The SFFaudio Podcast #142 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG – Accessory Before The Fact by Algernon Blackwood

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #142 – Accessory Before The Fact by Algernon Blackwood, read by Gregg Margarite. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (16 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it (by Jesse, Tamahome, and Gregg Margarite).

Talked about on today’s show:
Accessory Before The Fact was published in 1911, Jesse doesn’t understand this story, Wilkie Collins, ethereal planes are the hook (rather than the detail), Gilligan and The Skipper vs. Laurel and Hardu vs. Harold and Kumar, “this is not a time-slip story”, “this is a precognative story”, paranoia, “spirtitualized”, Germanophobia, WWI, bigotry on display, L. Frank Baum’s racism, Teutonic invasion, how many characters are in this story (4 or 3)?, peeling away the layers, déjà vu, see/feel the future, quantum theory, is time a superimposition onto real reality?, slipstream, fantasy, should we dismiss this story?, Ten Minute Short Stories, adventure, Accessory Before The Fact is at the genesis of all this, an accountant on vacation, “what do you do when you have one of these events and you can’t prove it”?, The Moment Of Decision by Stanley Ellin, 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do On TV edited by Alfred Hitchcock, An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, time is an illusion, “time is a serious problem…”

Accessory Before The Fact by Algernon Blackwood - illustration by Bob Harvey

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 13 More Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV

Posted by Jesse Willis

Naxos Audiobooks: 2 FREE Horror tales, The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce and The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

SFFaudio Online Audio

Naxos AudiobooksNaxos Audiobooks, is offering a couple of free audiobook downloads this month!

Here’s part of the description of the first one:

Bierce’s ghost stories are not among the best-written but they are unusual and distinctly ‘modern’ in their definition of what constitutes a ‘ghost’. They enjoy a popularity today that eluded them during Bierce’s lifetime, perhaps because the late twentieth century reader is more prepared to accept his psychological approach to the genre. The stories resist neat classification, no conclusions are offered. Whatever the true nature of the entity in The Damned Thing, Bierce offers no tidy answer. One of the protagonists offers his theory but it is no more than that and you are left with the feeling that perhaps the entity wanders the earth to this day and that Bierce merely recorded one episode of its existence.

NAXOS AUDIO - The Damned Thing by Ambrose BierceThe Damned Thing
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Jonathan Keeble
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9789626344941
First published in 1894.

The Damned Thing has been adapted as an episode of Masters Of Horror as well as for the comics in Graphic Classics: Ambrose Bierce, 2nd Edition:

The Damned Thing - illustration by Reno Maniquis

The second audiobook is longer, but not huffduffable. It’s wrapped in a zipped folder with 12 MP3s (and also includes a wonderful 8 page PDF with story notes by Chloé Harmsworth).

NAXOS AUDIO - The Canterville Ghost by Oscar WildeThe Canterville Ghost
By Oscar Wilde; Rupert Degas
1 Zipped MP3 – Approx. 77 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9789626349748
“A terrifying ghost is haunting the ancient mansion of Canterville Chase, complete with creaking floorboards, clanking chains and gruesome disguises – but the new occupants seem strangely undisturbed by his presence. Deftly contrasting the conventional gothic ghost story with the pragmatism of the modern world, Wilde creates a gently comic fable of the conflict between old and new. Rupert Degas’s hilarious reading brings the absurdity and theatricality of the story to life.”

The Canterville Ghost - illustration by Wallace Goldsmith

The Canterville Ghost has been adapted to film more than a dozen times! Here’s the trailer for the first such, from 1944:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #101 – RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #101 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk recent arrivals

Talked about on today’s show:
The Wise Man’s Fear is long, ♪ Hellhole ♪, The Road To Dune |READ OUR REVIEW|, quality of Dune series, Adjustment Bureau, Twilight Zone, A Kind Of A Stopwatch, The Stainless Steel Rat For President, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted, Richard Matheson, Other Kingdoms, (parentheses), Richard Christian Matheson (son), I Am Legend comic, Splatterpunk, some Masters Of Horror tv episodes, James Tiptree, Jr., The Screwfly Solution, Lovecraft, Dreams In The Witchhouse, Ambrose Bierce, Damn Thing, John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns episode, incontinence, Alex Bledsoe, Dark Jenny, Sword-Edged Blonde, Blood Groove |READ OUR REVIEW|, Alex H And The Airship City, Girl Genius Online comics, Airship Fantasy, William Gibson, Count Zero, Necromancer?, Normads Of Gor, Assasins Of Gor, Warlord Of Mars, Elvin Blood, cover of Warlord Of Mars #5 comic, comics vs trade paperbacks, 3 YA titles, Sweep: Book Of Shadows, don’t worry the title isn’t Wicca, Liparulo’s Whirlwind, Guardians of Ga’Hoole Book 9: The First Collier, would owls be good pets?, Shadowfever has a soundtrack, Darkfever used to be on Podiobooks, Moning is not George R. R. Martin, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, March In Country, Lifeforce the movie, The Executioner series, E. E. Knight at Graphicaudio, “I Am Batman!”, Batman: Inferno at Graphicaudio, Kings Of The North, borderline sf, Clive Cussler, The Jungle, aural noir, Andrew Vachss, rhymes with tax, child protection, Only Child, Down Here, Hard Looks comics, Shaken, Jacq Daniels, drink names, Tequila Mockingbird, Lucky Stiff, a million honeybees, this is noir romance, Romeo And Juliet spoiler, horoscopes, David Suzuki, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Radio Drama Revival, Anita Blake #1 (Guilty Pleasures), Death Cloud (young Sherlock), Fountains Of Paradise, Fade To Blonde, Gilgamesh The King |READ OUR REVIEW|, The God Engines |READ OUR REVIEW|, fiction where “stuff happens”, Roy Dotrice world record, The God Engines review gender controversy

Posted by Tamahome

(note by poster: listening to yourself is weird)

Masters Of Horror – the original stories in audio

SFFaudio Online Audio

Masters Of HorrorOver the past few years I’ve bought more than a dozen of DVDs featuring episodes of Masters Of Horror. MOH was a cable TV show that brought together Horror stories and Horror filmmakers in hour-long formats. Several of these shows were rather lame – but a few were very good or even excellent.

Three episodes that were rather good were adapted from public domain stories…

Weird Tales July 1933The Dreams In The Witch House
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by MorganScorpion
2 MP3 Files – Approx. 90 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Archive.org
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
Written in January/February 1932, it was first published in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Apparently this story was “heavily influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s unfinished novel Septimius Felton.”

The Damned Thing
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Greg Elmensdorp
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 4, 2006
First published in 1893.

The Black Cat
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Ralph Snelson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 11, 2008
First published in the August 19th, 1843, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Short Horror Story Collection #005

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox - Horror Story Collection 005Horror Story Collection 005
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 15, 2008
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams.

Berenice
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by MorganScorpion
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Black Cat
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Ernst Pattynama
1 |MP3| – 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Monkey’s Paw
By W.W. Jacobs; Read by Matthias Whitney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Occupant of the Room
By Algernon Blackwood; Read by Mooseboy Alfonzo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Painter’s Bargain
By William Makepeace Thackeray; Read by Mooseboy Alfonzo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Room in the Tower
By E.F. Benson; Read by MorganScorpion
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Stalley Fleming’s Hallucinations
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Read by heshman08
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Tell-Tale Heart
By Edgar Alan Poe; Read by Reynard T. Fox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

To Be Read at Dusk
By Charles Dickens; Read by Alex C. Telander
1|MP3| – Approx. 22 [UNABRIDGED]

Transformation
By Mary Shelley; Read by: Alecia
1 |MP3| – Approx. 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/horror-story-collection-005.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox’s Horror Story Collection 004

SFFaudio Online Audio

Just added to the ever expanding LibriVox catalogue…

LibriVox Audiobook - Horror Story Collection 004Horror Story Collection 004
By Various; Read by various narrators
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 9th, 2008
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams.

The Dream
By Ivan Turgenev; Read by Pete Williams
1 |MP3| – Approx. 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Ghoul’s Accountant
By Stephen Crane; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf; Read by Lauren Herzog
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 1)
By Anonymous; Read by Bobby Marcelino
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 2)
By Anonymous; Read by Sy
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Napoleon And The Spectre
By Charlotte Bronte; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

One Summer Night
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Street
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Glen Hallstrom
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Test of Courage
By C.W. Leadbeater; Read by SWES
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Wedding Chest
By Vernon Lee; Read by Tysto
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/horror-story-collection-004.xml

My thoughts on this collection: Other than some bad pronunciations by narrator Pete Williams (who sounds a lot like Alex Wilson), Ivan Turgenev’s The Dream makes for a solid listen. It’s quite dreamlike and seems inspired by Turgenev’s own life. Beirce’s One Summer Night sounds like it would have been a great story if the setup narrator Paul Curran has had been tweaked a bit (there’s something wrong with the sound, it’s both too bassy and too whistly at the same time). Lovecraft’s The Street, narrated by Glenn Halstrom (AKA Smokestack Jones) is a good reading, but their still something wrong with his setup too (a persistent hiss). SWES’s narration of A Test Of Courage by C.W. Leadbeater, on the other hand is clear and completely noise free – but is way too fast! Tysto, who reads Vernon Lee’s A Wedding Chest, also has a good setup. His reading is a tad off. I’m not sure what the problem is, but the word that springs to mind is “cadence.”

Posted by Jesse Willis