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.
The SFFaudio Podcast #157 – The Syndic by C.M. Kornbluth, read by Mark Nelson.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (6 Hours 20 Minutes) comes to us courtesy of SciPodBooks.com and WonderEbooks. The Syndic was first published in Science Fiction Adventures, December 1953 and March 1954.
Come back for our next episode (SFFaudio Podcast #158) to hear our discussion of it.
Here’s the etext |RTF| (Rich Text format).
Posted by Jesse Willis
SFFaudio Podcast #116 was a nearly 2 hour discussion of The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth. At the time, last July, there was no commercial audiobook version. Now there is!
The Space Merchants
By Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth; Read by Dan Bittner
Audible Download – 6 Hours 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio (available through Audible.com)
Published: December 2011
In a vastly overpopulated near-future world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold all political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge transnational corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and boasts some of the world’s most powerful executives. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that all the products on the market improve the quality of life. However, the most basic elements are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel. The planet Venus has just been visited and judged fit for human settlement, despite its inhospitable surface and climate; colonists would have to endure a harsh climate for many generations until the planet could be terraformed. Mitch Courtenay is a star-class copywriter in the Fowler Schocken advertising agency and has been assigned the ad campaign that would attract colonists to Venus, but a lot more is happening than he knows about. Mitch is soon thrown into a world of danger, mystery, and intrigue, where the people in his life are never quite what they seem, and his loyalties and core beliefs will be put to the test.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Episode #151 of The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast is a special episode on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and similar time travel tales. It is both special and strange. First it’s strange because it’s the first part of a two part discussion of time travel and not a regular book review. Secondarily it is special because I participated in it!
Or as Luke puts it:
Time Travel Special part 1: Luke and Jesse discuss A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain as a jumping off point for the topic of “A being out of time.”
|MP3|
Podcast feed: http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast
Discussed on the show:
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, Smoke by Donald E. Westlake, romance and time travel, science fiction’s hold on time travel, the process of time travel vs. the man out of time, Army Of Darkness, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is totally political, retellings and abridgements of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, framing stories, “a dispute with crowbars”, the LibriVox audiobook edition, 1889 illustrations on Gutenberg.org, the Blackstone Audio audiobook, Stuart Langton, Yankee vs. English accents, the Arthurian characters, Idiocracy, taking the piss out of the British, a very thin satire, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman, the effect on electricity on progress, Thomas Edison, dynamite, SFBRP #100, Then End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, comparing the 19th century man with the 21st century man, smartness man and the most moral man, democracy, “what we really need are newspapers”, the tyrannies of monarchy and religion, pick your own oppression, the man from the past comes to the present, adventures, “the Vulcan project”, great insults, Sandy’s reproach, “Mark Twain is fucking hilarious”, the characters bamboozle each other (and the reader too), attributed to Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx, “he is his own target”, occupy Wall Street, Ray Nelson’s Eight O’Clock In The Morning, John Carpenter’s They Live, the 1%, the Robber Barons, Carnegie and Nobel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an essential adult read!, “you think you might know this book, but really you don’t know this book”, Luke gives it 4 out of 5 stars, sfbrp.com/episode-lists, feedback from #150 (ebooks, audiobooks and paperbooks)
Posted by Jesse Willis
Here’s a convention panel from Readercon 2011 entitled “Capturing the Hidden History of Science Fiction.” It was recorded back in July 2011 and the panelists include Fred Lerner, Barry N. Malzberg, Jamie Todd Rubin, Darrell Schweitzer and Eileen Gunn. Apparently one of the panelists objected to it’s existence on YouTube, but it’s up and online again.
[via SFSignal]
Posted by Jesse Willis
THE CHALLENGE:
This is our 6th Annual SFFaudio Challenge. Every November 11th, for the last six years, we’ve offered the following challenge to SFFaudio readers:
“We’ll give you an audiobook if you make one for everyone else.”
That deal still holds. We’ll get you an audiobook if you make make an audiobook out of one of the public domain etexts we suggest. All you’ll need to do is claim a title (by email), record the audiobook, using your own human voice (sorry no robots), and follow the rules (see the first comment of this post for the rules). Some titles will not be public domain in all countries, but this is a global challenge. We’ve also added, for the very first time, a French language title!
Still feeling a little unclear on how it all works? Then have a look at our past SFFaudio CHALLENGES:
|OUR FIRST CHALLENGE|
|OUR SECOND CHALLENGE|
|OUR THIRD CHALLENGE|
|OUR FOURTH CHALLENGE|
|OUR FIFTH CHALLENGE|
PRIZES:
This year we’re doing something a bit different with prizes, something better. Instead of offering those unwieldy physical copies we’ve got DRM-FREE MP3 downloads for you! This not only saves us on postage it also allows for a much greater selection of audiobooks! For each audiobook you complete, you can choose one of more than 1,300 titles available! All prizes this year come courtesy of Tantor Media.
CHALLENGE TITLES:
The Friendly Demon (aka The Devil Frolics With A Butler) by Daniel Defoe |HORRORMASTERS|PDF| (short story)
Seventh Victim by Robert Sheckley |PDF| (short story)*
CLAIMED BY CAINE DORR NOVEMBER 12, 2011
Untouched By Human Hands (aka One Man’s Poison) by Robert Sheckley |PDF| (short story)*
Writing Class by Robert Sheckley |RTF| (short story)*
CLAIMED AND COMPLETED BY WILLIAM COON (of Elquoent Voice) ON NOVEMBER 13, 2011
The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel |GUTENBERG| (novel)
City At World’s End by Edmond Hamilton |ARCHIVE.ORG| (novel)
The Common Man by Mack Reynolds |GUTENBERG| (short story)
The Ship Of Ishtar by A. Merritt |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA| (novel)
Supernatural Horror In Literature by H.P. Lovecraft |WIKISOURCE|GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA| (essay)
Almuric by Robert E. Howard |WIKILIVRES|GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA| (novel)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA| (novel)
Animal Farm by George Orwell |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA| (novel)
Empire by Clifford D. Simak |GUTENBERG| (novel)**
CLAIMED BY BILL KIRBY ON JANUARY 3, 2012
The Great Potlatch Riots by Allen Kim Lang |GUTENEBERG| (short story)
The Dominion In 1983 by Ralph Centennius |GUTENBERG| (30 pages)
Ten From Infinity by Paul W. Fairman |GUTENBERG| (novel)
CLAIMED BY KAREN SAVAGE ON NOVEMBER 11, 2011
No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber |GUTENBERG| (short story)
CLAIMED BY DANIEL GURZYNSKI ON NOVEMBER 21, 2011
The Syndic by C.M. Kornbluth |RTF| (novel)*
CLAIMED BY MARK NELSON ON NOVEMBER 13, 2011
Our first French audiobook:
La Vie Électrique by Albert Robida |GUTENBERG| (novel)
So, who wants to sign up?
[*With special thanks to Rick Jackson of Wonder Publishing for selection advice **This etext was part of SFFaudio Challenge #2, but wasn’t completed]
Posted by Jesse Willis
I was curious about which of our podcasts was popular. Since it’s relatively easy, and I’m always interested in other podcaster’s podcasts statistics, I thought I’d reveal ours. Maybe this post will prompt some others to post theirs too.
Here is a list of SFFaudio’s single most popular podcast per month (by download) from January 2011 to October 2011.
Jan. (1216 Downloads) – #089 – Jesse talks to Professor James Campanella |MP3|
Feb. (3088 Downloads) – #094 READALONG: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift |MP3|
Mar. (2700 Downloads) – #097 READALONG: The Garden Of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges and Fair Game by Philip K. Dick |MP3|
Apr. (1267 Downloads) – #102 Scott Jesse and Tamahome talk about new releases |MP3|
May (1258 Downloads) – #109 AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick |MP3|
Jun. (1390 Downloads) – #112 AUDIOBOOK: The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth |MP3|
Jul. (2190 Downloads) – #116 READALONG: The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth |MP3|
Aug. (3740 Downloads) – #105 – AUDIOBOOK: The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell |MP3|
Sep. (7417 Downloads) – #105 – AUDIOBOOK: The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell |MP3|
Oct. (7480 Downloads) – #105 – AUDIOBOOK: The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell |MP3|
As you can see, for the last three months our single most popular download has been the exact same show. It is a complete and unabridged reading of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. This show, which came out on April 25, 2011, has been downloaded about 22,000 times so far. That makes it one of our most popular (if not the most popular shows’s we’ve ever done). It is however a bit of an anomaly. This is due to the fact that The Most Dangerous Game is commonly assigned in schools. Almost all of the rest of the credit should go to the most excellent narrator, William Coon, who recorded it – go check out his site he has many other excellent audiobooks too.
If we exclude that episode from the last three months we get the following results:
Aug. (1939 Downloads) – #120 Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk to Infinivox editor Allan Kaster |MP3|
Sep. (2006 Downloads) – #126 AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Statement Of Randolph Carter by H.P. Lovecraft |MP3|
Oct. (1892 Downloads) – #128 Scott, Jesse, Tamahome and Luke Burrage talk about new releases and recent arrivals |MP3|
Looking at just the most popular downloads I’m pleased to see that nearly all of our kinds of shows are represented. READALONG, AUDIOBOOK, and even regular discussion podcasts are all popular. Our listeners all have great and eclectic tastes it would seem.
For a complete listing of all our past shows go HERE.
And for other podcasters (and anyone else who cares) here is the raw data on our top ten downloads for each month (January 2011 to October 2011):
Posted by Jesse Willis