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.
CBCer and SF fan Joe Mahoney put up this |MP3| on his blog, Assorted Nonsense. It’s a hilarious Science Fiction story recorded for the event called Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids, which was organized by Dan Misener of CBC’s Spark.
Joe wrote the story when he was 12, back in 1977. At that time it was meant to be a serious story. But as it was written when he was a kid it seems a whole lot funnier now.
He describes the whole experience HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis
In a provocative move (for a novice) one of Robert Sheckley’s earliest stories, Writing Class, is 1,000 word wonder about the proper construction of stories. This story came at the beginning of a career that would later produce 250 short stories. It took more than fifty years for it to get reprinted.
The audiobook for it was narrated by our friend William Coon for SFFaudio Challenge #6. Thanks Bill!
Writing Class
By Robert Sheckley; Read by William Coon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Eloquent Voice
Recorded: November 13, 2011
Etext: |RTF|
“Never use cliches in describing alien life-forms,” Professor Carner admonished his class. But Eddie persisted—with good reason! First published in Imagination, December 1952.
And here’s the |PDF|!
Posted by Jesse Willis
Recorded in Malad, Idaho (at The Iron Door Playhouse) in 2010 and 2011 here are two original plays written and directed by our very own Scott D. Danielson. These are humorous Halloween themed audio dramas, recorded live (on stage) by local actors. Both productions feature gentle joking with the Halloween creature conventions, as well as the occasional wry stab at more topical terrors (look for a pathetically pining vampire and a protesting henchperson).
Doctor Finkelstein’s Revenge
By Scott D. Danielson; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 48 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Recorded: October 31, 2010
Ghosts At The Iron Door
By Scott D. Danielson; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 42 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Recorded: October 29, 2011
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Boat Of A Million Years by Poul Anderson
Genesis by Poul Anderson
Shadow On The Sun by Richard Matheson
Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson
Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted by Harry Harrison
The Stainless Steel Rat For President by Harry Harrison
The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues by Harry Harrison
The Stainless Steel Rat Goes To Hell by Harry Harrison
The Stainless Steel Rat Joins The Circus by Harry Harrison
Count Zero by William Gibson
Posted by Jesse Willis
Naxos Audiobooks, is offering a couple of free audiobook downloads this month!
Here’s part of the description of the first one:
Bierce’s ghost stories are not among the best-written but they are unusual and distinctly ‘modern’ in their definition of what constitutes a ‘ghost’. They enjoy a popularity today that eluded them during Bierce’s lifetime, perhaps because the late twentieth century reader is more prepared to accept his psychological approach to the genre. The stories resist neat classification, no conclusions are offered. Whatever the true nature of the entity in The Damned Thing, Bierce offers no tidy answer. One of the protagonists offers his theory but it is no more than that and you are left with the feeling that perhaps the entity wanders the earth to this day and that Bierce merely recorded one episode of its existence.
The Damned Thing
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Jonathan Keeble
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9789626344941
First published in 1894.
The Damned Thing has been adapted as an episode of Masters Of Horror as well as for the comics in Graphic Classics: Ambrose Bierce, 2nd Edition:
The second audiobook is longer, but not huffduffable. It’s wrapped in a zipped folder with 12 MP3s (and also includes a wonderful 8 page PDF with story notes by Chloé Harmsworth).
The Canterville Ghost
By Oscar Wilde; Rupert Degas
1 Zipped MP3 – Approx. 77 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9789626349748
“A terrifying ghost is haunting the ancient mansion of Canterville Chase, complete with creaking floorboards, clanking chains and gruesome disguises – but the new occupants seem strangely undisturbed by his presence. Deftly contrasting the conventional gothic ghost story with the pragmatism of the modern world, Wilde creates a gently comic fable of the conflict between old and new. Rupert Degas’s hilarious reading brings the absurdity and theatricality of the story to life.”
The Canterville Ghost has been adapted to film more than a dozen times! Here’s the trailer for the first such, from 1944:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Sometimes titled “The Diamond Necklace” this story is a 3,000 word short story that is often upheld as a tale at, or very near, the pinnacle of ironic fiction. Guy de Maupassant’s short story La Parure is usually given the English title “The Necklace” – despite “La Parure” literally translating into English as “The Finery”.
The Necklace has been reprinted hundreds of times, in books, textbooks and newspapers. It has been collected volumes of “mystery or detective” stories – which is pretty damn odd considering that it has neither a detective nor a mystery in it. And stranger still, it has been anthologized in collections with titles like Masterpieces Of Terror And The Unknown and Isaac Asimov Presents The Best Horror And Supernatural Of The 19th Century.
How does this modest little tale, featuring a Parisian couple, and their acquaintances, a story with no supernatural elements at all qualify as a “supernatural” tale?
How can a story, like The Necklace, in which nobody dies, or is even physically injured, be considered ‘a tale of terror or horror’?
Perhaps the mystery lies not within such questions, but instead with one’s interpretation. Perhaps, just as with the translation from one language to another, there are kinds of horrors, kinds of terrors, indeed kinds of fates which can only be classified as a moral horror, a social terror, or one of life’s little mysteries that leaves us asking questions like the ones above.
Guy de Maupassant has created a story for the ages, a mystery story in which you, the reader, are the detective. Your job is to solve the case of…
The Necklace (La Parure)
By Guy de Maupassant; Read by Patti Cunningham
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 21, 2009
|ETEXT|
Mathilde is a beautiful bride of a mid-level Parisian bureaucrat. Her natural elegance and grace seem somewhat out of place with her husband’s junior position. This is the story of a beautiful woman who works hard and gets everything she wants. First published in the February 17, 1884 issue of Le Gaulois (a French daily newspaper).
Here’s the cover illustration (artist unknown) for La Parure from the October 8, 1893 issue of Gil Blas (a Parisian literary magazine):
The most evocative illustrations I’ve seen for The Necklace are by Gord Rayner- they accompany an uncredited radio style play adaptation (for four actors) in the 1960s Canadian textbook entitled Sense And Feeling edited by R.J. Scott. Here’s the 12 page play |PDF| and here are the illustrations:
Update:
Here’s a wonderful radio dramatization that keeps most of the tale intact:
Favorite Story – The Necklace
Adapted from the story by Guy de Maupassant; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: KFI
Broadcast: October 7, 1947
Cast:
Heather Angel … Mathilde Loisel
Hans Conried … Pierre Loisel
Posted by Jesse Willis