAGUE of AMERICA. When a mass outbreak of super-powered individuals threatens the world, the JLA determines that latent metahuman abilities are being triggered by an alien contagion, one that’s spreading throughout Earth as it transforms its hosts into monstrous engines of destruction. Racing to contain the infection, the world’s greatest super heroes link the parasitic plague to an alien invasion from the team’s earliest days and make a horrifying discovery: the JLA itself is responsible for the imminent disaster they now face.

Said to be a “funny, fast-paced science fiction adventure” this is author Michael Reisman’s first book…

Simon Bloom: Gravity Keeper
By Michael Reisman; Read by Nicholas Hormann
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 9780739363539
Ordinary sixth-grader Simon Bloom has just made the biggest discovery since gravity–and it literally fell into his lap. Or onto his head, anyway. You see, Simon has found the Teacher’s Edition of Physics, a magical reference book containing the very formulas that control the laws that govern the universe! By reciting the formulas out loud, he’s able to do the impossible–like reverse the force of gravity to float weightlessly, and reduce friction to zoom across any surface! But a book that powerful isn’t safe with Simon for long. Before he knows it, he is being pursued by evil forces bent on gaining control of the formulas. And they’ll do anything to retrieve them. Now, Simon and his friends must use their wits and the magic of science in a galactic battle for the book, and the future of the universe.

Another juvenile novel, sounds a bit like The Secret World Of Og…

Puddlejumpers
By Mark Jean and Christopher Carlson; Read by Sean Kenin
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 9780739363379
Ernie Banks, named for the legendary Chicago Cubs shortstop, is a troubled, thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. Abandoned on the doorstep of the Lakeside Home for Boys when he was three years old, his only proof that he once belonged to somebody is a vintage Ernie Banks baseball card, a crystal acorn he wears on a string around his neck, and a strange spiral birthmark on the bottom of his right foot. As a last reprieve before being sent to a juvenile detention facility, Ernie is allowed to spend three weeks on a working farm. When Ernie arrives at the home of Russ Frazier, he learns that the widower’s baby was kidnapped years before. Ernie is determined to solve the case. He teams up with Joey, a local tomboy, to investigate clues that lead them on a dangerous journey into a forbidden world of dark secrets, magic puddles, and the cavernous underground kingdom of the Puddlejumpers–eleven-inch-tall water creatures with whom Ernie has a mysterious connection.

Only rarely are audiobooks embargoed, the last one I remember was a Harry Potter, here’s another, I think we can probably guess why it won’t be showing up on shelves early…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
By James Rollins; Read by L.J. Ganser
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 9780739358986
Warning: SPOILERS….
It’s 1957, the atomic age is in full swing, and McCarthy-era paranoia has the nation on edge. But for Indiana Jones, the Cold War really heats up when his latest expedition is crashed by a ruthless squad of Russian soldiers. Commanded by a sword-wielding colonel who’s as sinister as she is stunning, the menacing Reds drag an unwilling Indy along as they brazenly invade American soil, massacre U.S. soldiers, and plunder a top-secret government warehouse. Their objective: a relic even more precious–and powerful–than the mythic Ark, capable of unlocking secrets beyond human comprehension.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – S.M. Stirling, Mary Shelley, Frank Herbert

Thursday, March 27, 2008Thursday, March 27, 2008 Jesse Willis

New Releases

Another in S.M. Stirling’s alternate planet series (a parallel world first introduced in The Sky People), have a listen to the Dragon Page interview/chat with Stirling |MP3|, it too sounds like a cool book, The Sky People earned an SFFaudio Essential designation…

In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings
By S.M. Stirling; Read by Todd McLaren
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400106103 (CDs), 9781400156108 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
On Mars, early hominids evolved civilization earlier than their earthly cousins, driven by the needs of a harsh world growing still harsher as the initial terraforming ran down. Without coal, oil, or uranium, their technology was forced onto different paths, and the genetic wizardry of the Crimson Dynasty united a world for more than 20,000 years. Now, in a new stand-alone adventure set in this world’s 2000 AD, Jeremy Wainman is an archaeologist who has achieved a lifelong dream: to travel to Mars and explore the dead cities of the Deep Beyond, searching for the secrets of the Kings Beneath the Mountain and the fallen empire they ruled.

Unhyped, unbalyhooed, and probably the last novel that needs to be re-recorded, never the less I think the fact that Simon Vance is narrating makes this a worthy edition…

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley; Read by Simon Vance
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: February 2008
EAN: 9781400106349 (CD), 9781400156344 (MP3-CD)
Mary Shelley’s tragic story of a scientist who created a monster is perhaps even more compelling today than when it was written nearly two centuries ago. The brilliant Victor Frankenstein fashions a new form of life only to discover, too late, the irreparable damage he has caused.

Here’s the first in a new batch of old, non-Dune, Herbert novels getting their first unabridged releases…

Hellstrom’s Hive
By Frank Herbert; Read by Scott Brick
10 CDs, 1 MP3-CD – 4 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400105649 (CDs), 9781400155644 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects. First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as “Project 40,” Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC 7: H.G. Wells, Brian Aldiss, Hergé’s Tintin and a promise of Arthur C. Clarke tales to come)

Saturday, March 22, 2008Tuesday, December 8, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

By the sheer volume of H.G. Wells stories airing this coming week on BBC Radio 7 you’d might think it was H.G. Wells who had just died, and not Arthur C. Clarke! But no, BBC7 is planning on playing some Clarke for they announced the following: “As a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke we will be repeating these programmes [four readings commisioned and broadcast in 2007] in the near future.” Good on them! Until then…

In typical Wellsian fashion (time travel used to be fantasy until Wells got his mitts on it) this 1901 tale transforms a Fantasy concept (the existence of past lives) into a SF theme, casting a future life (as of a dream), that is both vivid and recognizable – written before both of the World Wars it depicts a world in which tanks, airplanes and something that sound like a nuclear weapon exists…

A Dream Of Armageddon
By H.G. Wells; Read by Robert Bathurst
2 Parts – Approx. 2 Hours [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday and Tuesday at 6.30pm and midnight
A tale of an advanced civilisation descending into mindless war was an uncannily close prediction of the horrors of WW2 when it was written in 1901.

This one, sounding more like Lovecraft than it has any right to, should be a treat for sailor and land lubber alike…

The Sea Raiders
By H.G. Wells; Read by Robert Bathurst
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Wednesday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
Another classic tale of high adventure by sci-fi master H. G. Wells. Strange monsters from the deep start terrorising the horrified residents of Devon’s coastline.

Yep, you’ll find Wells was responsible for most of the well worn tropes of SF – this next one is described as the inspiration for the Star Trek (original series) episode “Wink of an Eye”…

The New Accelerator
By H.G. Wells; Read by Robert Bathurst
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Thursday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
A friend of H.G. Wells is on the verge of making a scientific breakthrough which promises to revolutionise human life – so the two friends decide to road-test the new drug – with exciting but dangerous consequences.

And a Brian Aldiss tale, first broadcast back in May 2007…

Song Of The Silencer
By Brian Aldiss; Read by Nigel Anthony
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
To establish universal peace, scientists have constructed a massive computer designed to mimic human thought and act as a guide to world decision making. But will flicking the switch signal the end of the human race?

First broadcast on BBC Radio 5 in 1993, here’s a treat of an audio drama…

The Adventures of Tintin
Based on the Hergé comic book series; Performed by a full cast
6 Broadcasts – 3 Hours [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7
Broadcast: Monday to Monday at 9am, 8pm and 1am
Famous boy reporter Tintin has been covering the return of the Sanders-Hardiman expedition from Peru. When all the participants fall mysteriously ill, Tintin is compelled to investigate.

All of the above will be available on the “listen again” page the day after they air.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: She by H. Rider Haggard

Saturday, February 16, 2008Friday, March 23, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

“She is a classic of the imagination, a milestone and foundation stone of a whole sector of fantastic novels upon which others have built and still build novels of wonder. The sector is that of the lost land, the lost race, the wonder that lies over the next mountain or beyond the farthest sea.” – Donald A. Wollheim (author of H. Rider Haggard’s Empire of the Imagination)

Complete and unabridged, H. Rider Haggard’s She! What’s that you say? You’ve been hankering for a story about a lost civilization ruled by gorgeous 2000 year old female-despot? That’s even what you thought the word Fantasy meant for all these years? Don’t know what I’m talking about?

She was a 19th century best-seller from the author of King Solomon’s Mines, its another tale set in Africa. A mysterious African kingdom in fact. It explores themes of “imperial arrogance, sexual obsession, power and isolation” and it’s all wrapped up in a high adventure format. Best of all, it’s out now in the form of a Public Domain audiobook from LibriVox!

She
By H. Rider Haggard; Read by various
29 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – 11 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: February 2008
At 5 years old Leo Vincey is left in the care of a Cambridge professor by the name of Horace Holly. His father leaves him a strange casket which he is to open on his 25th Birthday. On opening the Casket Leo and Horace discover the strange history of Leo’s ancestors. Leo and his adoptive father Horace must travel all the way to Africa in order to uncover the solve his family’s strange history.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/she-by-h-rider-haggard.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter / Barsoom” books

Tuesday, February 12, 2008Sunday, April 11, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is best known for his Tarzan series of books. His second best known series is our topic for the day. The first three books in the John Carter of Mars series (AKA The Barsoom Series) are available via the tireless volunteers at Librivox! Enjoy…

A Princess of Mars (book one in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by various readers
29 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 2006
“Part One of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars-Series. Easy, swank, pulp read about an omnipotent gentleman teleported to Mars, finding an outlandish society of ape-, tree- and lizardmen, red-, white-, yellowmen, brains on legs, strange bastions and curious apparatuses, where the strongest survives and women are needy beauties to be saved. How can something be so platitudinous and at the same time so imaginative and enthralling?”

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/a-princess-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

The Gods Of Mars (book two in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by JD Weber
22 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 7 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 2006
“The Gods of Mars is a 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel, the second of his famous Barsoom series. It can be said that the novel set the tone for much science fiction to come. Its influence can clearly be seen in franchises such as Star Trek and Farscape. While Burroughs no doubt borrowed liberally from the pulp fiction of his day, particularly westerns and swashbuckling tales, the pacing and themes set the tone for the soft science fiction genre. The protagonist, John Carter, with his proficiency in hand-to-hand combat and flirtations with beautiful alien women, could be said to have set the mold for later influential icons like Captain James T. Kirk and James Bond. At the end of the first book, A Princess of Mars, John Carter is unwillingly transported back to Earth. The Gods of Mars begins with his arrival back on Barsoom (Mars) after a ten year hiatus, separated from his wife Dejah Thoris, his unborn child, and the Red Martian people of the nation of Helium, whom he has adopted as his own. Unfortunately, John Carter materializes in the one place on Barsoom from which nobody is allowed to depart: the Valley Dor, which is the Barsoomian heaven.”

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-gods-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

The Warlord Of Mars (book three in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by JD Weber and Kara Shallenberg*
16 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2007
“Warlord of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel, the third of his famous Barsoom series. John Carter continues his quest to be reunited with his wife, the princess Dejah Thoris, and discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient mysterious Martian races.”* One point of interest, the reader for Warlord, JD Weber, mysteriously disappeared before recording the last chapter. After waiting several months, Kara Shallenberg recorded the last chapter.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-warlord-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Radio Tales Of The Strange & Fantastic

Friday, January 4, 2008 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Radio Tales Of The Strange & Fantastic is a website devoted to “bring[ing] you stories of the supernatural and the supernormal dramatizing the fantasies and the mysteries of the unknown.” The webmaster, Rich Carlson, has as his goal a “no frills (and no ads, no pop ups, no cookies) in a single page” of the best in OTR Speculative Fiction. And that’s just what it is! Newcomers to classic science fiction, fantasy, horror and adventure radio plays and long time fans of the medium can easily locate and download some of the best examples of the art form. RToTSF links to more than 50 hours of public domain favorites. With particular focus on the well-known novel and short story writers whose speculative works reached a wider audience via radio. Featured authors include the likes of:

Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, John Brunner, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Guy de Maupassant, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Robert A. Heinlein, Shirley Jackson, M. R. James, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, H.P. Lovecraft, Archibald MacLeish, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Curt Siodmak, Carl Stephenson, Dalton Trumbo, H. Russell Wakefield, Stanley Weinbaum, H. G. Wells, Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny.

This is a site worthy of repeated visits.

Posted by Jesse Willis