Basil Rathbone reads The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe from the album “Basil Rathbone Reads Edgar Allan Poe“, released 1954 by Caedemon.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Basil Rathbone reads The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe from the album “Basil Rathbone Reads Edgar Allan Poe“, released 1954 by Caedemon.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Mack Reynolds is an SF author who needs more attention. Unfortunately his non-public domain works, the majority of his work, are languishing, orphaned. Escape Pod has paired this less than stellar novelette with an excellent narrator, Corson Bremer, but even so it’s a less than stellar representative example of Reynold’s most thoughtful societal thinking. Expediter merely hints at the kinds of things Mack Reynolds could do. Come to think of it, what we really need is an expediter to make the still copyrighted works of Mack Reynolds available as ebooks (and audiobooks).
Expediter
By Mack Reynolds; Read by Corson Bremer
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: October 28, 2013
His assignment was to get things done; he definitely did so, Not quite the things intended, perhaps, but definitely done. First published in Analog, May 1963.
Podcast feed: http://escapepod.org/podcast.xml
Here is the |ETEXT|.
And I’ve assembled a |PDF|.
Posted by Jesse Willis
One can easily imagine a story like this actually happening at an upper-crust English country seat like the fictional Downton Abbey – Ruth Golding’s fabulous narration is spot on for this cute little “ghost story” by Saki.
The Hedgehog
By Saki; Read by Ruth Golding
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox
Published: 2012
The busybodies at a vicarage garden party invite a one Miss Ada Bleek, from the “Society for Psychical Research”, to have a bit of a snoop at their local ghosts – she finds a very large and rather pale one.
And here’s a five page |PDF| version.
Posted by Jesse Willis
First published in Fanciful Tales of Time and Space, Fall 1936.
Mr Jim Moon narrates this poem |MP3| by Robert E. Howard.
Here’s a |PDF| made from that publication.
Solomon Kane’s Homecoming by Robert E. Howard
The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town,
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life, roamed up the streets and down.The people followed wonderingly to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack and spoke as a ghost might speak:“There sat Sir Richard Grenville once; in smoke and flame he passed.
“And we were one to fifty-three, but we gave them blast for blast.
“From crimson dawn to crimson dawn, we held the Dons at bay.
“The dead lay littered on our decks, our masts were shot away.“We beat them back with broken blades, till crimson ran the tide;
“Death thundered in the cannon smoke when Richard Grenville died.
“We should have blown her hull apart and sunk beneath the Main.”
The people saw upon his wrist the scars of the racks of Spain.“Where is Bess?” said Solomon Kane. “Woe that I caused her tears.”
“In the quiet churchyard by the sea she has slept these seven years.”
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane, and Solomon bowed his head.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the fairest fade,” he said.His eyes were mystical deep pools that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head and spoke of his wanderings.
“Mine eyes have looked on sorcery in dark and naked lands,
“Horror born of the jungle gloom and death on the pathless sands.“And I have known a deathless queen in a city old as Death,
“Where towering pyramids of skulls her glory witnesseth.
“Her kiss was like an adder’s fang, with the sweetness Lilith had,
“And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood in that City of the Mad.“And I have slain a vampire shape that sucked a black king white,
“And I have roamed through grisly hills where dead men walked at night.
“And I have seen heads fall like fruit in a slaver’s barracoon,
“And I have seen winged demons fly all naked in the moon.“My feet are weary of wandering and age comes on apace;
“I fain would dwell in Devon now, forever in my place.”
The howling of the ocean pack came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head like a hound that sniffs the trail.A-down the wind like a running pack the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by and went into the night.A wild moon rode the wild white clouds, the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon, where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eery echoed call that whistled down the wind.
Posted by Jesse Willis
From Weird Tales, November-December 1941. Listen to Mr Jim Moon‘s great narration of this poem by Charles Baudelaire |MP3|.
Though credited as having been translated by one “Timeus Gaylord” we are reliably informed that this was a pseudonym of Clark Ashton Smith.
The Owls
By Charles Baudelaire, translated by Clark Ashton SmithIn shelter of the vaulted yews,
Like alien gods who shun the world,
The flown owls wait with feathers furled;
Darting red eyes, they dream and muse.In rows unmoving they remain
Till the sad hour that they remember,
When, treading down the sun’s last ember,
The towering night resumes its reign.Their attitude will teach the seer
How wise and needful is the fear
Of movement and of travailment;For shadow-drunken wanderers bear
On all their ways the chastisement
Of having wished to wend elsewhere.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Julie Hoverson recently recorded Riya’s Foundling. It’s a little Science Fiction gem from the hands of Algis Budrys and the pages if Science Fiction Stories, #1 (1953).
It’s a story about an intelligent cow (actually a cow-like alien being) that adopts a young human calf.
I’m not very much interested in the earthbound setup – frankly it’s weak – but there’s something very Alfred Besterian about the writing and the alien POV is really fascinating (and somehow familiar).
Here’s the audio, |MP3| Approx. 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
And here’s the |PDF| version!
Posted by Jesse Willis