BBC 7: Scots Gothic – the influence of Scotland on Edgar Allan Poe

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BBC Radio 7 - BBC7If you love Edgar Allan Poe (and really who doesn’t?) you’ll want to get your mitts on today’s BBC 7 documentary!

Scots Gothic – A Portrait Of Edgar Allan Poe In Ayrshire
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: June 27th 2008 @ 9am and 7pm
Billy Kay investigates the impact of Scotland and its culture on the great American author Edgar Allan Poe. As a boy, Poe made an extended visit to Ayrshire in the company of his Scots-born foster father – where the vivid local folklore, bodysnatching stories and school task of recording graveyard epitaphs are all believed to have influenced the development of Poe’s dark imagination. Local historians discuss this world of “Scots Gothic”, with readings from John Buick and Keith Fleming.

It’s already in the “Listen Again” section! Go check it out!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast

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Miette’s Bedtime Story PodcastHere’s a podcast that I’ve been listening to, on and off (mostly off), for years. Miette is a mystery to me and seemingly pretty much everyone else. She’s been putting out a weekly (or so) podcast since 2005 and yet we don’t know a lot about her. We know she loves to read short stories. That she’s got an accent people don’t easily pin down, and that she’s got a dog. Other than that…. well, we really don’t know.

What makes it all even more puzzling is that she’s an “obscurantist.”

Now I like the obscure, but she, well… she’s just out there – Miette has gone past the obscure and into the hinterlands of the truly odd. Every once in a while I want to throw her a lasso (or a lifeline) but I’m kind of afraid because she might pull me out there with her!

That sheer out-there-ness also makes me feel so normal. Miette’s the absolute omega to the omnivorous celebrity mainstream and me I’m just the guy who gets to say “sorry I don’t have TV” three or four times a week.

Perhaps Miette is from a parallel universe?

It would explain a lot.

Assembled below are some of the Miette-read tales that attracted me to her podcast. None of them are youur typical short story – most are experimental in some way, usually they’re at least odd, strange, or weird. The thing is though, these tales that I’ve picked here are the most centric of Miette’s stories!

SFFaudio interest:

Fun With Your New Head
By Thomas Disch; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Cask of Amontillado
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
By J.G. Ballard; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Red Room
By H.G. Wells; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

I See You Never
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

How the World Was Saved
By Stanislaw Lem; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Necrophil
By Felipe Alfau; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A story about a woman who dies too much.

The Yellow Wallpaper
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Aprrox. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Aprrox. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

On An Experience In A Cornfield
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Judgment
By Franz Kafka; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A World of Sound
By Olaf Stapledon; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
By Ursula K. Le Guin; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

of Aural Noir interest:

A Letter to A.A. (Almost Anybody)
By Charles Willeford; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Lost Soul
By Ben Hecht; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

It Had To Be Murder
By Cornell Woolrich; Read by Miette
2 MP3s – Approx. 84 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://www.miettecast.com/feed/

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Masters Of Horror – the original stories in audio

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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

Audible.com: FREE Fairy Tales + FREE Poe + MORE FREE

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There are a couple of “Audible Fairy Tales” titles for kids available for FREE from Audible.com. You will need to have an Audible.com account already but if you do you’re golden with these…

Audible Fairy Tales - The True History Of Little Golden HoodThe True History Of Little Golden-Hood
By Andrew Lang; Read by Leo Laporte
Audible Download – 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com / Audible Fairy Tales
Published: 2008
You know the tale of poor Little Red Riding-hood, that the Wolf deceived and devoured, with her cake, her little butter can, and her grandmother? Well, the true story happened quite differently, as we now know. First of all, the little girl was called and is still called Little Golden-hood; secondly, it was not she, nor the good grand-dame, but the wicked Wolf who was, in the end, caught and devoured.

Audible Fairy Tales - Beauty And The BeastBeauty And The Beast
By Andrew Lang; Read by Roscoe Orman
Audible Download – 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com / Audible Fairy Tales
Published: 2008
Once upon a time in a very far-off country, there lived a merchant who had been so fortunate in all his undertakings that he was enormously rich. As he had, however, six sons and six daughters, he found that his money was not too much to let them all have everything they fancied, as they were accustomed to do.

But that isn’t all! An Audible Kids account (which you can get FREE if you already have a regular Audible.com account) will get you even more gems…

Audible / Reading Is Fundamental

I’m listening to the E.A. Poe tale in there now. It’ll freak your kids out right and proper!

[via the Teaching Learners With Multiple Needs blog]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Edgar Allan Poe all over BBC7 this week

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 7 - BBC7 It’s a busy week over on BBC7 with FIVE whole Poe programs playing! All this is in celebration of Poe’s 200th birthday. If Poe were alive today he’d be a rich man, not because any of his writings are still in copyright, but rather because he’d be able to rake in dough just by doing dramatic readings of his own work. But, since he isn’t still alive [as far as YOU know] we’ll just make do with these…

The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe
In this imaginative and mysterious drama by Christopher Cook, one of Poe’s own early creations, the detective C. Auguste Dupin investigates the bizarre and strange death of the writer. First broadcast in 1988, it stars John Moffatt and Kerry Shale and is directed by John Powell.
Sunday at 10am and 8pm

The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling short story was first published in 1842. Read by David Horovitch, it is the tale of the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. The story was abridged by Richard Hamilton and directed by Emma Harding.
Sunday at 11am and 9pm

The Tell-tale Heart
In another of Poe’s atmospheric short stories, a man coldly calculates and commits what he believes is the perfect murder. When he is confronted by members of the constabulary, will his own heart incriminate him? Directed and produced by Clive Stanhope for CSA Word, this classic example of Gothic fiction is read by Richard Pasco.
Sunday at 11.15am and 9.15am

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold Bug
Set in 1838, this is Poe’s story of piracy, slavery and a treasure hunt. It was dramatised by Gregory Evans and first broadcast in 2001. Starring Clarke Peters, John Sharlan, Rhashan Stone and William Hootkins, it is directed by Ned Chaillet.
Saturday at 6pm and Midnight

The Fall of the House of Usher
Our final Edgar Allan Poe offering is read by Sean Barrett. A man’s descent into madness seems bound to the house of his ancestors. It is a Radio 7 commission and was first broadcast in 2003.
Thursday and Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30pm

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mister Ron presents: An 1880 Poe spoof – The Murder in the Rue Rivoli

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Podcast - Mister Ron's Basement Mister Ron’s Basement podcast will be celebrating Edgar Allan Poe’s Bicentennial this month with a collection of Poe’s funniest stories. However, we will beginning with an 1880 spoof of Poe’s Detective Fiction by the remarkable Stanley Huntley in Episode number 1255. It’s called The Murder in the Rue Rivoli. Poe fans should get a kick out of this highly polished satire…

Posted by Mister Ron