science fiction – Page 175

LibriVox: Planet Of The Damned by Harry Harrison

Friday, June 6, 2008Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Planet of The Damned, a 1962 Science Fiction novel by Harry Harrison, was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine in the autumn of 1961 under the title A Sense Of Obligation. Here it is now, for the first time, as an unabridged, 100% FREE, and public domain audiobook. The only caveat is that this is a multi-voiced reading. Check it out, decide for yourself if this should have a single voiced reading too…

Planet Of The Damned
By Harry Harrison; Read by various
19 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 5th 2008
Once in a generation, a man is born with a heightened sense of empathy. Brion Brandd used this gift to win the Twenties, an annual physical and mental competition among the best and smartest people on Anvhar. But scarcely able to enjoy his victory, Brandd is swept off to the hellish planet Dis where he must use his heightened sense of empathy to help avert a global nuclear holocaust by negotiating with the blockading fleet, traversing the Disan underworld, and cracking the mystery of the savagely ruthless magter.

Subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/planet-of-the-damned-by-harry-harrison.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – Mike Resnick, Edgar Allan Poe

Friday, June 6, 2008 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently plopped into the SFFaudio Audible Account…

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours and 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

Starship: Pirate, Book 2
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. There, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules. But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole’s principles limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players: the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, the enigmatic alien fence David Copperfield, and the fearsome alien pirate known as the Hammerhead Shark.

Starship: Mercenary, Book 3
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Military discipline and honor have been a poor match for Capt. Wilson Cole’s life of pillaging and plundering. Seeking a better way of life, the Teddy R. has become a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it’s evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way, they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters. The life of a mercenary is not always predictable. Circumstance now pits Cole and the Teddy R. against the former Pirate Queen, Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

And received by mail from Audio Book Case…

Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre Volume II
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase
Published: June 2008
Includes four tales of the supernatural, shock and horror:
The Conqueror Worm, The Tell Tale Heart, The Imp Of The Perverse and Hop Frog

Posted by Jesse Willis

Cory Doctorow loves the Little Fuzzy audiobook

Thursday, June 5, 2008Thursday, June 5, 2008 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Cory Doctorow posted this to BoingBoing.net today:

I just finished listening to the Audio Realms audio edition of H Beam Piper’s classic science fiction novel Little Fuzzy and fell in love with the book all over again. Little Fuzzy was the first book I ever bought for myself: it was on my first trip to Bakka, the world’s oldest surviving science fiction bookstore, at the age of nine or ten. Tanya Huff — now a bestselling writer in her own right — was working that day and I asked her for some recommendations. She marched me back to the used section of the store and took down a copy of Little Fuzzy, promising that I’d love it.

I did.

Little Fuzzy is Piper’s masterpiece, a tight, neat science fiction story that epitomizes the golden age of sf. It concerns a prospector on a distant world who discovers a potentially sentient aboriginal race (the “Fuzzies), and his ensuing fight — fists, lawyers and even guns — to get them recognized as sentient beings. Along the way, Piper explores the nature of colonial economies, the deepest questions of consciousness and intelligence, paternalism and self-determination, and the nature of the rule of law. All in a package that a nine-year-old will find riveting and delightful.

The Audio Realms 5-CD unabridged recording just won Publishers Weekly’s annual Fantasy Audiobook of the Year award (why “fantasy” I’m not sure), and it’s easy to see why. Brian Holsopple’s reading brings the characters — warm, human, flawed and passionate — to life. The editing is not exactly perfect (there’s a couple of pickup lines that Holsopple recorded that are left in, which is a little distracting), but the story is every bit as wonderful as I remember it, and the reading is a great match.

Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so there’s both a free ebook and a free recording available of the text. And for the record, I got Tanya Huff’s job at Bakka when she retired to write full time.

[via BoingBoing.net]

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC Radio will broadcast and podcast Robert J. Sawyer’s Rollback

Thursday, June 5, 2008Thursday, June 5, 2008 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Robert J. Sawyer has a contract in hand from CBC Radio One’s Between The Covers program. BTC will broadcasting Robert J. Sawyer’s novel ROLLBACK! I asked Heather Brown, a producer at Between The Covers for more details on the distribution method and she had this to say:

“Yes, we will be podcasting as well as broadcasting Robert J. Sawyer’s novel ROLLBACK. At the moment there is no firm date for the broadcast/podcast although it won’t be presented until much later this year and perhaps not til early next year. The book will be abridged somewhat but Mr. Sawyer will be a full participant in those choices.”

That’s very cool! I’ve long enjoyed Between The Covers, but it was their broadcast of Connie Willis’ Bellwether that cemented my love of this long running CBC Radio show. We’ll keep you updated on the broadcast and podcasting dates for this.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Stalker: a new sci-fi audio drama

Thursday, June 5, 2008Thursday, June 5, 2008 Julie

SFFaudio Online Audio

While enjoying the latest episode of New World Army, I was excited to hear an announcement for a new audio drama that the same team is producing. The Stalker is “is the strange and alarming story of two special agents that apprehend a stalker of an important political official, and how the interrogation uncovers his true identity, but cannot stop the violence that surrounds him.”

It is only 15 minutes long and I listened to it last night. Intriguing. Apocalyptic. X-Files-ish. A solid beginning for a series.

You can go to the site and listen.

Or download the |MP3|.

Posted by Julie D.

Review of Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer

Thursday, June 5, 2008Sunday, October 4, 2009 Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

Calculating God
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 12 hours – [Unabridged]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
ISBN: None
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Paleontology / Religion / Philosophy / Space Travel /

One of the things I enjoy most about reviewing audiobooks is that I get to revisit novels that I’ve read and loved in the past. When these beloved novels are given great readers (not always the case), I can’t wait to get at them. Calculating God is one of those novels, and Jonathan Davis is an excellent narrator, so this audiobook leapt to the top of my TBR list the moment I realized it existed.

Jonathan Davis burst onto the science fiction scene with his stellar narration of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (SFFaudio review here). Since then, in the science fiction genre, he’s been almost exclusively reading Random House’s Star Wars abridgments. He reads them well, but I was thrilled to see him step away from that and narrate another of science fiction’s great novels. He is one of our very best narrators and this is a fine performance. I was rapt the entire time, and even near tears at one moment in the book.

When I read this novel for the first time, I was a bit taken aback. I am a Catholic and I’ve been reading science fiction all of my life. I have never had a problem reconciling science and religion and have been both perplexed and dismayed that Christianity is portrayed so often as being incompatible with science. It’s certainly true that for many Christian churches this conflict is real, but those churches are not Catholic churches, despite the most famous illustration of the conflict being the Catholic treatment of Galileo. I tell everyone who cares that Galileo was an aberration in the history of the Church (not the norm), but still, it was a colossal (though admitted) mistake. But for myself, science and religion are NOT in conflict. I’ve included a link at the bottom of this review to an interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer that aired on CBC Radio as an illustration of a Catholic’s relationship with science. Robert J. Sawyer is mentioned in the interview as well.

Back to the novel at hand: The reason I was taken aback when I first read this book was that it’s the first novel I’ve ever read in which the aliens believe in God. That in itself makes this book interesting enough to pick up. Imagine – an alien lands on your front doorstep and starts to question your doubts about the existence of God. Most science fiction portrays religion as something that is grown through or evolved past. By the time an alien species is mature enough for stellar travel, surely they have jettisoned religion? There’s no place for such a thing in a rational, scientific universe. Right?

Well, not according to this novel. Sawyer presents, in a very entertaining and interesting way, arguments for and against God’s existence. The main character (Tom Jericho) is a paleontologist who is dying of cancer. An alien (named Hollus) lands near the Royal Ontario Museum and strolls right in, asking to see the fossils. And off the novel goes. Jericho and Hollus spend much of the novel together looking at fossils and discussing various topics that range from the wide, including mass extinctions and evolution, to the intimately personal, like the approaching death of Jericho. I can think of no better way to present these topics than this lively novel, and I’ll recommend it to anyone interested in thinking about these things, no matter which side of the fence they are on.

Sawyer uses science fiction to create circumstances that make us readers think about important ideas in different ways and from different perspectives. That’s exactly the kind of science fiction I love to read, and why I’ll keep coming back to Robert J. Sawyer for more. I’m very happy to have had a chance to revisit this novel, and even happier to be able to award it our SFFaudio Essential designation.

Audible.com has published a few more of Robert J. Sawyer’s novels: The Neanderthal Trilogy is there (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids). They also have his Nebula winning novel The Terminal Experiment, published by Recorded Books. We reviewed it back in 2003.

Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God page: LINK

A link to a CBC interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Astronomer: LINK

Posted by Scott D. Danielson