The Willamette Radio Workshop is working Halloween! Tuesday October 31st 2006 at 10:30am PST in Portland Oregon KBOO-FM 90.7 will feature two short offerings from WRW…
Through The Turnstile
By Carole Dane
“A post-apocalyptic tale of dark irony and reluctant human contact.”
The Outsider
By H.P. Lovecraft (adapted by Joe Medina)
Produced, performed and directed by Sam A. Mowry.
Go to http://www.kboo.fm/listen to stream the broadcast live.
Audiobooks by H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, and others, are 50% off for Halloween listening. On sale at Audible.com through October 31st.
Posted by Moriond
The rediscovery of spoken literature, you gotta love it. Sean Puckett and Dawn Keenan do too. Sean said the idea for Voices In The Dark came to him suddenly one afternoon:
“…imagine when there was no HDTV, no radio, and entertainment was what you and your family did together, and not what you watched together. When the sun went down and everything was candle-lit, familes would gather together and play, sing and read.”
Their website name came soon after, and before they could catch their breath, the domain was registered. Dawn Keenan, says…
“My most precious memories of my father are from early childhood, when he would tell us stories and sing songs. Though I only became interested in his passion of Canadian history as an adult, I have had an especial love of folk tales and legends that reaches as far back as I can remember. In high school, I was complimented on my voice by several teachers. I read news at the campus radio station when I was in university and have enjoyed reading aloud and singing with my daughter and son from their earliest days.”
One minor annoyance, narrator Sean Puckett doesn’t always attribute the titles at the begining of the MP3s. But other than that how can I complain when they provide such wonderous materials as these…
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
4 MP3 Files – 24 Minutes 20 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
|Chapter 1|Chapter 2|Chapter 3|Chapter 4|Chapter 5|
A young man on an architectural and historical tour of New England is drawn to the decaying port town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts.One of Lovecraft’s best loved novellas!
The Alchemist
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 24 Minutes 20 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
The latest decendant of a long line of nobility confronts the six hundred year-old curse that has cut down his forefathers at the age of 32.
The Beast In The Cave
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 17 Minutes 23 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
The narrator breaks away from his touring party in Mammoth Cave and becomes lost in the darkness.
Memory
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 2 Minutes 25 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
The Genie that haunts the moonbeams asks the Daemon of the Valley a question.
The Music Of Erich Zann
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 19 Minutes 33 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
A brief tale of a college student, a lost street in Paris, and a bent, old violist.
The Outsider
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 16 Minutes 29 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
One of the shorter works … about which it is not wise to say too much.
The Rats In The Walls
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 43 Minutes 25 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
An American gentleman takes posession of his ancestral estate in Exham, and learns far more about his family’s past than he ever imagined.
The Street
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Sean Puckett
1 MP3 File – 14 Minutes 51 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
SOURCE: Voices In The Dark
CREATED: 2005
Do things and places have a soul?
Other authors and stories of interest over on Voices In The Dark include:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
*I’ve added this one to our Cory Doctorow Author Focus listing.
The Case of Davidson’s Eyes by H. G. Wells
The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells
The Empire of the Ants by H. G. Wells
The Flowering of the Strange Orchid by H. G. Wells
The Magic Shop by H. G. Wells
If you’re an aspiring author, narrator or storyteller the folks at Voices In The Dark invite you to contribute! Here‘s the contact info.
The DATAJUNKIE blog is run by interesting fellow named Hyperdave. On a regular basis Hyperdave posts cool covers of retro books, comics and interior Science Fiction magazine art. He also occasionally posts up “Old Time Radio” or vintage LPs in MP3 format that matches the pics! This week Hyperdave has posted a number of terrific items….
First and foremost there is a downloadable compressed folder full of H.P. Lovecraft audio goodness, to get it check out THIS post. Included in it are a number of cool vintage H.P. Lovecraft paperback covers, as well as an awesome street map of Arkham, MA that includes info on the layout of Miskatonic University. I find this very helpful because apparently all of Arkham has been strategically erased on Google Maps!
The audio content consists of the following…
Beyond The Well Of Sleep
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Michael Hanson (Semi-Dramatized)
1 Mp3 File – 26 Minutes 44 Seconds [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: WHA Radio (Madison, WI)
Broadcast: 197? or 198? Sept. 3rd 1976
I hadn’t heard of the Mindwebs radio show prior to this posting, but a little research over at the always reliable OTR Plot Spot turned up this description:
“Not really audio drama in the strict sense of the definition, this 1970’s series out of WHA Radio in Wisconsin featured weekly readings of science fiction stories by some of the genre’s best writers. Nevertheless, since many of the readings were enhanced by music, periodic sound cues, and the occasional character voice, I consider them ‘semi-dramatized’ [SNIP] Besides, the music was so well written, and the performance of Michael Hansen, the reader, so evocative of each story’s mood, that the result was often better than most fully dramatized productions of the period. Precise episode totals are unclear, though at least 150 were aired between 1976 and 1984. Readings varied in length, but most were in half hour format.”
Also on tap in the same downloadable folder are: A strangely semi-dramatized (and slightly scratchy) anonymous David McCallum reading of Lovecraft’s The Outsider (20 Minutes 43 Seconds).
Even better there is a very good straight reading of Lovecraft’s The Rats In The Walls in two parts (running just under 1 hour). This version has the period racial slurs intact too.
And POSTED just today…
Famous Monsters Speak
Performed by Gabriel Dell
2 Mp3 File (from an original 33 1/3 LP Record) – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonderland / AA Records
Published: 1963
Product #: AR-3
It looks like all voices on this recording are actually just the one guy, Gabriel Dell.
An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends
By Forrest J. Ackerman; Performed by Boris Karloff
1 MP3 File – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Decca Records
Published: 1967
Product #: DL74833
A collection of synopses for the classic Universal films that stared Boris Karloff mixed with his performance are sound bites and musical cues from the films Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and The House of Frankenstein.
*Thanks to Roy for the additional details!
The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 4: The Rats In The Walls, The Shunned House, The Music Of Eric Zann
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Wayne June
3 CDs – 2 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1897304242
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Music / Atavistic Guilt / Cannibalism / Mushrooms /
Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do! … ‘Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust … wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?… Magna Mater! Magna Mater!… Atys… Dia ad aghaidh’s ad aodaun… agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas ‘s dholas ort, agus leat-sa!… Ungl unl… rrlh … chchch…
This collection from Audio Realms is the fourth in a series, and the second to be reviewed. There are three CDs and three complete and unabridged stories here, first published between 1922 and 1937. The tales are archaically constructed. If you sat down and try to read one of the paragraph-long sentences that Lovecraft wrote you’d probably begin to wonder why it actually works. Then if you considered that this is the guy who makes curious genealogists or amateur historians the center of his horror stories it becomes almost baffling how he manages to keep our attention at all. There is no doubt though: Lovecraft has our attention. I think I am on safe ground in calling him, at the very least, one of the true giants of Horror fiction. Here are three stories that will prove it…
The Rats In The Walls
The Delapore family, late of Massachusetts, has returned to its ancestral family estate in rural England. Their genealogical and historical research reveals that their ancestors have maintained a strange atavistic responsibility to the land and the ruin upon which their keep was built. Woe be to the friendly neighbors of the long-away Delapores, for the Delapore blood runs thick in their veins and loudly thrums with ancestral duty, as loudly perhaps as the “venimous slithering of ravenous rats in the walls.”
The Shunned House
The house of this story is reported to have been based on a couple of real houses that Lovecraft actually visited. One in particular in Providence, RI at #135 Benefit Street, as in the story, is supposed to be the main inspiration. This story also uses local Providence folklore and history for added depth, but I suspect that if even one fifth of the rest of this story were true we’d have to nuke Rhode Island from orbit, just to be sure. I think some people consider this to be one of Lovecraft’s lesser tales but this one really got me. I am probably a bit more mycophobic than your average person, though. If you don’t like mushrooms, or if you’re even a little afraid of them, listen to this one with the lights on.
The Music Of Eric Zann
One of the most frequently adapted of Lovecraftian tales. The narrator, a near-vagrant, recalls a fellow lodger of a mouldering lodging house in a mysterious French city. Erich Zann is being stalked by a nameless horror that comes to him at night. Only the eerie music he produced was not nearly as haunting as horror that chased him. First published in 1922, still powerful.
SFFaudio Essential narrator Wayne June is back! His grave rumbling voice and his letter perfect pacing makes each of these three tales a shuddersome experience. But I do have a one problem with this entry in the terrific Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft series. It isn’t the production; these CDs sound awesome. Wayne June’s reading of these three stories is absolutely definitive. His unaccompanied performance is utterly chilling – this series truly must be heard. It isn’t the packaging that is the problem, with original art by Allen K. The images on this series are reminiscent of the art found within the pages of the pulps in which these stories were first published. No, my problem isn’t with any of these things. My problem is with choice to censor a couple of lines of the text in The Rats In The Walls. It makes me want to cry. Maybe Lovecraft was indeed being a racist when he wrote the offending words (in naming Delacore’s cat “Nigger-man”), but I’m a purist. Instead of calling Delacore’s cat “Nigger-man” Audio Realms has changed it to “Blackman.” If the text is good enough to be republished year after year ought we not preserve it as it stands, racism and all? True horror is by its very nature transgressive, but I want all the horror in my life to be in fiction. A cannibalistic incestuous serial murderer of homeless children is scary in fiction but as long as its fiction I’m up for it. Keep all the racist crazy-talk in the fiction, I say, because that is where it all belongs.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The right proper fellows at Yog-Radio have recorded their second creepy H.P. Lovecraft tale and released it as a FREE mp3. Nice of them to prov… hey, wait a second, why would these guys be releasing such good stuff for free? Is this some lure to make me join their unspeakable cult? Well, mayhaps it is, but I’m happy to join if only they keep releasing such eldritch richness for my aural delight…
The Nameless City
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Michael Scott
1 MP3 file – 27 Minutes 46 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Yog Radio
Podcast: May 7th 2006
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange æons death may die.”
-From the Necronomicon