LibriVox – Page 49

LibriVox: The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey

Thursday, April 1, 2010Thursday, April 1, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox Narrator Karen Savage comes from the plainspoken school of audiobook narration. Her reading is crisp and clean, and, barring accidents will be listened to for at least several centuries. The Sky Is Falling is a weird and fascinating tale that blends a hard Science Fiction attitude with a grotesque Fantasy world. The brushing and melding of two incommensurable fiction paradigms, like this, was also done in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno |READ OUR REVIEW|.

The Sky Is Falling
By Lester del Rey; Read by Karen Savage
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 28, 2010
After dying in a terrible accident at a building site, Dave Hanson finds himself being brought back to life in a world where magic is real, and where the sky is breaking apart and falling. And he is expected to put it back together again. Will he be able to save this strange world, and his own new life?

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/rss/3780

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Also of note, this production completes the entire audiobooking of ACE DOUBLE #76960 (the other half being Lester del Rey’s Badge Of Infamy:

Badge Of Infamy
By Lester del Rey; Read by Steven H. Wilson
15 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: LibriVox.org
Published: January 17, 2007
Daniel Feldman was a doctor once. He made the mistake of saving a friend’s life in violation of Medical Lobby rules. Now, he’s a pariah, shunned by all, forbidden to touch another patient. But things are more loose on Mars. There, Doc Feldman is welcomed by the colonists, even as he’s hunted by the authorities. But, when he discovers a Martian plague may soon wipe out humanity on two planets, Feldman finds himself a pivotal figure. War erupts. Earth is poised to wipe out the Mars colony utterly. A cure to the plague is the price of peace, and only Feldman can find it

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/badge-of-infamy-by-lester-del-rey.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Here’s the first appearance of these two novels together:

Galaxy Magabook - The Sky Is Falling / Badge Of Infamy by Lester del Rey

And here’s the 1973 ACE Double appearance of these two novels together:

Ace Double- Badge Of Infamy / The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey

[thanks also to mim@can]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Jock of the Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick

Tuesday, March 23, 2010Monday, March 22, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox Here’s a fun, and approximately antipodean, compliment to Jack London’s stupendous novel The Call Of The Wild. Set in 1880s South Africa, it is a set of semi-fictional stories about an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier named Jock. According to a book called National Character In South African Children’s Literature it was none other than Rudyard Kipling who persuaded James Percy Fitzpatrick to collect his Jock tales in book form. Now that is quite a provenance!

Jock Of The Bushveld
By Sir Percy Fitzpatrick; Read by various
28 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 12 Hours 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Publisher: March 19, 2010
Jock of the Bushveld is a true story by South African author Sir Percy Fitzpatrick when he worked as a storeman, prospector’s assistant, journalist and ox-wagon transport-rider. The book tells of Fitzpatrick’s travels with his dog, Jock, during the 1880s. Jock was saved by Fitzpatrick from being drowned in a bucket for being the runt of the litter. Jock was very loyal towards Percy, and brave. Jock was an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3952

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Rastignac The Devil by Philip José Farmer

Monday, March 22, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox I get the sense that Rastignac The Devil is a satire, using the furniture of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. But I feel really embarrassed about not knowing what is going on, sub-textually, in this interesting, but baffling, novella by Philip José Farmer. Is it all an allegorical satire of some event in 17th century France?

A couple of other notes. Mike Resnick’s Starship series has a character named “Slick.” Slick is an alien with a sentient symbiotic skin (called a “gorib”). Rastignac The Devil has aliens and humans with just such a similar concept – very cool! Gregg Margarite, the narrator, does a very good job with the abundance of French words.

Anyway, like I said, I liked the story, thought it was weirdly cool, but don’t feel like I’ve understood it at all. Could someone fill me in?

Rastignac The Devil
By Philip José Farmer; Read by Gregg Margarite
2 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 19, 2010
Here is high fidelity fiction at Philip José Farmer’s story-telling best. It’s a vibrant, distractingly different tale of three centuries into the future. And as you read you’ll have a vague, uneasy feeling that it’s all taking place somewhere in the unexplored parts of the universe, even today. From Fantastic Universe May 1954.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4158

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Barry Eads (aka KiltedDragon)]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox.org: Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Sunday, March 21, 2010Friday, December 30, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox I like it when SFFaudio gets cited on Wikipedia. One of the citations there is a point I made about The Green Odyssey |READ OUR REVIEW| and the Dungeons & Dragons module Dragonlance: DL6 Dragons of Ice. I compared The Green Odyssey‘s roller-ships (a kind of wind powered land ship) with the iceboats of Dragons Of Ice And it was just yesterday I came across another similar variant on the sail-powered-terrestrial-ship:

“Mr. Fogg examined a curious vehicle, a kind of frame on two long beams, a little raised in front like the runners of a sledge, and upon which there was room for five or six persons. A high mast was fixed on the frame, held firmly by metallic lashings, to which was attached a large brigantine sail. This mast held an iron stay upon which to hoist a jib-sail. Behind, a sort of rudder served to guide the vehicle. It was, in short, a sledge rigged like a sloop. During the winter, when the trains are blocked up by the snow, these sledges make extremely rapid journeys across the frozen plains from one station to another. Provided with more sails than a cutter, and with the wind behind them, they slip over the surface of the prairies with a speed equal if not superior to that of the express trains.”

-From Around The World In Eighty Days (chapter XXXI) by Jules Verne

Here’s an image of it from a Golden Picture Classic edition of Around The World In Eighty Days:

An iceboat from Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Around The World in Eighty Days
By Jules Verne; Read by Mark F. Smith
37 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours 33 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 16, 2008
Mysterious Phileas Fogg is a cool customer. A man of the most repetitious and punctual habit – with no apparent sense of adventure whatsoever – he gambles his considerable fortune that he can complete a journey around the world in just 80 days… immediately after a newspaper calculates the feat as just barely possible. With his excitable French manservant in tow, Fogg undertakes the exercise immediately, with no preparations, trusting that his traveling funds will make up for delays along the way. But unbeknownst to him, British police are desperately seeking to arrest him for the theft of a huge sum by someone who resembles him, and they will track him around the world, if necessary, to apprehend him. This is an adventure novel of the first water, with wholly unexpected perils, hair-breadth escapes, brilliant solutions to insoluble problems, and even a love story. And can this be? – That he returns to London just five minutes too late to win his wager and retain his fortune?

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/around-the-world-in-80-days-by-jules-verne-2.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #050 – READALONG: The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #050 – Jesse and Scott discuss The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James.

Talked about on today’s show:
An excerpt from the lecture: Masterpieces Of The Imaginative Mind (Lecture 6: H.G. Wells: We Are All Talking Animals) by Professor Eric S. Rabkin, James thought novels ‘must explore an individual’s psychology’ but H.G. Wells asserted novels ‘must explore the great social forces that shape all of us.’, The Teaching Company, The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James, Blackstone Audio’s version, PaperbackSwap.com, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast show on The Invisible Man and More Invisible Men, LibriVox.org, LibriVox’s FREE version of The Turn Of The Screw, Stephanie Beacham, War Of The Worlds, The Time Machine, Donald E. Westlake, John Irving, James Lee Burke, Pat Conroy, literary fiction, ambiguity, deliberate ambiguity, the framing sequence, Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, outlining the plot, country estates, England, governesses, orphans, corruption and contamination, ghosts, Christmas, Why is it called The Turn Of The Screw?, Is this a double ghost story?, if the governess is crazy doesn’t that make the story pointless? sexism, solitary decisions may not be wise, what happens to Miles? The Innocents (1961), sexuality, James called The Turn Of The Screw “a shameless potboiler”, adaptations and interpretations, The Turn Of The Screw (2009), The Others (2001), Marlon Brando’s prequel The Nightcomers (1971), Thomas Kuhn, incommensurable literary paradigms?, Margaret Atwood, literary Science Fiction, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Handmaid’s Tale, governess stories, tutors, teachers, surrogate parents, William Makepeace Thackeray‘s Vanity Fair, Johdi May, The Turn Of The Screw (1999), is the governess an unreliable narrator?, The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, Mystery and Science Fiction are very closely aligned, tales of ratiocination, Edgar Allan Poe, The Turn Of The Screw in comics, Pocket Classics, Oscar Wilde, The Importance Of Being Earnest, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: The Innocents, Blackadder II, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow as read by Martin Jarvis, RadioArchive.cc, The Turn Of The Screw BBC radio drama, Saturday Night Theatre.

The opening of The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James – Pocket Classics edition (ISBN: 0883017393):

Pocket Classics - The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James (ISBN: 0883017598)
The Turn Of The Screw - illustration by Lynd Ward

DELL - The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of “The Eternal Wall” by Raymond Z. Gallun

Monday, March 8, 2010Monday, March 8, 2010 Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio’s 7th Anniversary World Tour continues – we’ll have you know that no hotel rooms have been trashed to date. But there’s still time…

“The Eternal Wall”
By Raymond Z. Gallun; Read by Gregg Margarite
26 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Librivox
Published: 2009
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time Travel / Evolution / Time /

This story was published in November, 1942 in Amazing Stories magazine. It’s the first story by Raymond Z. Gallun that I’ve read. I was happy to come across it, since I recently ordered the Del Rey The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun paperback. Love those books.

“The Eternal Wall” is not included in that collection, which raises my expectations of the stories that were included, because this is a very good story. It starts with a guy driving a car quickly down the road. He’s late for a date with his girlfriend, so he pushes it too far and ends up flying off a cliff into deep alkali-rich water. Now pick up the story a few million years later. Humans have long since left the Earth, and the next phase of evolution has resulted in a race of prairie dog-like intelligent creatures that find a mummified body at an archaeological dig. Their technology is great, so they figure out how to re-animate the well-preserved body.

The end of the story didn’t ring true to me, but it contained the point of the story, or at least the reason the story was titled “The Eternal Wall”. The wall is time – the main character can’t go back in time, and the new intelligent life on Earth, despite their advanced technology, can’t do it either. It can easily be seen as a response to the time travel stories that permeated science fiction in the 40’s – a dose of scientific realism, perhaps?

But it’s not the view of time presented in the story that doesn’t ring true – it’s the reaction of the man after being re-animated. Oh, the drama! I wanted to slap him.

Gregg Margarite performs the story, hysterical re-animated man and all, and I’ll be looking for more from him. Thanks to Gregg, and thanks to Librivox for making it available!

A reminder – Librivox is looking for your help!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson