Stephen King – Page 24

Recent Arrivals from Penguin Audio

Wednesday, January 14, 2009Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Scott D.

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

These four audiobooks by Stephen King are actually reprints, I believe for the first time on CD. All four are novellas from the 1982 collection called Different Seasons. They are excellent stories, and they are read by one of my all-time favorite narrators: the late Frank Muller.

The Shawshank Redemption
aka Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
By Stephen King; Read by Frank Muller
4 CDs – 4 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780143143956

A man convicted of murder lives in a prison brutally ruled by a sadistic warden and secretly run by a con who knows all the ropes and pulls all the strings. Made into a movie called The Shawshank Redemption.

The Body
By Stephen King; Read by Frank Muller
5 CDs – 6 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780143143925

Four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. The film Stand By Me is based on this novella.

The Breathing Method
By Stephen King; Read by Frank Muller
3 CDs – 3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780143143932

A disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death.

Apt Pupil
By Stephen King; Read by Frank Muller
6 CDs – 7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780143143963

Todd Bowden is one of the top students in his high school class and a typical American sixteen-year-old–until he becomes obsessed about the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. The inspiration for the film of the same name.

A high tech thriller!
Daemon
By Daniel Suarez; Read by Jeff Gurner with Garet Scott
13 CDs – 16 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780143144441

Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can’t always be said for the people who design them.

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company’s stock price. But Sobol’s fans aren’t the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol’s secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it’s up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .

Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #019

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #019 – Julie Davis (of the Forgotten Classics, StarShipSofa and Happy Catholic blog) joins us for a potassium filled show.

Talked about on today’s show:
Forgotten Classics, The Hidden Adversary, Agatha Christie, Temptation, David Brin, Recorded Books, Sundiver, Different Seasons, Stephen King, Frank Muller, Daemon, Daniel Suarez, Microsoft Zune’s 30gb brick = DRM, Librivox’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Craftlit, Craftlit podcast, Another Beowulf & Grendel, Iceland, Greenland, The Fall, Encounters At The End Of The World, Antarctica, Chicago, Dreams With Sharp Teeth coming to DVD, Harlan Ellison, Voices From The Edge, City Of Darkness, Ben Bova, A Wizard Of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin, The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, A good book badly read: IBM And The Holocaust, Edwin Black (have a listen to a sample) |MP3|, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, Tony Smith from StarShipSofa, the worst news of 2008/2009: Donald Westlake is dead. The Hunter, The Sour Lemon Score, Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr Burglar books, Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Spider Robinson, The Hook, The Ax, Humans, Samuel Holt, Grofield, Lemons Never Lie, Hard Case Crime, Somebody Owes Me Money, The Risk Profession, Tomorrow’s Crimes, Anarchaos, Theodore Bikel, Westlake’s “nephew novels”, Smoke, Ross Thomas, Dick Francis, an incomplete but wonderfully annotated bibliography of Westlake novels, My Own Worst Enemy, Money For Nothing, The Cutie, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Robert Silverberg,

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

Friday, January 2, 2009Friday, January 2, 2009 Scott D.

Aural Noir: Review

This review was originally posted on Monday, November 14, 2005 on our now merged AuralNoir.com site.

The Colorado Kid
By Stephen King; Read by Jeffrey DeMunn
4 CDs – 4 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0743550404
Themes: / Mystery / Hard Case Crime / Murder / Reporters / Newspaper / Maine /

In brief, Stephen King’s latest novel is a good one, though I don’t feel it fits well into the Hard Case Crime mold. Details? Here they are:

Two old newspaper men, both approaching retirement, tell a female intern the story of a man who was found dead on the coast of the Maine island on which they live. They reveal clue after clue that they had put together along with a forensics graduate student that worked with police back when it happened. And that’s… pretty much it. No grisly private eyes, no grifters, and no real danger for the main characters, which is why I think the book is a strange fit for the Hard Case Crime line of novels.

Still, this is a short Stephen King novel reminiscent of an earlier King short novel called “The Body”, on which the film Stand by Me was based. There is much going on here between the characters. The old men are approaching retirement and are sharing their years of investigative reporting experience to the intern. The intern is eager to be accepted. The story of the investigation, the clues, the forensics – all extremely interesting in King’s hands, even though “action” is not a word that I’d use to describe it. The novel is filled with the depth of character that Stephen King is famous for, and I enjoyed it even though it was not quite what I expected.

Jeffrey DeMunn is the perfect choice to read The Colorado Kid. He read one of King’s earlier novels – Dreamcatcher – and also starred in what was easily the best Stephen King miniseries – Storm of the Century, where he got to use his excellent Maine accent. He used that accent in this reading, too, and as the island and its inhabitants are characters in themselves, DeMunn’s added authenticity was welcome and very effective. It is a gem of a performance.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #017

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #017 – Brian Murphy of The Silver Key blog joins the podcast and talks to us about his terrific blog, writing habits, and how vikings and rappers are alike.

Talked about on today’s show:
Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, Michael D.C. Drout‘s Beowulf, Neil Gaiman‘s Beowulf, religion in fiction, god in fiction, Stephen King, Carrie, The Stand, Desperation, The Regulators, Kate Nelligan, Delores Claiborne, Cujo, The Tommyknockers, On Writing, Duma Key, The Dark Tower, George R.R. Martin, A Song Of Ice And Fire, Roy Dotrice, Pandora Star, Peter F. Hamilton, Audiofile magazine, how being a truck driver is worse than being in prison (without audiobooks), Mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction edited by Allan Kaster, Fantasy, Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, The Wheel Of Time, Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, my fantasy fiction rant, “fantasy fiction works best when magic is talked about but rarely seen”, The Cimmerian blog, Mark Finn’s Blood And Thunder, Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Gentlemen Of The Road, Henry Treece, The Viking Trilogy: Viking’s Dawn, The Road To Mikligaard, Viking’s Sunset, Bernard Cornwell, Saxon Stories: The Last Kingdom, Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels, William Gibson, Neuromancer, The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft, Wayne June, horror movie: Session 9.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #014

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #014 – Plenty of exciting jibber jabber for you today. It’s a good show, as long as you define good very narrowly.

Talked about on today’s show:
Wall-E, our infamous Wall-E is a criminal post, Bolt, Bill C-61, Brian Murphy‘s review of The Halloween Tree, Poe’s Children, StarShipSofa’s Richard K. Morgan interview, Hour 25, converting m3u into MP3, Coeur de Lion‘s podcast, the difference between “mainstream fiction”, “literary fiction” and “slipstream fiction”, Peter Straub, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, James Wallace Harris’ post about Science Fiction as a religion, A Man In Full, Tom Wolfe, Mike Resnick’s Starship series, space opera, David Brin, Startide Rising, the impenetrable Kelly Link, evolution in art, William Gibson‘s literary journey, Charles Stross is for connoisseurs of SF, modern painting’s inaccessibility: Voice of Fire, on an child’s SF education: give them Heinlein, Bradbury and Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, The Call Of The Wild, Goosebumps, Gaiman’s signed poster deal, converting children to my religion: treating books with reverence, audio drama: Johnny Chase: Agent Of Space, review of Queen Of The Black Coast, amateur and professional audio drama, Colonial Radio Theatre vs. Broken Sea Audio Productions.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #011 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

The SFFaudio Podcast #011 – in which our desperate heroes attempt to display the manliness and fortitude, listing all the recent arrivals, and some recent listens.

Talked about on today’s show:
audiobooks, epic fantasy, science fiction, The Runelords, David Farland, Blackstone Audio, Brilliance Audio, Dragonheart, Todd McCaffery, Pern, Penguin Audio, Jim Butcher, Codex Alera, Furies of Calderon, Kate Reading, Random House Audio, The Widows Of Eastwick, John Updike, Peter Straub, Poe’s Children – an anthology, Stephen King, Star Wars – Millennium Falcon, James Luceno, Macmillan Audio, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Michael Kramer, Richard Stark, Books On Tape, Frank Herbert, Heretics Of Dune, the Alan Smithee version of Dune (1984), Neal Stephenson, Anathem (28 CDs long!), The Book Of Lies, Brad Meltzer, Ender In Exile, Orson Scott Card, Team America World Police, Sherlock Holmes Theatre, Yuri Rasovsky, audio drama, 2000X, Repent Harlequin Said The Tick-Tock Man, Harlan Ellison, Mercedes Lackey, Foundation, Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind, Legend Of The Seeker, SFSignal.com, iTunes, Infinivox, Guest Law, John C. Wright, Audio Realms, Shadow Kingdoms, Robert E. Howard, Fallout 3, and Team America: World Police‘s song we’re gonna need a montage!