audiobook – Page 135

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 020

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Some terrific new listening, and some re-recorded tales, are found in this collection of LibriVox’s short Science Fiction:

Harry Harrison’s Arm Of The Law is fun, and well written with a sympathetic portrayal of a factory fresh robot turned Martian lawman. Police coruption gets a right royal cleaning when a seemingly Asimovian-lawed robot shows up on Mars. Greg Margarite reads the robot’s few lines extremely well. This is yet more proof he’s a narrator with terrific instincts for characterization.

Philip K. Dick’s The Gun is predictable but still very readable/listenable. Fredric Brown’s Keep Out is, like so many Brown tales, short, sweet and funny!

George O. Smith’s History Repeats features mercenary aliens and talking dogs. Cool! Other than a few almost unnoticeable pauses this is an excellent reading by Bellona Times.

And that’s just a few of these stories! Why not have a listen yourself? Then, please pop your thoughts on each in as a comment. All the cool kids are doing it!

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 020
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
Science Fiction is speculative literature that generally explores the consequences of ideas which are roughly consistent with nature and scientific method, but are not facts of the author’s contemporary world. The stories often represent philosophical thought experiments presented in entertaining ways. Protagonists typically “think” rather than “shoot” their way out of problems, but the definition is flexible because there are no limits on an author’s imagination. The reader-selected stories presented here were written prior to 1962 and became US public domain texts when their copyrights expired.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-20.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

2BR02B
By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
In the not so distant future an over-populated planet requires that every birth be balanced by a death. When Edward K. Whelig, Jr.’s wife births triplets he needs to find three people willing to enter a local suicide booth and give him the receipt… From Worlds of If, January 1962.

And All The Earth A Grave
By C.C. MacApp; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| -Approx. 19 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
There’s nothing wrong with dying—it just hasn’t ever had the proper sales pitch! From Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1963.

Arm Of The Law
By Harry Harrison; Read by Greg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 34 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
How could a robot—a machine, after all—be involved in something like law application and violence? Harry Harrison, who will be remembered for his THE VELVET GLOVE (Nov. 1956) and his more recent TRAINEE FOR MARS (June 1958) tells what happens when a police robot hits an outpost on Mars. From the August 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe.

The Bell Tone
By Edmund H. Leftwich; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
It is no use. It’s too late. The earth—I must dig—alone. From the July 1941 issue of Comet.

The Gun
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Greg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead. Only the gun showed signs of life … and the trespassers had wrecked that for all time. The return journey to pick up the treasure would be a cinch … they smiled.

History Repeats
By George O. Smith; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
There are—and very probably will always be—some Terrestrials who can’t, and for that matter don’t want, to call their souls their own… From Astounding Science Fiction May 1959.

Keep Out
By Fredric Brown; Read by Greg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered—except one of the flaws of human nature… From Amazing Stories March 1954.

My Father, the Cat
By Henry Slesar; Read by Patricia Oakley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
“Henry Slesar, as we have said before, is a young advertising executive who has rapidly become one of the better known writers in the field. Here is an off-trail story that is guaranteed to make some of you take a very searching second look at some of the young men you know.” From Fantastic Universe December 1957.

Of Time And Texas
By William F. Nolan; Read by Joe Pilsbury
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
“Twenty-eight-year-old William Nolan, another newcomer to the field, introduces us to the capricious Time Door of Professor C. Cydwick Ohms, guaranteed to solve the accumulated problems of the world of the year 2057.” From Fantastic Universe November 1956.

LibriVox - Operation Lorelie by William P. Salton Operation Lorelie
By William P. Salton; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2009
It was a new time and a vast new war of complete and awful annihilation. Yet, some things never change, and, as in ancient times, Ulysses walked again—brave and unconquerable—and again, the sirens wove their deadly spell with a smile and a song. From Amazing Stories March 1954.

[additional thanks to “julicarter” and Lucy Burgoyne]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #038: AUDIOBOOK: The Burning Bridge by Poul Anderson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #038 – Diverting from our usual agenda of talking about audiobooks, we’re presenting one. This comes courtesy of Rick Jackson, of Wonder Audio. It’s an unabridged reading of Poul Anderson’s short story The Burning Bridge!

And be sure to check out our authors pages section on POUL ANDERSON , it details other versions of this story and many other Poul tales.

The Burning Bridge
By Poul Anderson; Read by Amanda Fitzwater
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The SFFaudio Podcast
Podcast: October 5, 2009
Usually there are two “reasons” why something is done; the reason why it needs to be done, and, quite separate, the reason people want to do it. The foul-up starts when the reason-for-wanting is satisfied … and the need remains! First published in Astounding Science Fiction January 1960.

[thanks to Rick and Amanda]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Sunday, October 4, 2009Sunday, October 4, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

The Lies of Locke Lamora
By Scott Lynch; Read by Michael Page
18 CDs – Approx. 23 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2009
ISBN: 1400110513
Themes: / Fantasy / Crime / Magic /

An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains—a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans—a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards.

Here’s the one sentence summary I’ve been using to describe The Lies Of Loche Lamora:

Like Oliver Twist in Lankhmar.

In a way this is the anti-Harry Potter book. It’s about a school for thieves and not magicians. It doesn’t have heroes and villains as much as it has profligate crooks and despicable liars. Our protagonist is the titular Locke Lamora, a young wastrel in the city of Camorr. He’d starve or be sold into worse slavery had he not been born with a certain larceny in his heart. Camorr, the city itself, too is a terrific character in this book, being a vividly described assemblage of various fantasy cities Lankhmar, Arenjun, and real life historical ports like late medieval Venice. Under careful tutelage, Locke and his companions grow into formidable talents, practicing their art in a series of ever more elaborate con-games.

When I was a kid playing Dungeons and Dragons I almost always played the “thief” class. Magic users always seemed lame to me, clerics were like magic users but with religion (which seemed to me like a third wheel for actual role playing) and fighters were boring. Sure you’re tough – and that’s good for fighting, but that’s it. I always thought there was a little too much fighting in D&D. My favourite part of role playing was the part in the tavern, before the quest proper really got started. I was inspired by Baggins burglar clan – but thought they had it too damn easy with the magic ring of theirs. Later in life I’d see movies like: The Sting, The Grifters, and Harry In Your Pocket. I’d read books like: The Green Eagle Score and The Girl With The Long Green Heart. Those stories all had setups I really dug. I liked characters who lived by their wits. Characters who, without being either the best shot, or the fastest draw, without having the biggest muscles or fastest legs could make the getaway with at least half a sack of gold in hand. And that’s why I like The Lies Of Loch Lamora so much.

The Lies Of Locke Lamora is rich with detail. I have a hard time conceiving just how much time Scott Lynch put into the world building. The magic system is based, smartly, around the “language” or “name” model of magic. Words have power. Knowing the “true name” of something or someone gives you power over it. Indeed, even in real life language is almost like magic. I can say to you something like: “The blue horse with the rainbow flavoured fedora is clambering slowly up the valley’s cool red roof” and some sort of weird imagery is suddenly **poofed** into your mind. I can buy into this kind of magic. It’s the same kind of magic that J.K. Rowling puts into her villain names: Just think about it, Voldemort and Malfoy, (“underground death dweller” and “bad foil”). It’s too bad Rowling didn’t have the teachers at Hogwarts teaching this magic language magic system instead of the hodge-podge it has – I might have cared more. So back to the book at hand, magic plays a fairly central role in the plot of The Lies Of Locke Lamora, it’s rare, and doesn’t enter into the novel until quite late. Other furnishings in Lynch’s Fantasy landscape include substitution. Instead of glasses we get “optiks” and instead of chemical we get “alchemical.”

Thinking back, narrator Michael Page did employ a fairly wide range of voices. And there are quite a few characters for him to bring to life. Several of these age over time. Some narrators take over the text, Page is not one of them – he delivers the lines as appropriate, so that for the most part I didn’t notice his performance. If there are any laments I have about this excellent audiobook they are very few. One would be it’s length, it is a tad long. This is a sin that virtually every Fantasy novel is guilty of these days. It held my attention, but there were certainly a few scenes that could have been easily summarized without losing one whit of the novel’s otherwise careful pacing. Another lament, the Bantam Spectra paperbook edition of this book includes an excellent map of the city of Camorr. Modern audiobooks never include maps as a supplement. So neither does this Tantor edition. This is a mistake. Any novel assumes a certain familiarity with geography but Fantasy novels, especially of this kind, are burdened with creating a new world from scratch. An audience that is unfamiliar with its geography is less likely to be able to follow the action spatially. Several times during my was listening I wished I had a map of the city of Camorr at hand.

If you do get this audiobook I suggest that you print out a copy of THIS MAP over on ScottLynch.us.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Killing Castro by Lawrence Block

Sunday, September 20, 2009Sunday, September 20, 2009 Jesse Willis

Aural Noir: Review

Killing Castro is book number 051 in the Hard Case Crime library.

Hard Case Crime Killing Castro
By Lawrence Block; Read by Henry Leyva
4 CDs – Approx. 4 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: January 2009
ISBN: 9780792759751
Themes: / Thriller / Cuba / Hitman / Mercenaries / History / Assassination / Crime /

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro.

Until the announcement on the Hard Case Crime website in 2008 most Block aficionados, like me, had no idea that novel that is Killing Castro existed. Us Blockheads knew that LB had written a ton of novels early in his career. Heck we’d even identified quite a few of them. But unless you’d owned a copy of Fidel Castro Assassinated: A Dramatic Tale of a Daring and Successful Plot to Kill Cuba’s Dictator, and had compared this obscure 1961 Monarch paperback with Block’s writing you’d never have known he’d written it. This is because it was originally attributed to an otherwise unknown author “Lee Duncan.” Had it been written by “Paul Kavanagh” (a known Block pseudonym), I’d have already found and read a copy years ago. Indeed, to my ears this certainly feels like a lost fourth Paul Kavanagh novel. Two of Paul Kavanagh’s three other novels are about shady operatives doing black-ops for cash too. If you want the original paperback, by the way, ABEbooks.com currently lists a copy at $150.00. That’s down from the $600 asking price just a few months back. Hard Case Crime offers the gorgeous covered paperback version for just $7. Me, I’ll stick with the BBC Audiobooks America version.

One of the things I liked most about this audiobook, other than the brisk characterization and snappy plotting, was all the historical context Block put into the novel. This isn’t merely a thriller, or a crime story. Running just under 5 hours (204 pages in paperbook) there’s about half an hour of historical exposition between all the action. In those sections Block deftly details Fidel Castro’s personal biography, the history Batista’s rule of Cuba, Fidel’s leadership of the revolution and a thoughtful analysis of the revolution’s aftermath. As far as I can tell the history is entirely accurate. It sticks to the facts and makes a case both for and against Castro’s revolution without any special pleading. To my mind “Lee Duncan” could have probably got a job at the Cuba desk of the CIA, just based on the analysis within this novel. They really could have used him too as the book originally came out the same year as the CIA-backed Bay Of Pigs invasion. But I guess the covert world’s loss is our literary gain.

This is the first time I’ve heard Henry Leyva as a narrator. He performs the American mercenaries with enough distinction to tell all five of them apart, and gives good voice to two Cuban rebels, one male, one female. As Leyva is fluent in both English and Spanish he brings a ton of authenticity to the Cuban accented anti-castristas. He really is a narrator to watch. I first heard him as an actor performing in an episode of J. Michael Straczynski’s excellent audio drama anthology series City Of Dreams. He’s also narrated the audiobook version of Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard, so I’m gonna have to get my hands on that audiobook too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Dutch Treat The Audiobooks of Elmore Leonard

Thursday, September 17, 2009Thursday, September 17, 2009 Jesse Willis

Aural Noir: Online Audio

My Elmore Leonard Audiobooks Dutch Treat The Audiobooks Of Elmore Leonard As you can see by my stack of Elmore Leonard audiobooks, gathered from my shelves, Dutch Treat: The Audiobooks of Elmore Leonard is just the kind of podcast I’m looking for. It’s on a highly specific subject, one that couldn’t really exist in any other format. The unnamed host takes clips from each Elmore Leonard audiobook (abridged and unabridged) to showcase Leonard’s terrific dialogue in the hands of some of the top narrators in the audiobook business. It was great to hear Grover Gardner, Joe Mantegna, Robert Forster chewing up Leonard’s dialogue once again. The only real detraction I see, in this super-fun podcast, is the highly unnecessary “strong language” warning.

It’s Elmore Fucking Leonard for fuck’s sake!

Actually there’s not a gratuity of swearing in these audiobooks, which makes the warning doubly annoying. Might as well say: “Elmore Leonard is a fiction writer, none of the events in these novels have actually happened.”

[sigh]

Okay, enough of my whining, have a listen.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://dutchtreat.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Tuesday, September 15, 2009Thursday, November 19, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Listening For The League's Gentlemen At LibriVox Alan Moore’s comic The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is chock- full of public domain literary references (and characters). This is the third in a series of posts in which I root out the freely available audiobooks (at LibriVox.org) that either feature the characters in “the league” or which are at least alluded to in passing in the story. What’s especially interesting in this case is that Moore’s wasn’t the first comic book to take inspiration from Henry Jekyll’s chemically induced bipolarity. Marvel comics had its own take on Jekyll and Hyde with Bruce Banner’s transformation into The Incredible Hulk. Indeed it seems rather strange that I never saw this until I saw Moore’s own re-purposing.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson; Read by Kristin Hughes
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 24, 2009
After hearing Mr. Enfield’s account of a distressing event involving Edward Hyde, the heir of his friend, Henry Jekyll, John Utterson is convinced that Jekyll’s relationship with Hyde is built on something sinister. Utterson’s concern for his friend is not unfounded but the reasons aren’t quite what he, at first, believes.
Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis