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.
Focus On The Family, an “American evangelical tax-exempt non-profit organization” has been creating audio dramas that I’ve been completely ignoring (probably unjustly) for years.
It looks like they’ve got some terrific source material and some solid acting expertize for their most recent project, an audio dramatization of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. More details |HERE|.
It may be that The Screwtape Letters was written as a response to Letters From The Earth by Mark Twain – certainly the two books take the epistolary form and are set in a Bangsian Fantasy world. Twain’s take was skeptical athiesm, Lewis’s was was rational apologetic. Call and response?
In the June 6, 1962 issue of The Christian Century published C.S. Lewis’s answer to the question:
“What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?”
Here was C.S. Lewis’s list:
1. Phantastes, A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald |GUTENBERG|
2. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA|
3. The Aeneid by Virgil |LibriVox AUDIOBOOK|
4. The Temple: Sacred Poems And Private Ejaculations by George Herbert
5. The Prelude; Or, Growth Of A Poet’s Mind by William Wordsworth
6. The Idea Of The Holy by Rudolf Otto
7. The Consolation Of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius |GUTENBERG|
8. Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell |GUTENBERG (ABRIDGED VERSION)|
9. Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA|
10. Theism and Humanism by Arthur James Balfour
Given Lewis’ stuggle with both Christiainity and atheism is it not curious that The Bible doesn’t show up on that list? Probably not. It may have been #11.
The SFFaudio Podcast #043 – Jesse and Scott talk about all the Recent Arrivals and New Releases that have been piling up while Scott’s been away fiddling on a roof.
Simon & Schuster Audio is publicizing the fourth book in a series of novels for “Young Readers” that may interest just about any reader of any age. Here, There Be Dragons is the first book in James A. Owen’s “The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica” series which is a “grand fantasy adventure that tells the story of four travelers — who happen to be C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and H.G. Wells — as they travel through lands that may be familiar to readers of myths, legends, and fantasy literature.”
Here’s the book trailer for the third book in the series:
The trailer has me wondering if Jules Verne ever wrote a story with a time machine in it. That’s gotta be the H.G. Wells time machine right? Right?!?
On March 31st CBC Radio One’s Writers And Company aired an interview, conducted in November 2000, with Arthur C. Clarke. I somehow missed this episode in the podcast feed (sorry folks). Unfortunately it is no longer in the podcast feed either. Fortunately it is still online. Have a listen |MP3|!
This may be the very best of the many Arthur C. Clarke interviews out there. Clarke talks his youth, Science Fiction, science, Astounding magazine, Meccano, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Eric Frank Russel, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and tons more. Kudos to the CBC and Eleanor Wachtel, as other people have noted, she’ truly is “the best arts interviewer in the business.”
This sounds just up our alley! it’s described as “Gritty noir fiction, mind-bending fantasy, and medical thriller combine in a new novel by an author dubbed the ‘cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett.'” Noir and Fantasy! Yum yum!
The Resurrectionist
By Jack O’Connell; Read by Holter Graham
9 CDs -11½ Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Published: April 2008
ISBN: 9781598875942
[LISTEN TO AN MP3 SAMPLE] Sweeney is a druggist by trade; Danny, his son, is in a persistent coma, the victim of an accident. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the Peck Clinic, a fortress-like haven in a post-industrial city overrun by gangs. Doctors there claim to have resurrected two patients who were similarly lost in the void. Gradually, Sweeney realizes that the cure for his son’s condition may lie in “Limbo,” a fantasy comic-book world into which Danny had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that surrounds the clinic, Sweeney searches for answers and instead finds sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of mystery.
Narrator Wayne June assures us that he’s done his research on this new series of definitive Edgar Allan Poe readings…
Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre – Vol. 1
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase.com
Published: March 2008
ISBN: 0977845303 Three tales from the original master of horror fiction, Edgar Allan Poe! Included in this collection are “The Raven”, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask Of Amontillado.”
Tee Morris returns to his, and the world’s first podiobook, restoring lost scenes, adding more production and voices from other favorite podcasters. Read our review of the original version HERE, then set sail with Rafe and Askana again…
Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana (Remastered)
By Tee Morris and Lisa Lee; Read by Tee Morris and others
Podiobook (a podcast novel) – [UNABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: 2008 Morevi, a landlocked kingdom shrouded by jungles and mystery, falls under the rule of Askana Moldarin. In the dawn of this New Age, hidden traitors in her own regime threaten to destroy everything. The First Queen, independent of council, seeks help to reveal the conspiracy against her… Enter Rafe Rafton, captain of the Defiant.
Soon to be a major motion picture, already an audiobook!
The Chronicles Of Narnia: Book 2 – Prince Caspian (Movie Tie-In)
By C. S. Lewis; Read by Lynn Redgrave
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Childrens Audio
Published: April 2008
ISBN: 0061435279 Narnia is in trouble! All the magical creatures and Talking Animals have been forced into hiding by an evil king. Fortunately, young Prince Caspian escapes in time to lead the Old Narnians in the fight for their freedom. But when the battle goes badly, Caspian blows an enchanted horn. Suddenly Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are pulled back into Narnia from England, where they had returned after defeating the evil White Witch. In a race against time and with the aid of the Great Lion, Aslan, they join Caspian and his army in a battle to restore peace throughout Narnia.
At over 1,000 pages in length this is the longest work of speculative fiction published between two covers (Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard was published in separate volumes) – it becomes now one of the longest audiobooks ever made at a backbreaking 38 CDs!
Atlas Shrugged
By Ayn Rand; Read by Kate Reading
38 CDs – Approx. 40 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books On Tape
Published: March 2008
ISBN: 1415949247 First published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand’s greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy…to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction…to the philosopher who becomes a pirate…to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad…to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels. Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.
This weekend’s offerings on BBC Radio 7 include a Philip K. Dick short story that was first broadcast on BBC7 in September 2003. It was first printed in the July 1954 issue of Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine. And, in the middle of next week the 7th Dimension begins broadcasting the second novel in C.S. Lewis’ “Cosmic Trilogy.” Perelandra was first published in 1943. It makes an allegorical argument in the form of interplanetary adventure. Listeners familiar with the Narnia books will find a familiar morality play at work in Perelandra.
Of Withered Apples
By Philip K. Dick; Read by William Hootkins
1 Part – Approx. 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday at 6.30pm and 12.30am More horror than science-fiction – A young woman picks the last withered apple from an ancient tree. Although this ensures the tree’s survival, the cost is horrifically high.
Perelandra
By C.S. Lewis; Read by Alex Jennings
18 Parts – Approx. 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Wednesday to Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30pm (continuing) “Perelandra continues the sometimes thrilling, sometimes mystical, but always sublimely evocative adventures of Dr.Ransom first explored in Out of the Silent Planet. In this second volume of C.S.Lewis’ acclaimed Cosmic Trilogy, Ransom is called to the beautiful paradise planet of Perelandra, or Venus, which is in grave peril from his old adversary Dr.Weston. Ransom encounters floating islands and bubble trees as well as an all-powerful female ruler, an Eve figure who undergoes temptation at the hands of a Satan figure in the form of Weston. Ransom must engage with Weston in a desperate struggle to save the purity of Perelandra.”
Each broadcast will be available via the “listen again” feature for a week after airing.
