H. Beam Piper – Page 8

LibriVox Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #006

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here comes Volume #6 in the Short SF Stories Collection series – all public domain, all 100% FREE, from the folks at LibriVox…

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 006
By various; Read by various
Zipped MP3 Files, Podcast or individual MP3s – Approx. 4 Hours 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 25, 2008
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science and technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories, originally published between 1752 and 1962. Those published after 1922 entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-vol-006.xml

And here are the individual stories with my own notes on some…

Accidental Death
By Peter Baily; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the pages of Astounding Science Fiction magazine’s February 1959 issue. A tale about, aliens and space travel, told in a curious recorded epistolary form (and its set atop Mount Everest). Strange, but kind of familiar, worth listening to, but not likely to be at all memorable.

…After a Few Words…
By Randall Garrett; Read by Alex Becker
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in Analog magazine’s October 1962 issue – with the LibriVox team identifying the author, “Seaton McKettrig,” as actually Randall Garrett using one of his many pseudonyms. A few off-pronunciations aren’t enough to mar this solid reading. A historical tale – that really isn’t.

The Diamond Maker
By H.G. Wells; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A canvas sack full of several hundred pounds worth of diamonds, proffered on a London bridge for a paltry £100. It sounds like a con, at the very least a deal too good to be true. But the owner of the diamonds has a tale of woe to explain why he is selling them at such a cut-rate price. This one reminds me of Wells’ The Crystal Egg. Narrator, Jerome Lawsen, has a nice setup, the recording on this one is very clean.

Egocentric Orbit
By John Cory; Read by Perry Clayton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn’t the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn’t it? It may not take so long for a spaceman to learn … First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s May 1960 issue. This is the second version of this story to be recorded by LibriVox.

Flight From Tomorrow
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in the unwieldy titled “‘Future’ combined with ‘Science Fiction Stories’” magazine’s September/October 1950 issue. This one’s a novelette, an out-in-out time travel tale, that though a bit predictable, and certainly very period, has a certain vintage charm. Jerome Lawsen, reads it well.

In The Year 2889
By Jules Verne; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in 1889, and credited to Jules Verne, it was actually written by Michel Verne, Jules Verne’s son. But then just to confuse matters more it was published under Jules Verne’s name correctly a year later when the senior Verne re-wrote it (and changed the title to In The Year 2890). In any case, this tale is set a mere one thousand years in the future.

The Measure of a Man
By Randall Garrett; Read by D.E. Wittkower
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
“What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other … and act on it.” From the April 1960 of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Micromegas
By Voltaire; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
An 18th century tale (first published in 1752), Micromegas is significant in the pre-history of SF. Earth is visited by a pair of alien visitors, one from a planet circling Sirius and the other from the planet Saturn! This reading is also significant as it was recorded using a £1800 microphone!

The Sky Trap
By Frank Belknap Long; Read by Dr Special
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From Comet magazine’s July 1941 issue (the same issue that has Leigh Brackett’s A World Is Born – which is also available HERE). This is Dr. Special’s first recording for LibriVox. He reads it very well, even though there are a lot of lines like… “Good God Dave, do you suppose something has happened to space?”

Test Rocket
By Jack Douglas; Read by Lance
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the Amazing Science Fiction Stories magazine’s April 1959 issue (which had an amazing cover).

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE LISTENS Review: Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper

Review

Little Fuzzy

by H. Beam Piper

Source:Internet Archive |17 zipped MP3s|
Length: 6 hr, 45 min [UNABRIDGED]
Reader: Maria Lectrix

The book: Jack Halloway, a lone gem miner on the corporate-owned planet Zarathrusta, discovers a small furry alien hiding in his mining shack. The alien, whom he names “Little Fuzzy”, is friendly, and although primitive, appears to be intelligent. When word gets out about Little Fuzzy, it means bad news for capitalist Victor Grego. Grego runs the entire planet under a Terran Federation policy that allows the Zarathrusta Corporation to operate with little interference, but only if the planet is not home to a sentient life form. If the Fuzzies, as they come to be called, are sentient beings, then they own the planet and all the profits that the Zarathrusta Corporation has been making are forfeit. A legal battle ensues, a physical battle looms, and Jack discovers that he’s become responsible for a whole race of adorable aliens.

This is a fun young adult book with great depth. The early going is a little rough, as Piper introduces many characters one after the other before the reader can get a good handle on each. Later, as the relationship between these characters becomes apparent, the sense of being lost in a flood of minor characters diminishes. Toward the end of the book, the story seems to drag, but Piper is able to wrap up the plot before too much momentum is lost and arrives at a satisfying conclusion.

Although written in the 1960s, the book brings up many issues that are pertinent today. Piper’s descriptions of climate change, corporate and government distortion of science, and the need for ecological preservation make the story seem, at times, like it was written in the present day. The issue that becomes the centerpiece of the last half of the book, whether Fuzzies are sentient beings, is not as esoteric as it appears. Many of today’s most vexing ethical issues, such as abortion, stem cell research, and euthanasia, are in part, a debate over what divides a living thing from a sentient human being. To Piper’s credit, he makes the debate in his novel entertaining as it is enlightening. I finished the novel with both a smile and something to think about.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: Maria Lectrix delivers a delightful reading of a book she seems to love. Her voicing of the Fuzzies’ “yeeps” is a high-pitched squeal that sticks in the mind. She does an admirable job reading the other characters parts, though I would have preferred if she had made each voice more distinct so the characters could be more readily identified. I won’t say this is a perfect recording. There is a hiss when listening at higher volume and she stumbles over a word a few times. Yet, none of this interfered with my enjoyment of the novel, which in my mind, is the mark of a good storyteller.

Posted by Seth

Recent Arrivals – More from Audio Realms

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Little Fuzzy
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Brian Holsopple
5 CDs – 5 hours, 53 minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304617
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it, and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people…

Shadow Kingdoms: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Brian Holsopple, Bob Souer, Bob Barnes, and Charles McKibben
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304129
The first volume of the Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting much of Howard’s work for the pulp magazine Weird Tales meticulously restored to its original magazine texts featuring stories with King Kull and Solomon Kane.

This volume contains:
“The Lost Race”, read by Charles McKibben
“The Dream Snake”, read by Bob Souer
“The Hyena”, read by Bob Souer
“Red Shadows”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Skulls in the Stars”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Rattle of Bones”, read by Bob Barnes
“The Shadow Kingdom”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Voice of El-Lil”, read by Bob Barnes

Voodoo Planet
By Andre Norton; Read by Chuck McKibben
3 CDs – 3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304372
The sequel to Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet finds the Solar Queen banned from trade and starting her supposed quiet two-year stint as an interstellar mail carrier. But instead her crew accepts a visit to the safari planet of Khatka, where they find themselves caught in a battle between the forces of reason and the powers of Khatka’s mind-controlling wizard.

The Land That Time Forgot
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Brian Holsopple
3 CDs – 3.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304334
Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known for his Tarzan and Mars series of books, also created the lost island of Caprona, where American Tyler Bowen is stranded in a lost world where prehistoric animals and people have flourished unchanged since the beginning of time.

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
By Michael Moorcock; Read by Jeffrey West
5 CDs – 5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304020

The Second Book in the Elric Saga
… and leaving his cousin Yrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek an unknown goal in the world of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were at best, disliked.

Hide and Seek
By Jack Ketchum; Read by Wayne June
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304402
Hide and Seek is a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you’re with the right people. But shouldn’t. Not ever… Dead River’s a sleepy little town on the coast of Maine without much going for it. The Great Depression hit hard and never let go. Even now, sixty-odd years later, there’s not much to do, not much going on. So that when a trio of friends, rich college kids, arrive there on a forced march with their parents for summer vacation they have to make their own amusements. And they do, in spades. Dan’s a local and didn’t get a chance to go to college. There was never the money. He works in a lumberyard hauling two-by-fours and furring around all day with a forklift. He’s even more bored than he knows. When the college kids arrive, that changes.
The most daring of the three is a beautiful, troubled girl name Casey. She’s not opposed to stealing caviar or cars or running around naked in graveyards. For Casey the thrill’s the thing and the riskier the better. Dan falls for her, hard. And gradually becomes the fourth member of the group–the poor relation. But the games need escalation. It’s a need that finds them at last in an old abandoned house at night, a house reputed to be haunted, where phantom lights burn in broken windows. Where something lurks waiting in the dark…

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Cory Doctorow loves the Little Fuzzy audiobook

SFFaudio News

Cory Doctorow posted this to BoingBoing.net today:

I just finished listening to the Audio Realms audio edition of H Beam Piper’s classic science fiction novel Little Fuzzy and fell in love with the book all over again. Little Fuzzy was the first book I ever bought for myself: it was on my first trip to Bakka, the world’s oldest surviving science fiction bookstore, at the age of nine or ten. Tanya Huff — now a bestselling writer in her own right — was working that day and I asked her for some recommendations. She marched me back to the used section of the store and took down a copy of Little Fuzzy, promising that I’d love it.

I did.

Little Fuzzy is Piper’s masterpiece, a tight, neat science fiction story that epitomizes the golden age of sf. It concerns a prospector on a distant world who discovers a potentially sentient aboriginal race (the “Fuzzies), and his ensuing fight — fists, lawyers and even guns — to get them recognized as sentient beings. Along the way, Piper explores the nature of colonial economies, the deepest questions of consciousness and intelligence, paternalism and self-determination, and the nature of the rule of law. All in a package that a nine-year-old will find riveting and delightful.

The Audio Realms 5-CD unabridged recording just won Publishers Weekly’s annual Fantasy Audiobook of the Year award (why “fantasy” I’m not sure), and it’s easy to see why. Brian Holsopple’s reading brings the characters — warm, human, flawed and passionate — to life. The editing is not exactly perfect (there’s a couple of pickup lines that Holsopple recorded that are left in, which is a little distracting), but the story is every bit as wonderful as I remember it, and the reading is a great match.

Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so there’s both a free ebook and a free recording available of the text. And for the record, I got Tanya Huff’s job at Bakka when she retired to write full time.

[via BoingBoing.net]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Audio Realms an update

SFFaudio News

Though fairly quiet of late, Audio Realms has been busy recording some classic SF, Fantasy and Horror that we’ll be telling you a lot more about very soon. The ringleader there, Fred Godsmark, says he’ll be following up the recently released Andre Norton novel “Voodoo Planet” (details of which have just been added to our ANDRE NORTON author’s page) with an unabridged release of Norton’s The Time Traders!

Audio Realms recently won accolades for their 2007 release called Little Fuzzy. That’s H. Beam Piper’s best loved novel! The acclaim came from none other than Publisher’s Weekly magazine! Little Fuzzy won “Best Fantasy AudioBook for 2007!”

Currently available from this Audio Realms are classics like:

The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Out of Time’s Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Further, a new “urban horror” imprint of Audio Realms saw the release of two sure fire hits:

Hide And Seek by Jack Ketchum and
The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon

And their popular Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft series is up to Volume 6 now too! But it doesn’t all end there. The near future portends even more goodies:

The Rising by Brian Keene
The Door Through Space by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Things That Are Not There by C.J. Henderson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
People Of The Dark by Robert E. Howard (this includes a Conan story, Queen Of The Black Coast)

And even a Weird Tales collection!

Fred’s going to be sending review copies of a lot of these. That will make some serious internecine fighting in the SFFaudio review clubhouse. Which reminds me, I need to add some more obsidian shards to the end of my club.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: LibriVox makes being cool look easy

SFFaudio Commentary

I really like the attitude of the people over on LibriVox.org. In one thread on the LibriVox forums a first time poster makes note that ‘LibriVox titles are being sold on eBay for $’. Like that guy I too was quite shocked and a little dismayed when I found that out. Here’s me thinking:

These audiobooks are available for free and yet some people are actually SELLING them!?!?! How dare they!

But as Puffin1, a long time LibriVoxateer so sensibly points out…

“It’s okay. We [LibriVox] don’t mind. Everything we do is in the public domain. Thanks for your concern. Welcome to LibriVox. Have fun!”

How cool is that?

It really sums up the LibriVox attitude too. Another LibriVoxer, David Barnes (AKA earthcalling), pointed out that… ‘the seller credits LibriVox … and is providing a service that LibriVox doesn’t provide – namely audiobooks on CD.’

Their whole attitude is positive and relaxed, their idea is “the more recordings are ‘out there’, the better!” As it turns out, it’s actually a very good thing that a lot of the sellers on eBay are selling these audiobooks. eBayers looking for audiobooks can discover LibriVox that way.

One such person is a Texan named R. J. Davis (aka Rick).

Rick described himself as “mostly retired” and a “two year cancer survivor.” I’d describe him as one cool mostly retired cancer survivor who narrates audiobooks. Rick found LibriVox through one of these eBay retailers, and has, since joining in December 2007 (!), started narrating public domain Science Fiction for LibriVox! He’s already read individual short stories like:

“Time and Time Again” by H. Beam Piper
“Warning from the Stars” by Ron Cocking
“Stairway To The Stars” by Larry Shaw

And he’s solo-completed entire novels like:

Key Out of Time by Andre Norton
The Time Traders by Andre Norton

And Rick’s got two more Norton novels forthcoming…

Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton
The Defiant Agents by Andre Norton

Rick is what I’d call a real audiobook fan. LibriVox makes being cool look easy, and that’s pretty amazing because narrating an audiobook is bloody hard work.

Posted by Jesse Willis