science fiction – Page 136

Live in NYC: Frankenstein – Halloween Special

Wednesday, October 28, 2009Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Oh to be in New York City on Halloween…

Frankenstein – Halloween Special
Based on the novel by Mary Shelley; Adapted by Dan Bianchi; Performed by a full cast
Length: 1 Hour 20 Minutes [LIVE STAGE PERFORMANCE]
Venue: The Kraine Theater @ 85 E 4th St., NYC
Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009 @ 3pm
Tickets: smarttix.com
Details: General Admission, $18 with code VICTOR, 212-868-4444
Official website: horsetrade.info
In 1818, a 19 yr old girl, Mary Shelley, wrote the most influential, the most frightening science fiction novel of all time…about a scientist who dared to go where no man had gone before…in his quest to become God!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Maria Lectrix: Medal Of Honor by Mack Reynolds

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Jesse Willis

Maureen O’Brien, of the Maria Lectrix podcast, has just wrapped up a short story by one of the truly under-appreciated SF authors. Here’s what Maureen said of him:

“Mack Reynolds was an extremely prolific author who was very popular back in the fifties, sixties and early seventies. (He apparently was a member of the Socialist Labor Party, which surprises me. I always thought he was an early libertarian or something. Well, I’m no pundit.) Anyway, he always struck me as a very Western-ornery sort of writer, and he wrote a lot of military and political sf. It was fairly obvious that he loved throwing what-ifs into the speculation blender. Today he’s almost totally forgotten by younger sf readers, except for his 1968 Star Trek kids’ novel, which was recently reprinted at John Ordover’s behest. (A very nice behest.) I don’t think any of his books were precisely great, but they were all pretty good reads.”

Mack Reynolds also wrote some very readable utopian and dystopian novels that engaged the philosophy of Karl Marx in social Science Fiction thought experiments. No other SF author has engaged communism, socialism and economics like Mack Reynolds did. And that’s not only really strange, it’s really pretty shameful. Economics is a fascinating subject in SF – perhaps the problem is it’s harder to write about?

Here’s Maureen’s latest…

Medal Of Honor
By Mack Reynolds; Read by Maureen O’Brien
4 MP3 Files – Approx. 87 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: September – October 2009
Provider: Archive.org
If you’d received the Galactic Medal of Honor, you could do no wrong, they said. But what if the wrong man received the award, and still found out that was true? Dallas McCord “Mack” Reynolds was a well-known and prolific writer of military SF and stories of political extrapolation during the nineteen-sixties and seventies. From Amazing Science Fiction Stories November 1960.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

Monday, October 26, 2009Monday, October 26, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox My friend Luke Burrage, of the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, has been talking with me about the Planetary Romance subgenre of Science Fiction. We’re both big fans of it. It’s an old genre, probably best sired by Edgar Rice Burroughs with his novel A Princess Of Mars.

Here is the definition of Planetary Romance from the introduction to The Ultimate Guide Of Science Fiction: The Definitive Illustrated Guide (edited by David Pringle):

PLANETARY ROMANCE: a romantic adventure story set on a colourful alien planet, often involving an element of swordplay (or science fiction equivalent).

I bring this all up because the most recent Planetary Romance to draw my attention is one that’s Texas-sized in scope, but short in length (running under 3.5 hours). And of course the necessary swordplay element has naturally been replaced by gunplay – it is a planet full of Texans after all!

Lone Star Planet
By H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
5 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 25, 2009
New Texas: its citizens figure that name about says it all. The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s’Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it’s common knowledge that the s’Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors—and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless he can get them to act, and fast, there won’t be a Texan alive, scared or otherwise!

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/lone-star-planet-by-h-beam-piper-and-john-j-mcguire.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

And, if you’re looking for more terrifically narrated Planetary Romance audiobooks you couldn’t do better than to start with another one read by Mark Douglas Nelson … The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer.

[Thanks also to libraryanne and James Christopher]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 023

Thursday, October 22, 2009Thursday, October 22, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox In addition to the readers, this audiobook was produced by:

Book Coordinator: Gregg Margarite
Dedicated Proof-Listener: Wendel Topper
Meta-Coordinator/Cataloging: Lucy Burgoyne

Thanks guys!

I haven’t had a chance to listen to half of these yet but I did get a chance to enjoy the final tale in this collection. It’s by Fritz Leiber and is super-funny. It’s the tale of an alien invasion — of privacy. See when a Martian visitor lands on Earth he has the good sense to make his first contact with a professor of anthropology. The only question is, will the formalities actually start after the naturally necessary bodily functions finish?

If you find another good one in this collection put in a comment. I’d be much obliged!

Short Science Fiction Collection 23
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
Science Fiction is speculative literature that generally explores the consequences of ideas which are roughly consistent with nature and scientific method, but are not facts of the author’s contemporary world. The stories often represent philosophical thought experiments presented in entertaining ways. Protagonists typically “think” rather than “shoot” their way out of problems, but the definition is flexible because there are no limits on an author’s imagination. The reader-selected stories presented here were written prior to 1962 and became US public domain texts when their copyrights expired.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-23.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Bolden’s Pets
By Floyd L. Wallace; Read by Bev J. Stevens
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
The price of life was a life for a life—which was all the reward the victim looked for! From Galaxy Science Fiction, October, 1955.

A Filbert Is A Nut
By Rick Raphael; Read by Linda Dodge
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
That the gentleman in question was a nut was beyond question. He was an institutionalized psychotic. He was nutty enough to think he could make an atom bomb out of modeling clay! From Astounding Science Fiction November 1959.

The Hated
By Frederik Pohl; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
After space, there was always one more river to cross … the far side of hatred and murder! From Galaxy Science Fiction January 1958.

The Plattner Story
By H.G. Wells; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009

Regeneration
By Charles Dye; Read by Wendel Topper
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
So long as there are men and women alive, in a livable environment, then a new beginning is possible. From Future combined with Science Fiction stories September 1951.

Rex Ex Machina
By Frederic Max; Read by Synergy
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
The domination of the minds of tractable Man is not new. Many men have dreamed of it. Certainly some of them have tried. This man succeeded. A science fictional letter from a father to a son. From Fantastic Universe May 1954.

Tales of Space and Time; The Star
By H.G. Wells; Read by Linda Dodge
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009

The Success Machine
By Henry Slesar; Read by Troy Bond
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
Mechanical brains are all the rage these days, so General Products just had to have one. But the blamed thing almost put them out of business. Why? It had no tact. It insisted upon telling the truth! From Amazing Science Fiction Stories January 1960.

Unspecialist
By Murray F. Yaco; Read by Wendel Topper
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
A machine can be built to do any accurately described job better than any man. The superiority of a man is that he can do an unexpected, undescribed, and emergency job … provided he hasn’t been especially trained to be a machine. From Astounding Science Fiction, January, 1960.

What’s He Doing In There?
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibirVox.org
Published: August 4, 2009
He went where no Martian ever went before—but would he come out—or had he gone for good? From Galaxy Science Fiction December 1957.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC4 & RA.cc: Stephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd

Monday, October 19, 2009Monday, October 19, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ve been enjoying quite a lot of Stephen Fry on television lately. He’s been following in the footsteps of Douglas Adams in the recent series Last Chance To See, doing an autobiographical examination of a fascinating disorder in Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and criss-crossing the USA in Stephen Fry in America. But the programme that I’ll draw your attention to is a very nice hour long documentary that aired on BBC Radio 4 a couple weeks back. I picked it up through RadioArchive.cc, and I recommend you do the same.

Fry brings quite a bit to the show, delving back into computer history, talking about Alan Turing (and how that connects to where the Apple company’s logo came from), sliding tangentially into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and plenty more besides. The “Y2K disaster” seems more and more relevant these days, not because of the disaster itsel (which didn’t happen) but rather because the fixity of poorly informed media opinion is more and more likely despite our increasing ability to digitally record and rehash our poor predictions. We just don’t do it – except with programmes like this!

Stephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd
By Stephen Fry
1 Broadcast – Approx. 56 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: October 5, 2009
The Western world, with a few notable exceptions, poured billions of dollars into electronic pesticides to defeat the Y2K bug. Only to find that for the most part it could have been defeated by turning the systems off then on again. So, why the silence when the bug didn’t bite? The answer’s in the programme. Politicians, experts and businessmen all profited in status or cash from the threat. In the media – to paraphrase the crime reporters – it bled so it led. In the USA, government brazenly claimed victory for its defeat. In reality, the enemy was almost totally imaginary. But it’s useless blaming the great and the good. It was inevitable. We’d been told repeatedly that this brilliant new technology would change the world. Then we were told it could all stop on the stroke of one spookily special midnight. We were the newly addicted, suddenly faced with the prospect that our supply was fatally endangered. There was only one thing we could do. Panic. Then spend millions fixing it. Sorry, that’s two things.

Here’s a 15 minute selection from the doc:

You can pick up the rest, via torrent, from RadioArchive.cc.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Escape Pod: Come All Ye Faithful by Robert J. Sawyer

Friday, October 16, 2009 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

This story came out yesterday. It’s about atheists hanging out in churches. I too was hanging out a church yesterday. We spent a while upstairs listening to some moving eulogies and some denuded (or maybe modest) theological claims. Then we went downstairs and ate deviled eggs. It smelled musty down there but otherwise the atmosphere wasn’t that bad. There, my uncles reminisced about the church. Other than for a wedding, maybe 20 years back, they hadn’t been there for 40 years or so. They had spent many a Sunday there. While listening to the sermon, they said, they’d look up to the high ceiling and wonder about the small hatch sitting directly above the altar.

Was that where Jesus was going to descend from?

Since they didn’t mention getting an answer I guess the best answer would be: “not yet kids”

EP220: Come All Ye Faithful
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Mike Boris
1 |MP3| – Approx. 34 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: October 15, 2009
Father Bailey is the one and only priest on Mars, with hardly any congregation to speak of. But his life suddenly gets interesting when the Vatican calls upon him to investigate an apparent miracle on the desolate plains of Cydonia…

Posted by Jesse Willis