H.G. Wells – Page 24

New Releases for May and June

New Releases

Dontcha just love new releases? I know we sure do, here’s a tasty batch for May and June. Also, I hope you all know that many of these titles are available in multiple formats (CD, Cassette, MP3, etc.) just follow the links to the publisher websites to see who has what.

Leading the charge this time is Random House Audiobooks with… wait for it… wait for it…

Science Fiction Audiobook - A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Paul Giamatti
8 Compact Discs – 9 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: May 2006
ISBN: 073932392X
Our most requested title (by readers and reviewers alike) . I’m dying to hear how Paul Giamatti will perform it. Expect a review shortly.

Tell Tale Weekly has released a never before adapted audiobook of…

The Valley Of The Spiders
By H. G. Wells; Read by Alexander Wilson
MP3 Download – 29 minutes, 11 seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TellTaleWeekly.org
Published: May 2006
A SF/Fantasy Pulp Adventure Story from 1903. “Three adventurers face danger, death, and giant spiders, all for the capture love of a woman, in this classic pulp adventure story.” Just $1.00! And be sure to read the nice intro Alex Wilson wrote for it on the TellTaleWeekly site too.

And of course there is no stopping the indefatigable Podiobooks.com, they’ve got a sweet batch of new podcast novels in the offing:

Podiobook - Immortals by Tracy Hickman The Immortals
By Tracy Hickman; Read by Tracy and Laura Hickman
MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Started: May 2006
It’s 2020, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up “quarantine centers” in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp’s gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates’ rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it.

Discovered Country
By Nora Fleischer
MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Started: May 2006
Rosemary Halpern, a mild-mannered librarian from Boston, found herself trapped hundreds of years in the future. A future that faced a new Ice Age. A future where ghouls walked the Earth, ravenous for human flesh.

Sonic Fiction
Edited by Jeffrey Kafer; Read by Jeffrey Kafer
MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Started: May 2006
An eclectic mix of authors from a range of ages and backgrounds. Featuring works of Science fiction, gritty war tales, murder and intrigue, comedy and farce, this is a book for any fan of short fiction. Let us tell you a story…

Prophecy Of Swords
By M.H. Bonham
MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Started: May 2006
Nearly a thousand years ago a great warrior named Lachlan sought to unify his people, using the power of the Three Swords of Destiny. Before his victory, Lachlan was killed by his trusted friend, Allarun. Now, Allarun is still in power but haunted by dreams of Lachlan’s death curse: that Lachlan would return to avenge his death. Allarun’s decision is to destroy the very people Lachlan tried to unite.

Brilliance Audio has a lock on lengthy Fantasy titles this quarter – check these out…

Dragon’s Fire
By Todd McCaffrey and Anne McCaffrey; Read by Dick Hill
10 CDs – 12 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9781423314561

More lore from the planet called Pern!

Phantom
By Terry Goodkind; Read by Sam Tsoutsouvas
2 MP3-CDs – 23 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9781593356873
I don’t know much about Goodkind, anybody heard one of his?

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths: The Lost Chronicles, Vol. I
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman; Read by Sandra Burr
13 Compact Discs – 15 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9781423316107

A new Dragonlance book with the old beloved characters! I loved the classic first trilogy as a kid. I wonder if this one will be as good.

Also Blackstone Audiobooks has “returns” to re-releases, remakes and all look promising…

Ceteganda
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: May 2006
ISBN: 9780786175116
This was previously recorded by the now defunct The Readers Chair – Grover Gardner makes this a remake.

Superman Returns
By Marv Wolfman; Read by Scott Brick
1 MP3-CD -[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: June 2006
ISBN: 0786175729
Looks like a Movie-Tie In.

Animal Farm & 1984
By George Orwell; Read by Richard Brown and Ralph Cosham
1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
PUBLISHER: Blackstone Audiobooks
PUBLISHED: June 2006
ISBN: 0786177144
Released seperately many times and by with many readers before, you can now grab them together. Orwell at his best.

Not much new Spec Fic over at the venerable Recorded Books, but this one caught our eye…

Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean
By Justin Somper; Read by John Curless
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books, LLC
Published: May 2006
ISBN: 1428110836

posted by Jesse

Review of The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells

The First Men in the Moon
By H.G. Wells, performed by a full cast
2 Tapes, Approx. 2 hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Alien Voices
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0671872281
Themes: / Science fiction / Aliens / Sociology / Space Travel /

Oars slap against water and thud against wood, waves lap against a small boat bobbing in the ocean, and shore birds scree along the not-too-distant shore. You close your eyes and are transported to another time and place, a sonic virtual reality in which two fisherman sit to either side of you, discussing the catch and the mysterious steel sphere that falls from the sky. Such richly detailed soundscapes draw you into this adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, and whisk you along from the familiar sounds of earth to the speculative sounds of deep space and the moon.

The acting is uniformly excellent, as well, with Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie leading a talented cast with their spot-on characterizations of Professor Caver and Mr. Bedford. These two form a buzzing, absent-minded scientist and cool, craven capitalist odd-couple who develop a spaceship built around gravity-blocking shutters and then fly it to the moon. The civilization they discover beneath the moon’s surface is, well, substantially alien. This tale isn’t quite Wells’, but it is told with such ebullience and impressive audio depth that you can’t help liking it. In fact, the genial enthusiasm that suffuses the entire production proves both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the work: It makes for fun listening, but it winds up blunting some of Wells’ sharper observations about humanity and reason.

On the plus side, this adaptation does an admirable job of streamlining Wells’ sprawling narrative to lead us effectively from the thrill of invention to the uncertainty of exploration, from budding friendship to estrangement, and from difficult first contact to horrifying understanding. But there are several missteps along the way. For one thing, the voyage to the moon has been clumsily appended with a comet rendezvous that cheerily ignores even Newtonian physics and leads to an incomprehensible predicament with the Caverite shutters. What’s more, a staged “revolution” on the moon is utterly unconvincing, and even more disappointing, the Grand Lunar is transformed from a rational genius to a power-mad egomaniac.

But the most important transformation is thematic. Wells’ original compares human terrestrial civilization with the formic lunar one to contrast life as we know it with his vision of a completely rational society. Both have distinct horrors: We have war and poverty, the Lunarites have de-evolved sub-races and casual deactivation of inconvenient units. In this production, the comparison seems more like one between Capitalism and Communism, and it reverses the threat at the end to be something like a Red Scare, which makes no sense when you consider which society has the more demonstrably violent past.

On the whole, this is a fun production and a treat to listen to. Enjoy it for what it is, but do not attempt to substitute it for a reading of the original.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Review

The Time Machine
By H.G. Wells; Read by James Spencer
MP3, OGG or AAC files download – 3 hours, 2 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TelltaleWeekly.org
Published: 2004
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time Travel / Math Fiction /

I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different.

Sounds suspiciously like the plot of every Doctor Who episode doesn’t it? But The Time Machine isn’t just about exciting time-travel adventures, it’s also about the class struggle in Great Britain in the late 19th century, the widening gap between rich and poor, what Humans have control over and what they don’t. Doctor Who has been known to tackle these ideas too, one of it’s serials even has H.G. Wells as a character, but the fact that The Time Machine did it first, and so well, speaks volumes.

Scientifically explained SF stories of time travel take their cue for explanation, when they do it at all, from this novel. Prior to its publication stories of travel in time went unexplained, the Connecticut Yankee, of Mark Twain’s comedic time-travel novel got a knock on his head that sent him back to Middle Ages England – and that was explanation enough in its way. But The Time Machine isn’t played for comedy, Wells’ futures are allegories for his worries about capitalism and communism, for his notation about gender blurring in the industrial age and his realization that not only are all men mortal, but so in fact is Mankind itself!

In just three hours Wells posits two futures: 1. A relative near term future humanity which has bifurcated into two distinct species (Eloi and Morlock) – they stand as the evitable result of aristocrat and proletariat class calcification present in the political theory at the time of it’s writing. 2. A vision of a far future Earth, showing the inevitable and unavoidable physical reality of the universe. Were this not a public domain text, and were not the plot so familiar to us we’d have to think ourselves blessed by this excellent reading. As it is, and as cheap as it is this classic of science fiction can be judged only by it’s audiobook. Thankfully the reading keeps pace with the text.

Sound quality is excellent, but the reader, James Spenser, doesn’t have much to do in the way of voices. He does however a marvelous job engendering anticipation, fear, disgust and sympathy through pacing. Spencer’s lack of an English accent for this Englishman’s tale doesn’t really matter, only one character in the novel is named, she couldn’t sensibly be called English and she doesn’t even have a speaking part. Much of the difficulty in this story comes from the stilted way it is rendered. Told in first person by an unnamed witness to the recounting of the main events, we are regaled second hand with the time traveler’s adventures in time. I can charitably call it “quaint.” Arthur C. Clarke later took up this kind of storytelling with his “Tales Of The White Heart” series of short stories, likely I think in homage to Wells. I’ve heard several audiobook renditions of The Time Machine now, of the non British reader’s Spencer’s is “the definitive edition.” And at just $5.00 it’s a deal.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox bills itself as "acoustical liberation …

Online Audio

LibriVox bills itself as “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain”, we bill it as “really cool”! The LibriVox volunteers read and record chapters of books in the public domain using the equipment they have at home, and then release the files as FREE audiobooks. The objective is to eventually make all books in the public domain available in the audio format. Several Science Fiction and Fantasy titles are already under way, and few have already been completed. Here’s a peek:

Completed Novels:
The Road To Oz by L. Frank Baum
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Completed Shorts:
A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

Multiple Narrator Forthcoming:
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Dracula by Bram Stoker
A Journey To The Interior Of The Earth by Jules Verne

Single Narrators Forthcoming:
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
Sky Island by L. Frank Baum
The Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Beowolf
Anthem by Ayn Rand
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

posted by Jesse

A couple of very nice new releases to tell you abo…

New Releases

A couple of very nice new releases to tell you about:

From Telltale Weekly, an unabridged The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Click here for a page that includes an excerpt. I’m looking forward to this – I listened to the Brilliance Audio version of this one… well, TRIED to listen to it. Found the reader not to my liking, though, which really kills an audiobook for me. It was packaged, by the way, with Wells’ The Time Machine, which was really excellent.

And from Infinivox, Solstice by James Patrick Kelly. Click here for more info and an excerpt. I really urge you to check out their stories.

Review of War of the Worlds, LA Theatre Works

Science Fiction Audio Drama - War of the Worlds War of the Worlds
Starring Leonard Nimoy, Jerry Hardin, Gates McFadden, Dwight Schultz, Armin Shimerman, Brent Spiner, and Wil Wheaton
Adapted by Howard Koch; Directed by John de Lancie
Duration: 1 cassette, 70 minutes
ISBN: 0807235628
Producer: LA Theatre Works
Themes: / Science Fiction / Alien invasion / H.G. Wells / Civilization’s End /

In 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air frightened the American public with its realistic radio version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Authentic sounding radio shows were interrupted by authentic sounding news casts which reported the landing and subsequent chaos caused by several angry aliens in Grover’s Mill, NJ. The story after the broadcast was the chaos caused by folks who thought the fictitious events were really happening, despite the occasional disclaimer. Orson Welles proved to us all, once and for all, that you can’t always believe what you hear.

In 1995, LA Theatre Works recreated this performance, live, directed by John de Lancie. The same script originally used by Welles, written by Howard Koch, is used here. This is not a remake, but a re-creation. The same script, same words, and the same cues are all here, just delivered by different actors.

The idea to gather Star Trek alumni and do this live radio show was John de Lancie’s. While listening, it is interesting to pick out who is who in the show. The production quality is excellent. But, as a fan of the original Welles production, only the performance of Brent Spiner as a crazed survivor stands out as a reason to give this one a listen. The original, imbued with its history and its great performances, is still the one to get.

This re-creation spawned several fine dramatic science fiction recordings led by John de Lancie and Leonard Nimoy under the name Alien Voices, and for that I’m grateful.