Philip K. Dick – Page 76

The StarShipSofa podcast, the U.K.’s answer to The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas

Saturday, September 23, 2006Monday, September 19, 2011 admin

SFFaudio Online Audio

Starship Sofa is a very cool podcast from the UK. The hosts, Tony and Ciaran, are into the literature side of Science Fiction and are determined to ramble, and very intelligently, about some of their favorite retro authors and movies. Their format is a little looser than the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas podcast, which is very much a mirror to Starship Sofa, Ciaran and Tony are far more likely to stray off topic than are Summer, Joe and David. They often talk about who was born a particular year a novel came out, what films were playing that year and what was happening in the news at the time. Occasionally I find myself enjoying their rambling, (I dig Momento too guys) but mostly I find myself wanting to spin ahead to the topic on offer. Despite these reservations, I enjoy Starship Sofa immensely and think you all might too…

Shows so far:

Show # 1: Classic Author: Alfred Bester |MP3|
Show # 2: Classic Author: John Brunner |MP3|
Show # 3: Classic Author: Algis Budrys |MP3|
Show # 4: Classic Author: Cordwainer Smith |MP3|
Show # 5: Classic Author: Stanislaw Lem |MP3|
Show # 6: Classic Film: Dark Star |MP3|
Show # 7: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 1) |MP3|
Show # 8: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 2) |MP3|
Show # 9: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 3) |MP3|

To subscribe to the podcast plug this feed into your podcatcher:

http://starshipsofa.libsyn.com/rss

posted by Jesse Willis

The Time Traveler Show # 6: More Philip K. Dick and J.C. Hutchins!

Thursday, September 7, 2006Saturday, March 27, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Time Traveler Show podcast #6 is available for download now. The featured tale is another Philip K. Dick short story that has never before been adapted for audio. It’s called The Gun and is read by Michael Bekemeyer. It is a very early PKD short story, his second, and it is a parable for its age, 1952. The guest on the show is J.C. Hutchins, host of the Podiobooker podcast as well as the author of our recently reviewed 7th Son: Descent.

The Gun
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Michael Bekemeyer
1 Mp3 File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: September 2006
Podcaster: TheTimeTravelerShow.com

A human spaceship encounters a strange planet that is giving off intense nuclear radiation. As the ship draws closer to the planet, the crew sees what appears to be a destroyed city and are shot at and forced to land. They find a strangely familiar tableau on the planet below.

To read the complete show notes for podcast #6 click HERE or download the show MP3 directly by clicking HERE.

To ensure you are the first to know of a new episode insert this feed into your podcatcher:

http://www.timetravelershow.com/shows/feed.xml

posted by Jesse

The Time Traveler Show Podcast Is Looking For A Few Good Voices

Saturday, July 15, 2006Tuesday, March 30, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Have you ever thought of trying to perform some Science Fiction or Fantasy audio yourself? Good news! The Time Traveler Show podcast is seeking narrators to read some short stories for upcoming shows!

Click HERE to read all the details. Upcoming stories include:

The Apotheosis Of Ki by Miriam Allen DeFord

The Gun by Philip K. Dick

Mousetrap by Andre Norton

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Monday, July 3, 2006Sunday, September 23, 2012 admin

SFFaudio Review

A Scanner Darkly
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Paul Giamatti
8 CDs – Approx. 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 073932392X
Themes: / Science Fiction / Drugs / Consciousness / Identity / Paranoia / Law Enforcement /

“I myself? I am not a character in this novel, I am the novel.”
-Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly

Bob Arctor is the owner of a ramshackle Orange County, California bungalow that houses a small group of drug users. The police think Bob is a dealer in the dangerously addictive drug called Substance-D but Bob really isn’t. Or is he? Fred thinks so, Fred is a deep-cover police agent assigned to surveil Bob’s every move by means of holoscanners and upclose undercover investigation – but Fred’s job is made more difficult because it requires him to take Substance-D, the effects of which have been to gradually split his brain into two very distinct and mutually combative conciousnesses. Fred schizm is so bad that he now doesn’t realize that he is also Bob Arctor and that he has in fact been narcing on himself! Fred/Bob’s only hope is to convince his/their dealer, a druggie named Donna, to get him to the source of Substance-D. Yep it is another typical Dickian plot, the downtrodden protagonist/s finds him/themselves at odds with complicated plot, which while not specifically aimed against him, is something in which he/they have become inadvertently entangled. Unfortunately when survival is the object of the game, Dick’s poor characters don’t know that doubling-down only multiplies the jeopardy by a factor of two.

Dick was no stranger to paranoid drug fantasies. Back in 1972 with his fourth marriage in ruins, an unsolved burglary in his Marin County home and a serious amphetamine addiction Dick travelled to Vancouver, British Columbia to be Guest of Honor at V-Con. After delivering a landmark speech he attempted suicide. Desperate for help, Dick begged and gained entrance to an exclusive heroin addiction treatment center called X-Kalay. This despite the fact he wasn’t addicted to heroin. When he eventually retuned to California he started work on a new novel. A Scanner Darkly was the result. Now 33 years later Dick’s novel has been adapted for audio as a result of the new film version. The good news is, no matter what you think of the film you’ll dig the audiobook. Despite what mayu sound like a downer, you’ll dig this book, A Scanner Darkly has some of the funniest scenes in all of Science Fiction. One section about a suicide gone wrong showcases Dick’s absurdist intellect… “[Charles Freck] spent several days deciding on the artifacts [that would be found by the archaeologists who discovered his dead body]….He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card.” Even better, the ending is masterful, giving up the same Science Fiction satisfaction as did his Hugo winning The Man In The High Castle.

Actor Paul Giamatti (who had a supporting role in the film version of PKD’s Paycheck) was the perfect choice to read A Scanner Darkly. Giamatti’s on-screen characters only hint at his range and it took this audiobook to showcase all that talent. This is an excellent performance, Giamatti has said that Steve Bucemi should have been cast in the Tom Cruise role of the Minority Report film but I’m thinking it should have been Giamatti. His sympathetic portrayal of these drugged-out hippies and drugged-up cops makes this Random House’s A Scanner Darkly the definitive reading of a Dick novel. Giamatti ably gives distinction to the cast of losers and even carries off the German sequences without a hitch. What blows me away about this production is that Giamatti had expresed interest* in being in the Linklater film version of the same name, Giamatti has stated in multiple interviews that he is a fan of PKD’s work. Giamatti has even been approached to play PKD in a film adaptation of Dick’s life! That’d be a hoot.

Two Seeing Ear Theater alumni, Brian Smith and John Colluci, produced and directed Giamatti’s performance. The audiobook also includes intro music and the complete coda; a list by Dick of many of his closest friends who died or were severely damaged by drug use. I heartily endorse this unabridged audiobook and we in our influenced wisdom have seen fit to grant it a hallowed place in the hall of SFFaudio Essentials. This is a book to be long remembered and a reading never to be forgotten.

*Entertainment Weekly (issue #884/885 Summer 2006 Double Issue – page 117)

Posted by Jesse Willis

A FREE Philip K. Dick Audiobook Kicks Off A New Audiobook Company

Saturday, June 24, 2006Thursday, March 18, 2010 admin

Online Audio

Wonder Audiobooks is the BRAND NEW audiobook company owned by the SFFaudio reviewer known as The Time Traveler. To promote his new site and his upcoming first release Wonder Audio has released a free audiobook! In the past other companies have given away audiobooks as promotions as well, but I’ve never seen a better title by a better author given away for free for such a promotion – this one is truly a stunner folks, a previously unrecorded Philip K. Dick story, Dick’s first published short story in fact, complete, unabridged and read by a professional narrator in a studio setting … best of all it is 100% FREE! This is truly an SFFaudio listener’s dream come true!

Beyond Lies The Wub
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Mac Kelly
1 MP3 File – 17 Minutes 40 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audiobooks
Published: June 2006
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Colonialism / Interplanetary Travel /Mars /

The arrogant Captain Franco and his crew of earthmen land on Mars to take on provisions – there they purchase a half ton pig-like creature called a “wub.” They think it a meat animal but when Franco starts to discuss exactly how to butcher the creature the Wub protests! The Wub is not as intellectually starved as it at first appears – indeed the classics, especially Homer’s Odyssey are of special interest to the wub – which makes it doubly ironic that the humans aboard Franco’s ship didn’t remember about what the dread goddess Circe did to Odysseus’ poor crew…

Folks, Beyond Lies The Wub will be just one story in an exclusive short fiction collection called Among The Aliens coming soon from Wonder Audiobooks. Other stories included in the collection will be:

Green Patches by Isaac Asimov
Lover When You’re Near Me by Richard Matheson
Anthropological Notes by Murray Leinster
Arena by Fredric Brown
The Monsters by Robert Sheckley
The Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum
The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick
The Wind People by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Captains Mate by Evelyn E. Smith
The Devil On Salvation Bluff by Jack Vance

All these and an as yet unnamed short story by Alfred Bester will come in a 6 CD set!

WOO HOO!

by Jesse

New Releases for May and June

Thursday, June 1, 2006Sunday, January 3, 2010 admin

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