WWI – Page 14 – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #067 – TALK TO: Dan Carlin

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #067 – Scott and Jesse talk to Dan Carlin, of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts!

Talked about on today’s show:
Hardcore History, Common Sense, the Rashomon effect, Gilligan’s Island, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, defensive reporting, nuance vs. talking points, BBC, NPR, PBS, Wikileaks, Common Sense Show #179 – GenX Journalism, the Martian political position, comics, What If…, Niall Ferguson, “counterfactual history“, “how different would voting be if there were no money impacting the political system at all?”, the toothless United Nations, the Canadian political system vs. the U.S. political system, the Congress Of Vienna, WWI, WWII, the Napoleonic Wars, the Rwandan Genocide, the Korean War, the Gaza flotilla incident, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq War, unilateral action, Panama, NATO, imagine if the United Nations wasn’t toothless, Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder” video, Grenada, a “muscular” foreign policy, “air on the side of reality”, Julian Assange, unreleased Abu Ghraib prison video, podcasting, “how cool is it to have an international program?”, Pierre Trudeau, “we live in reaction to you”, U.S. foreign policy, Barack Obama, first contact in Science Fiction, first contact in history, Despoilers Of The Golden Empire by Randall Garrett, Fransisco Pissaro, United States expedition to Korea, “Korea is a dagger, in the hand of China, pointed at the heart of Japan”, Globalization Unto Death, “the hermit kingdom”, Magellan expedition, Steppe Stories, an island off the coast of India, Commodore Perry‘s expedition to Japan, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Civilization (board game), Sparta, the freedom of podcasting.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Online Audio

There’s a new FREE audiobook version of Philip K. Dick’s 1953 novella The Variable Man available from LibriVox and superstar narrator Gregg Margarite!

Here’s the teaser:

“He fixed things—clocks, refrigerators, vidsenders and destinies. But he had no business in the future, where the calculators could not handle him. He was Earth’s only hope—and its sure failure!”

Here are four different covers from various paperbook incarnations of this time travel tale…

The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick - Covers

And here’s the audiobook…

The Variable Man
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
3 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 49 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 3, 2010
Predictability has come a long way. The computers of the future can tell you if you’re going to win a war before you fire a shot. Unfortunately they’re predicting perpetual standoff between the Terran and Centaurian Empires. What they need is something unpredictable, what they get is Thomas Cole, a man from the past accidentally dragged forward in time. Will he fit their calculations, or is he the random variable that can break the stalemate? From Space Science Fiction September 1953.

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

Podcast feed:
http://librivox.org/rss/4275

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and Diana Majlinger]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #051 – TOPIC: THE YELLOW PERIL

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #051 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Luke Burrage and Professor Eric S. Rabkin to discuss THE YELLOW PERIL.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (aka The Mysterious Dr. Fu-Manchu) – available via Tantor Media, fix-up novel, hypnosis, Sherlock Holmes, the yellow peril incarnate, the yellow peril as the hordes of asia, the Chinese Exclusion Act (USA), Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 (Canada), Tamerlane (the scourge of god), The Yellow Peril by M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, racism, WWI, colonialism, Burma, Thuggees, Boxer Rebellion, genius, The Talons Of Weng Chiang, if you read it as Fu-Manchu being the hero you may like the story more, mad scientist, Faust, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Robur-Le-Conquérant by Jules Verne (aka Robur-The-Conqueror aka The Clipper of the Clouds), The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, colonialism, The Invisible Man, the other colored other, The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman by Alan Moore, Hawley Griffin (The Invisible Man), Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde, Mina Murray (from Dracula by Bram Stoker), English 418/549: GRAPHIC NARRATIVE (Winter 2010), The Invisible Man shows I and II, If I Ran The Zoo by Dr. Seuss, Jonah And The Whale, Suess’ anti-Japanese propaganda during WWII, Japanese internment during WWII in USA and Canada, Aryan, India, Nazi Germany, The Thule Society, Sri Lanka, racial stereotypes, Marco Polo, Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, gender and skin color, blondness, Karamaneh (the love interest in The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu), femme fatale, Black Widow (1987), miscegenation, the Chinese hordes vs. the insidious Japanese, War With The Newts by Karel Čapek, Japan, LibriVox.org, Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein, beauty as goodness (in fairy tales), King Kong, Last And First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker, The Iliad by Homer, The Old Testament, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame edited by Robert Silverberg, Arena by Fredric Brown, Plato, the red scare, Jack London, The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, Arslan by M.J. Engh, Chung Kuo by David Windgrove, selective memory, polarized memory, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Encounter With Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes, China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh, Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It by Zachary Karabell, Firefly, Limehouse, London, Detroit, The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick |READ OUR REVIEW|, alternate history, SS-GB by Len Deighton, Fatherland by Robert Harris, Gorky Park, North Korea, the North Korea embassy in East Berlin.

The Yellow Peril

The Fiendish Plot Of Fu-Manchu (Thanks Gregg!):

Posted by Jesse Willis

SFPRP: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

Luke Burrage, in the first of two shows with me as a guest on Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, is reviewing and talking about The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Its a fun exercise, we run down the whole book and talk about other invisibility stories too. Have a listen…

SFBRP #078 – H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man
1 |MP3| – Approx. 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: SFBRP.com
Podcast: Monday, January 18, 2010

Here’s what we talked about:
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, the public domain status of the writings of H.G. Wells, Luke and Jesse in conversation, The War Of The Worlds, The Island Of Dr. Moreau, The First Men In The Moon, Luke’s review of The Time Machine, Sussex, invasion literature, mad scientist, horror, thriller, the village of Iping, invisibility, scientific invisibility, What Was It?, haunted house, the 2000 film Hollow Man, Smoke by Donald E. Westlake, the development of the invisibility meme, creating tension in a scene with exposition, Luke’s review of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan Raiders Of The Lost Ark story conference |PDF|, a Nazi monkey, Griffin (the titular Invisible Man) as an anti-hero, The Ring Of Gyges (found within Plato’s The Republic), invisibility as a cipher for moral character, invisibility is good for nothing other than spying, if you’re an invisible person you’ll need a confederate, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Miss Pim’s Camouflage by Lady Stanley, WWI, Invisible Agent, WWII, isolation, moral isolation, anonymity, Eric Rabkin’s point about, refractive index, albinism, the sleight of hand that H.G. Wells uses in The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, The Crystal Egg by H.G. Wells, Mars, long distance communication, what is the serious problem with invisibility? [the answer is a DEFEATER for any truly HARD SF story], the background for The Time Machine is Charles Darwin, evolution and the class system, the background for The War Of The Worlds is invasion literature, war and colonialism, Eddie Izzard‘s colonialism through flags, the background for The Invisible Man is personal responsibility, isolation and moral character, Thomas Marvel (the tramp with an invisible friend), the parallels between The Invisible Man and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fawlty Towers, psychopathy, sociopathy, the one ring’s invisibility, invisibility for burglary is only half as useful as you’d expect, imagine the Sauron’s ring in the hands of Denethor, Boromir, or Gandalf!, the filmspotting podcast, visit Luke’s website!

http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Miss Pim’s Camouflage by Lady Stanley

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s another LibriVox release that, had I not found something similar recently, I probably normally wouldn’t mention. The reader, Grant Hurlock, uses absolutely no inflection in his narration, so it’s not really a great reading. But, the book’s plot is kinda quirky cool. It’s very much like a 1942 propaganda movie I watched recently, The Invisible Agent; it featured the grandson of Dr. Jack Griffin (the protagonist of H.G. Well’s The Invisble Man), who decides to use his grandfather’s invisibility formula to spy on Nazi Germany. Miss Pim’s Camouflage, the new LibriVox.org audiobook, on the other hand, features a patriotic spinster who wants to do her fair share in fighting The Great War! She comes from a long line of soldiers, but, having been born a woman, she is only able to do her part of the “war work” by gardening in her onion fields. One day, too long in the sun, she finds herself having been turned completely invisible. So now this will be Miss Pim’s chance to win herself a VC by going behind enemy lines and spying on the Germans. Neat huh?

LibriVox - Miss Pim's Camouflage by Lady Stanley Miss Pim’s Camouflage
By Lady Stanley; Read by Grant Hurlock
31 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 7 Hours 49 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
Mid-WWI, staid Englishwoman Miss Perdita Pim suffers a sunstroke gardening & gains the power of invisibility. She becomes a super-secret agent, going behind German lines, sometimes visible, sometimes not, witnessing atrocities & gleaning valuable war information

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/miss-pims-camouflage-by-dorothy-stanley.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks to Barry Eads and Tricia G too!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Brighton Boys In The Radio Service by

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox What ho chaps! Now that it’s 1918 and all let’s all go fight in The Great War! It’ll be trenches of fun. Hey look our teacher thinks it’s a smashing idea! Even better, our parents seem to have no objections at all! Now we’re being trained by these jolly good officers! I tell you Uncle Sam is doing us the favor here. My don’t our uniforms look smart.

Yep. You see where this is going don’t you?

Early on in this whip-fast boy’s adventure the bad boy of Brighton, an evil sort named Herbert Wallace, tries to discourage Slim Goodwin, one of our heroes, from enlisting in the U.S. Army’s signal corp. He is of course soundly trounced by the school’s headmaster:

“Well, Wallace,” said the principal of Brighton, “I hear you’ve been studying up on military subjects. Intending to get into the fight?”

Herbert Wallace hung his head and muttered an unintelligible reply.

“Now look here, Wallace,” spoke the headmaster sternly, “where did you get the military manual from which you gave Goodwin the information that he could not pass the examination for the army?”

“I—I got it from the library, sir.”

“Got it without permission, too, didn’t you?” pursued the headmaster.

“Yes, sir,” said Wallace, in confusion.

“And didn’t know that it was out of date, and that the requirements were completely changed after the United States entered this war, eh?”

“No, sir,” answered Wallace, on the verge of a breakdown.

“I’ll decide upon your punishment later,” announced the headmaster. “See me here at four o’clock. Meanwhile, Wallace, be careful where you get information, and be careful how you dispense it.”

Yep. Almost 100 years after the event itself I’m still freaked out by the prospect of shipping off to fight in meat-grinder that was World War I. I find it hard to make a case for censorship. But if I was forced to write an essay arguing in favour of it I would present this book as my primary evidence. And since when should you get permission to go to the school library?

Still, narrator Tom Clifton seems to be having a lot of fun reading this adventure. He’s also added in some morse code transmissions with the actual sounds rather than just reading the dot dashes as they appear in the text.

The Brighton Boys In The Radio Service
By Samuel Frances Aaron; Read by Tom Clifton
20 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21, 2009
The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service is a boys adventure story set in WWI – Three College Chums join the military and face the perils of spies, submarines and enemy soldiers in the trenches of embattled Europe. An engaging story set in a period where good guys wore white hats, bad guys wore black hats and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger so you have to come back for more!

Podcast feed:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-brighton-boys-in-the-radio-service-by-james-driscoll.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis