WWII – Page 15 – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #070

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #070 – Jesse and Scott talk about the most recent arrivals and the latest audiobook releases!

Talked about on today’s show:
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber, public domain, Brilliance Audio, Audible Frontiers, Scott Danielson’s Audiobook Fix, Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, Death’s Excellent Vacation, a new Sookie Stackhouse book, Charlaine Harris, True Blood, HBO, George R.R. Martin’s blog, A Game Of Thrones, “fat fantasy”, The Stand by Stephen King, the preface to The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition, Stephen King’s version of Hansel And Gretel, “getting lost in the world”, reading for ideas, characters are not ideas, The unexpurgated version of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, novelists are writing to the width of the supermarket paperback rack, Allan Kaster, as ebooks become more common book lengths will vary more, Outlaw Of Gor by John Norman, the movie version, Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente, the meaning of palimpsest, Aasne Vigesaa, Day By Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile by J.L. Bourne, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison is coming to audioook!, funny old Science Fiction, comics, Crossed: Volume 1 by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows, George Romero’s The Crazies, the 2010 remake of The Crazies, the “trixie virus”, the Reavers from Firefly, The Omega Man, I Am Legend, The Last Man On Earth, Upcoming Readalongs:, Assam And DarjeelingEarth Abides by George R. Stewart, Connie Willis’ introduction to Earth Abides, The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, going off the rails, the Michael Caine version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wayne June, Charles McKibben, The Essential Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Definitive Annotated Edition edited by Leonard Wolf, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Netflix Streaming, Netflix is coming to Canada, there should be a Netflix-like service for comics, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: Crossed: Volume 1, (get issue #0 FREE online |HERE|) you have to slowly build up your tolerance for Garth Ennis, “horrifically visceral”, DC Comics Hitman, DC Vertigo’s Preacher, War Story, Battlefields, The D-Day Dodgers, Neil Gaiman, The Sandman.

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

The SFFaudio Podcast #064 – READALONG: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #064 – Scott and Jesse talk with Julie Davis and Luke Burrage about The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester!

Talked about on today’s show:
Forgotten Classics, Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, Richard K. Morgan’s The Steel Remains, The Invisible Man, Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization, exploding volcanoes, Gulliver Foyle, jaunting as teleporting, BAMF, The Uncanny X-Men, Jumper by Steven Gould, Charles Fort Jaunte (is a reference to Charles Fort), Fortean Times, The Tyger by William Blake,Tā moko (Maori facial tattoo), religion, swearing, tabernac, future swearing, Louis Wu in Larry Niven’s Ringworld, the frivolity of the wealthy, satire, sailing as conspicuous consumption, telepathy, Paul Williams, The Stars My Destination as a “pyrotechnic novel”, the power of the narrative imagery, the audiobook (a Library of Congress Book for the Blind version), the heirs of Alfred Bester are fighting over the rights, transformation, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, “Most scientific!”, Alfred Bester’s years writing comics, WWII, the Wikipedia entry for The Stars My Destination, synesthesia, the long forgotten histories of synesthesia, Of Time, And Gully Foyle by Neil Gaiman, cyberpunk, a hard-boiled Philip K. Dick novel, passive schlubs, The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Pyrenees, the induction scene in William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew, a shotgun approach to transformation, The Stars My Destination as meta book, Peter F. Hamilton, the renaissance man, Classics Illustrated #3 The Count Of Monte Cristo, Fourmyle of Ceres, PyrE, (the inspiration for Pyr Books?), Napoleon Bonaparte, thought turning into action, our overcrowded future, Second Life, Surrogates, only in a cyberpunk future, retroactive foreshadowing, the 1991 BBC Radio Drama version of Alfred Bester’s Tiger Tiger, the old language, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Pyrene, cyborgs, wired nerves, bullet time, you can’t spoil a book like this.

Howard Chaykin art for The Stars My Destination - splash page 26, 1979

The Revenge Of The Cosmonaut by Alfred Bester

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #062 – TALK TO: Kelli Stanley

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #062 – Scott and Jesse talk to author Kelli Stanley about her novel City Of Dragons!

Talked about on today’s show:
Paul Bishop (of the Bish’s Beat blog), TinEye.com reverse image search, the San Francisco Public Library, eBay, Evernote, scrivner, Zotero (a firefox add-on), ABEbooks.com, comics, Treasure Island (California), Chesterfield cigarettes, hardboiled vs. noir, Roman noir, Raymond Chandler, Nox Dormienda by Kelli Stanley, Mystery Readers Journal, “the protagonist is fucked on page one”, James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Oedipus is noir, Blood On The Moon, noir western, Robert Wise, Deadly Pleasures Magazine, reviewed to death, cozy fiction, why the A-Team is a terrible scourge (it’s anti-noir), torture-porn, Paul Verhoeven, Reefer Madness, apologists for Robert E. Howard, Ashoka (emperor of India), Plutarch, 1940s, Hays office, Baby Face (1933), the history of fuck, HBO’s The Pacific, the wikipedia entry for “Fuck”, 17th century, enlightenment/restoration era sex toys, “the only words that are truly vile are the ones that are used to hurt and ridicule others”, femme fatale, editing, Minotaur books, the City Of Dragons paperbook, point of view as a camera, William Gibson, Tantor Media, the audiobook version of City Of Dragons, historical female private detectives, the perverse incentive of the California divorce laws, Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch, 1939 World’s Fair, High-Octane Stories From The Hottest Thriller Authors edited by Lee Child, WWII, a fan of the Spanish Civil War, Irish fascists vs. the IRA, Father Charles Coughlin and the Christian Front movement, communism, cynicism, Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Sacramento Street in San Francisco, Sino-Japanese War, the Rape of Nanking, Quiet, Please, marketing a book is up to the author, Decoder Ring Theatre’s Black Jack Justice, KelliStanley.com.

38 appropriate uses of the English language’s most iconic curse:

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Sherlock Holmes, Jack London, Hitler vs. Stalin, Alastair Reynolds

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

If there’s one public domain novel I don’t mind seeing endless re-releases and re-recordings of it’s this one…

The Call Of The Wild
By Jack London; Read by Jeff Daniels
CDs – Approx. 3 Hours 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: May 25, 2010
ISBN: 9780307710260
Sample |MP3|
Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild was written in 1903, but Buck’s gripping adventure makes for a thrilling listen on audio more than 100 years after it was first published. This gripping story follows the adventures of the loyal dog Buck, who is stolen from his comfortable family home and forced into the harsh life of an Alaskan sled dog. Passed from master to master, Buck embarks on an extraordinary journey that ends with his becoming the legendary leader of a wolf pack.

Now this should be interesting…

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London
By James L. Haley; Read by Bronson Pinchot
10 CDs or 1 Mp3-CD – Approx. 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 25, 2010
ISBN: 9781441758965 (cd), 9781441758972 (mp3-cd)
Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless San Franciscan in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling west coast—by and by playing the role of hobo, sailor, and oyster pirate. From his vantage point at the margins of Gilded Age America, he witnessed such iniquity and abuses that he became a life long socialist and advocate for reform. His adventures in the American wilderness and underworld informed his fiction, and his writing came to captivate the nation as it defined his era. Within his own short lifetime, London became the most popular, and bestselling, author of his generation. By adulthood he had matured into the iconic American author of such still-universally loved books as The Call Of The Wild, White Fang, and Sea Wolf, but in spite of his success, he was at war with himself. The highest-paid writer in America, he was constantly broke. Famous as he was for conjuring the brutality of nature in story after story and novel after novel, upon the actual deaths of his favorite animals he would dissolve into helpless tears. Sick, angry, and disillusioned, after a short, breathless life, he passed away at age forty, but he left behind him a glorious literary legacy. Award-winning author James L. Haley explores the forgotten Jack London—a man bristling with ideas, whose passion for social justice roared until the day he died. In Wolf, Haley returns Jack London to his proper place in the American pantheon, resurrecting the author of White Fang in his full fire and glory.

Made by makers…

Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World
By Mark Frauenfelder; Read by Kirby Heyborne
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: June 07, 2010
ISBN: 9781400117819 (cd), 9781400167814 (mp3-cd)
From his unique vantage point as editor in chief of Make magazine, the hub of the newly invigorated do-it-yourself (DIY) movement, Mark Frauenfelder takes listeners on an inspiring and surprising tour of the vibrant world of DIY. The Internet has brought together large communities of people who share ideas, tips, and blueprints for making everything from unmanned aerial vehicles to pedal-powered iPhone chargers to an automatic cat feeder jury-rigged from a VCR. DIY is a direct reflection of our basic human desire to invent and improve, long suppressed by the availability of cheap, mass-produced products that have drowned us in bland convenience and cultivated our most wasteful habits. Frauenfelder spent a year trying a variety of offbeat projects, such as keeping chickens and bees, tricking out his espresso machine, whittling wooden spoons, making guitars out of cigar boxes, and doing citizen science with his daughters in the garage. His whole family found that DIY helped them take control of their lives, offering a path that was simple, direct, and clear. Working with their hands and minds helped them feel more engaged with the world around them.
Frauenfelder reveals how DIY is changing our culture for the better. He profiles fascinating “alpha makers” leading various DIY movements and grills them for their best tips and insights. Beginning his journey with hands as smooth as those of a typical geek, Frauenfelder offers a unique perspective on how earning a few calluses can be far more rewarding and satisfying than another trip to the mall.

I always bet on the man with the bigger mustache…

Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin—the Eastern Front, 1941-1945
By John Mosier; Read by Michael Prichard
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 12.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 9781400117369 (cd), 9781400167364 (mp3-cd)
John Mosier presents a revisionist retelling of the war on the Eastern Front. Although the Eastern Front was the biggest and most important theater in World War II, it is not well known in the United States, as no American troops participated in the fighting. Yet historians agree that this is where the decisive battles of the war were fought. The conventional wisdom about the Eastern Front is that Hitler was mad to think he could defeat the USSR because of its vast size and population, and that the Battle of Stalingrad marked the turning point of the war. Neither statement is accurate, says Mosier; Hitler came very close to winning outright. Mosier’s history of the Eastern Front will generate considerable controversy both because of his unconventional arguments and because he criticizes historians who have accepted Soviet facts and interpretations. Mosier argues that Soviet accounts are utterly untrustworthy and that accounts relying on them are fantasies. Deathride argues that the war in the East was Hitler’s to lose, that Stalin was in grave jeopardy from the outset of the war, and that it was the Allied victories in North Africa and consequent threat to Italy that forced Hitler to change his plans and saved Stalin from near-certain defeat. Stalin’s only real triumph was in creating a legend of victory.

We’ve talked about it on the podcast, and here it is…

Terminal World
By Alastair Reynolds; Read by John Lee
15 Audio CDs or 2 MP3-CDs – Approx. 19.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Publisher: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 9781400117116(cd), 9781400167111 (mp3-cd)
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different—and rigidly enforced—level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint’s base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon’s own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police but by the very nature of reality—and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.

Death Cloud is the first in a series of novels in which Sherlock Holmes is re-imagined as “a brilliant, troubled and engaging teenager”…

Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud
By Andrew Lane; Read by Dan Stevens
3 CDs – Approx. 3 Hours [ABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Pan Macmillian Audio
Published: June 2010
ISBN: 9780230745124
The year is 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. His life is that of a perfectly ordinary army officer’s son: boarding school, good manners, a classical education – the backbone of the British Empire. But all that is about to change. With his father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously ‘unwell’, Sherlock is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire. So begins a summer that leads Sherlock to uncover his first murder, a kidnap, corruption and a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent…

[via Bish’s Beat]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Librivox: Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 030

Saturday, May 22, 2010Wednesday, May 26, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m still got several of the new to LibriVox recordings in this collection to listen to. But I’ve made a few notes on a few of them:

The Beast Of Space by F.E. Hardart is a tale of a woman hating asteroid miner who finds himself on a rescue mission. The writing is fairly clunky, but the ideas aren’t too bad.

Lester del Rey’s Dead Ringer is about an alien invasion by things that look like, but aren’t, human. The hero of the story, Dane Phillips, began gathering the evidence after a grenade tore the throat out of one of his buddies on Guadalcanal. This tale, as read by Gregg Margarite, is well worth a listen! In fact it’s a first rate short story, quite evocative, kind of The Twilight Zone-esque and would make an excellent audio drama.

tabithat’s reading of Herbert D. Kastle’s The First One is also worth checking out. Set in 2020, it features an astronaut who has returned from long space voyage. It should be a time of celebration, he is the first one to return, but after the parade a troubling uncertainty grips his family members – does it have something to do with the long frightening scars all over the astronauts body? You bet it does!

Pushbutton War, by Joseph P. Martino (a retired USAF Colonel), is a story about an Apache astronaut who takes inspiration from his grandfather’s warrior code to count coup on a hydrogen bomb. It’s a kind of Strategic Defense Initiative story but it also makes a nice companion piece to one of the Malcolm Gladwell-style anecdotes about radar screen operators and their ability to discern, in the blink of an eye, between enemy missiles and friendly aircraft. And I like the idea of a Space Apache!

It took me a couple of attempts to get into The Skull by Philip K. Dick. But with PKD you have to keep trying, so I kept trying. Reading along with the text helped, and after about 150 words or so I could manage the story without the extra textual assistance. I guess this is one of those stories that doesnt translate to audio that well. That said, once I got into it it was worth it. The Skull is a time travel story that makes a nice companion piece to Michael Moorcock’s Behold The Man. It’s about a future criminal who goes on a mission to kill a religious revolutionary from the 1960s.

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 030
By Various; Read by various
15 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – 6 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 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-030.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

As Long As You Wish
By John O’Keefe; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If, somehow, you get trapped in a circular time system . . . how long is the circumference of an infinitely retraced circle? First published in Astounding Science Fiction, June, 1955.

The Beast Of Space
By F.E. Hardart; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A tale of the prospectors of the starways—of dangers— From Comet July 1941.

The Big Trip Up Yonder
By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If it was good enough for your grandfather, forget it … it is much too good for anyone else! From Galaxy Science Fiction January 1954.

Cost Of Living
By Robert Sheckley; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If easy payment plans were to be really efficient, patrons’ lifetimes had to be extended! From Galaxy Science Fiction December 1952.

Dead Ringer
By Lester del Rey; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
There was nothing, especially on Earth, which could set him free—the truth least of all! From Galaxy Science Fiction November 1956.

The Doorway
By Evelyn E. Smith; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A discerning critic once pointed out that Edgar Allan Poe possessed not so much a distinctive style as a distinctive manner. So startlingly original was his approach to the dark castles and haunted woodlands of his own somber creation that he transcended the literary by the sheer magic of his prose. Something of that same magic gleams in the darkly-tapestried little fantasy presented here, beneath Evelyn Smith’s eerily enchanted wand. From Fantastic Universe September 1955.

The First One
By Herbert D. Kastle; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed … but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero…? From Analog July 1961.

Grove Of The Unborn
By Lyn Venable; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Glamorous Lyn Venable of Dallas, Texas, makes a first appearance in these pages (but by no means her first appearance in this field), with this sensitive story of a young man who needn’t have run. A contributor to William Nolan’s (Of Time And Texas, November, 1956, Fantastic Universe) famous Ray Bradbury Review, Miss Venable wants, very very much, to be a part, albeit small, of the comeback of science fiction that is seen today, as she wrote us recently. From Fantastic Universe January 1957.

The Hour Of Battle
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Megan Argo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
As one of the Guardian ships protecting Earth, the crew had a problem to solve. Just how do you protect a race from an enemy who can take over a man’s mind without seeming effort or warning? From Space Science Fiction September 1953.

The Man From Time
By Frank Belknap Long; Read by Norm
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
The method by which one man might be pinpointed in the vastness of all Eternity was the problem tackled by the versatile Frank Belknap Long in this story. And as all minds of great perceptiveness know, it would be a simple, human quality he’d find most effective even in solving Time-Space. From Fantastic Universe March 1954.

The Meteor Girl
By Jack Williamson; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Through the complicated space-time of the fourth dimension goes Charlie King in an attempt to rescue the Meteor Girl. From Astounding Stories, March 1931.

Pushbutton War
By Joseph Paul Martino; Read by FNH
1 |MP3| – Approx. 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
In one place, a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as Lief never dreamed of; from another, one of the descendants of the Caesars, and here an Apache rode a steed such as never roamed the plains. But they were warriors all. From Astounding Science Fiction August 1960.

Satellite System
By Horace Brown Fyfe; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Fyfe’s quite right … there’s nothing like a satellite system for a cold storage arrangement. Keeps things handy, but out of the way… From Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960.

The Skull
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen. But he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger’s skull under his arm. From If Worlds of Science Fiction September 1952.

Star Mother
By Robert F. Young; Read by TC Parmelee
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A touching story of the most enduring love in all eternity. From Amazing Stories January 1959.

[Thanks also to Wendel Topper and Lucy Burgoyne]

Posted by Jesse Willis