Reading, Short And Deep #162
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.
To Helen was first published in the 1831 collection Poems Of Edgar A. Poe.
Podcast feed https://sffaudio.herokuapp.com/rsd/rss
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Reading, Short and Deep Podcast #162 - To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
[ 0:32:50 | 32 MB ]
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Reading, Short And Deep #044
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Mansion Of Forgetfulness by Don Mark Lemon
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
The Mansion Of Forgetfulness was first published in The Black Cat, April 1907.
Podcast feed https://sffaudio.herokuapp.com/rsd/rss
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Reading, Short and Deep Podcast #044 - The Mansion Of Forgetfulness by Don Mark Lemon
[ 0:30:51 | 30 MB ]
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John Collier’s modern fairy tale, The Chaser, was adapted as an episode of the first season of the original The Twilight Zone. And now the story has just been narrated for Tom Elliot’s The Twilight Zone Podcast.
The Chaser
By John Collier; Read by Danny Davis
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Twilight Zone Podcast
Podcast: March 18, 2013
Alan, a lovelorn man, desperate for the object of his affections to return them, visits a queer chemist for a solution. First published in The New Yorker, December 28, 1940.
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheTwilightZonePodcast
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Here is a |PDF| of the story, and here is another |PDF|.
And here’s The Twilight Zone adaptation:
The story also inspired a Tales From The Crypt story, in issue 25:
That, in turn, was adapted for the television series, using the same name:
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – First podcast in 2008, in seven separate installments, here it is, the legendary, unconquerable epic that they didn’t want you to hear. It’s back, stronger, and wholly united into one massive adventure … the mighty BrokenSea Audio Productions adaptation of The Queen Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #188 - The Queen Of The Black Coast AUDIO DRAMA [ 2:18:28 | 126.92 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Here’s a terrifically interesting story of romantic adventure, and love, between two very heterosexual men.
Did I mention they are heterosexual?
Well they are.
They have wives!
That’s all there is to it.
The Heathen interweaves Jack London’s racist ideas with his experiences as a sailor to make a truly he-manish tale of two macho sailors who form an unbreakable seventeen-year bond after being shipwrecked in the South Pacific. This is manly beefcake Jack London from 1910, working the blood and breed obsessed vein of fiction and friendship that Robert E. Howard did so masterfully in stories like Queen Of The Black Coast and Hills Of The Dead.
Unfortunately, the version that my good friend Gregg Margarite read for LibriVox, a couple years back, was abridged (or perhaps sanitized) – the PDF version below includes a couple of extra lines here, there, and at the end. Important lines. It also includes more swearing.
Damn those abridgers and sanitizers.
Gregg is dead.
I’m confident he’d have wanted to have read the unsanitized and unabridged original had it been available.
The Heathen
By Jack London; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 3, 2009
First published in Everybody’s Magazine, August 1910.
Here’s a beautiful |PDF| made from a scan of the magazine.
Here are the rest of the terrific illustrations by Anton Fischer:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Pygmalion’s Spectacles was first published in 1935 in the aptly named Wonder Stories magazine. Four years after it’s first publication it was reprinted in Startling Stories as a “classic” and it was placed in their “Scientifiction Hall Of Fame.” It was reprinted again in Fantastic Story magazine in the Spring 1955 issue. Three magazine publications is a rare occurrence for any SF story. So, what makes this story special?
Well, this tale of utopia, immortality, and romance, is also, most probably, the very first story to feature the concept of virtual reality.
Here’s the description from the Wikipedia entry:
A comprehensive and specific fictional model for virtual reality was published in 1935 in the short story Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the story, the main character, Dan Burke, meets an elfin professor, Albert Ludwig, who has invented a pair of goggles which enable “a movie that gives one sight and sound […] taste, smell, and touch. […] You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.”
And though the ideas may be pioneering, the plot of Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar to Fitz-James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, itself an excellent SF tale. The tone of their respective endings differs, but their plot, in which a man falls in love with an intangible woman, is straight out of the Greek mythology that Weinbaum alludes to. And they both use science, rather than magic to get to their respective endings.
There is, I should also point out, a LibriVox |MP3| recording of the Metamorphoses by Ovid, a 2,000 year old poem featuring the myth of Pygmalion.
Here is a |PDF| made from the Pygmalion’s Spectacles publication in Fantastic Story. And here are two LibriVox versions (my advice, go for the first one):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13,2009
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Chrystal Layton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 17, 2007
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Lumen Winter (from Wonder Stories, June 1935):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Virgil Finlay (from Fantastic Story Magazine, Spring 1955):
Painting of Pygmalion and the statue by Jean-Baptiste Regnault:
[Thanks to Tim at The Drama Pod for the reminder]
Posted by Jesse Willis