Tag: Robert Sheckley

Mindwebs: The Gun Without A Bang by Robert Sheckley

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”
-Anton Chekhov, November 1,1889.

The Gun Without A Bang by Robert Sheckley

The Gun Without A Bang - illustrated by Dick Francis

MindwebsMindwebs – The Gun Without A Bang
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Michael Hanson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED with a musical bed]
Broadcaster: WHA Radio (Madison, WI)
Broadcast: August 4, 1982
Provider: Archive.org
Alfred Dixon is a weapons expert assigned to test, in hostile alien jungle conditions, a new deadly disintegration pistol. The thing kills alright, but there’s one thing it doesn’t do. It won’t report. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1958.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Printable PDFs Posted

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

SFFaudio MetaI’ve created a PDF Page, that is a page full of printable PDFs. Most are short stories, most are in the public domain (in most places). There are more than fifty PDFs there. All ready for download and printing.

Now I’m afraid that most have no OCR. But on the other hand the files are unlocked and so you could OCR them yourself should you so desire.

It’s currently filed under out FEATURES page, but HERE‘s the direct link.

Please let me know if any of the files there don’t download.

Authors included:
Charles Beaumont, John Buchan, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Boucher, Emily Brontë, Lucy Clifford, John Collier, Philip K. Dick, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Laura Lee Hope, Robert E. Howard, W.W. Jacobs, Henry Kuttner, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, C.C MacApp, William Morrison, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edgar Pangborn, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Sheckley, T.S. Stribling, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, and Manly Wade Welman.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Drabblecast: The Store Of The Worlds by Robert Sheckley

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Norm Sherman’s Drabblecast doesn’t do audiobooks right. At least – it doesn’t do them the way I like them. Sherman, like a small fraction of audiobook producers, has decided to place a music bed atop all his readings. I hate that.

But since Robert Sheckley’s The Store Of The Worlds isn’t available anywhere else, in the audio format, you may want to check it out anyway. Robert Sheckley was a great writer, and the music bed, while both distracting and ham handed manipulative, doesn’t wholly ruin the story.

Drabblecast - The Store Of The Worlds by Robert SheckleyThe Store Of The Worlds
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Norm Sherman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Drabblecast
Podcast: November 19, 2010
First published in Playboy, September 1959 (under the title The World of Heart’s Desire).


Playboy, September 1959 - The World Of Heart's Desire by Robert Sheckley

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC: Nightfall: Assassin Game by John G. Fisher

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

One of the very few legitimately Science Fiction stories in the CBC Nightfall series was this one, Assassin Game by John G. Fisher. It’s set in a then future in which all university students, in the top fifth percentile, are required to play an assassination game. Exceptional players are recruited by all the best transnational mega-corporations which offer free, but illegal, training in the summers. Chris Wiggins, a great voice actor best known perhaps for his role on Friday The 13th: The Series, plays the school’s president. And a very young sounding Saul Rubinek plays the protagonist, a student, and star player, who is unwilling to pick a sponsor. There’s a whole lot going on in this half hour show – with a big back-story, a vintage future sound design (Star Trek and Pac-Man), and a noirish plot.

Devoted readers may note some strong similarities to Robert Sheckley’s Seventh Victim and derivative tales.

CBC - NightfallNightfall #74 – Assassin Game
By John G. Fisher; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBC
Broadcast: November 5, 1982
Source: Archive.org
In the future, your career will be determined by now many students you eliminate at university. Assassin was just a game at first, then it got real.

Cast:
Saul Rubinek … Joel Unson (a computer science student)
Nicky Guadagni … Wendy Hirsch?
David Ferry … Martin (a political science student)
Ralph McPherson … Alex (Joel’s AI)
Peter Jobin … the computer and the man
Chris Wiggins … university president
Barbara Kyle … Miss and the PA announcer

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Beside Still Waters by Robert Sheckley

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Robert Sheckley was a joker, a satirist, a poker of fun at all of the silliness in life. But there’s something more going on in this short short story from 1953. Sure there’s the existentialist angle, and of course there’s the requisite Sheckley humor, but it’s the other quality in Beside Still Waters that makes this Sheckley story a bit different. You can see it right there in the title (taken from Psalm 23 of the Hebrew Bible), and you can see it in the Virgil Finlay’s illustration for the story too:

Beside Still Waters by Robert Sheckley - Illustration by Virgil Finlay

Beside Still Waters is an elegiac tale, offering only a cup of sadness to the reader, it’s the sort of story that Clifford D. Simak might have written. And that should be recommendation enough.

LibriVoxBeside Still Waters
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Frank Malanga
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 28, 2010
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot. First published in Amazing Stories Oct.-Nov. 1953.
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And here’s the |PDF| I made from the original magazine publication.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley on YouTube

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

One of the finest Science Fiction audiobooks on LibriVox, the novel that was the subject of SFFaudio Podcast #056, here it is …. The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley on YouTube.

A man awakes with amnesia. He is aboard a spaceship. He is a prisoner. He is gnorant of his crime and his name. His destination is the planet Omega. It is a prison planet from which there is no escape.

If you give it a five minutes, it’ll take you into the full five hours and you’ll know the truth of The Status Civilization!

The regular audiobook is available HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis