BBC Radio 5 + RA.cc: Hergé’s The Adventures Of Tintin

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Adventures of Tintin RADIO DRAMAWhen I was a little boy my best friend was the son of my dad’s best friend. When I met him he had just immigrated to British Columbia from France with his mom and dad. I lived in a house by the government dock and they lived on their sailboat. The same sailboat that they’d emigrated in. He spoke only French. I spoke only English. But that didn’t matter. I taught him English over the summer. We had a long stretch of beach to play on. We’d make sand castles, sand dykes and dams. We’d build rafts out of random beach flotsam. We collect shells and seagull feathers (I figured if we gathered enough feathers we could make a floatplane. Then, in the evenings, while my dad and his dad talked adult talk, smoked pot and drank beer, Gaël and I would share our comics. I would show him my English Batmans and Supermans, he showed me his French Lucky Lukes, Asterices, and Tintins.

Sometime after my father died and I moved north, I learned that Gaël, who I’d eventually lost touch with, had changed his name to Jeff. I miss that kid.

I haven’t seen any audio versions of Asterix, and Lucky Luke is quite scarce these days, but Tintin is available in radio drama form:

The Adventures Of Tintin

In these productions Tintin doesn’t have a French (or Belgian) accent, and his dog, Snowy, is more talkative than I remember him being in the comics. Nevertheless, this is still a fun series – especially as something to listen to after reading the comics. The shows are all only 30 minutes long, except for the two part episodes, The Calculus Affair and The Red Sea Sharks. A half-hour is really far too short to include every panel of dialogue and hour is better.

The Adventures Of Tintin

You can get all 13 episode of both seasons (and the special) by torrent over at RadioArchive.cc.

The Adventures Of Tintin – The Black Island
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Secret Of The Unicorn
The Adventures Of Tintin – Red Rackham’s Treasure
The Adventures Of Tintin – Destination Moon
The Adventures Of Tintin – Explorers On The Moon
The Adventures Of Tintin – Tintin In Tibet
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Seven Crystal Balls
The Adventures Of Tintin – Prisoners Of The Sun
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Calculus Affair – Part 01
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Calculus Affair – Part 02
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Red Sea Sharks – Part 01
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Red Sea Sharks – Part 02
The Adventures Of Tintin – The Castafiore Emerald

For more information on this series visit Tintinologist.org.

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE @ Audible.com: A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

SFFaudio Online Audio

Hot on the heels of the FREE Ringworld download from yesterday comes another FREE classic novel of a very different and wonderful kind of fantastik. A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole would never have been published had the author’s mother not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript after her son’s 1969 suicide at age 31. She took it to Loyola University in New Orleans and demanded someone read it. Reluctantly, Walker Percy (himself an author), began to read through the manuscript. He became more and more captivated with each page. When the book was eventually published in 1980 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!

Blackstone Audio - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy TooleA Confederacy of Dunces: Free Version
By John Kennedy Toole; Read by Barrett Whitener
FREE Audible Download – Approx. 13 Hours 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2005
Provider: Audible.com
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.

So enters one of the most memorable characters in recent American fiction: Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths.

This offer expires December 15, 2009.

[via Audible.com’s Twitter feed]

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4: The Ingoldsby Legends by Richard Harris Barham

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Radio Times - The Ingoldsby Legends - reviewed by Danny ScottBBC Radio 4Apparently the Radio Times pre-Christmas issues are on sale a bit earlier than the normal ‘one week ahead’ of schedule. So, thanks to that, we’ve got data from that early issue for the week of December 12-18, 2009 and it has one article that BBC Radio 4 fans will be definitely interested in reading.

According to Wikipedia: Richard Harris Barham (1788 – 1845) was an English novelist, humorous poet, and a Cardinal in the Church of England. But in the 19th century he was better known by his nom de plume: Thomas Ingoldsby.

In 1837 Barham began a series of stories published in Bentley’s Miscellany (a magazine then edited by Charles Dickens). Described as “grotesque metrical tales” The Ingoldsby Legends became very popular and were later collected into a book.

BBC Radio 4 - The Ingoldsby Legends by Richard Harris BarhamThe Ingoldsby Legends
By Richard Harris Barham; Read by Nicholas Murchie and Lucy Robinson
10 Broadcasts – Approx. 2 Hours 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: December 14-18 and 21-25, 2009 @ 22:45-23:00
A collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry supposedly written by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, but actually penned by the Rev. Richard Barham, first published in book form in 1840.

Stories included:
The Leech of Folkestone
In the depths of Romney Marsh, an avaricious woman, bored with her tedious husband, plots with her doctor to rid herself of her spouse. But it seems that more than normal medication is to be employed.
-First published in 1840.

Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie: A Legend Of Shropshire
A grisly and comic poetic tale concerning a local Bluebeard, intent on causing havoc wherever he roams.

Jerry Jarvis’ Wig: A Legend of the Weald of Kent
Is it possible for a wig to be possessed? And can it, in turn, possess a person foolish enough to wear it?
-First published in Bentley’s Miscellany May 1843.

The Specter Of Tappington
-Adapted into an episode of Weird Circle (1945) |MP3|
-Reprinted in Weird Tales October 1928.

The rest of the “Legends” are detailed over on the Wikipedia entry.

[Thanks Roy]

Posted by Jesse Willis

SpeakingVolumes: Roger Zelazny read by Roger Zelazny

SFFaudio News

SpeakingVolumes.usNeill Smith sez:

“…two Roger Zelazny audiobooks … have become available in unabridged form on CDs – Nine Princes In Amber and A Night In Lonesome October as originally read by Roger. You may know about these (and future Zelazny unabridged titles to finally be rereleased) but I just happened on the news. If you don’t know, the company is Speaking Volumes. I got the news from the newsgroup alt.books.roger-zelazny on Google. According to Chris Kovacs on this group, the releases will include Roger’s readings of Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows which were not released in unabridged form on cassettes.”

It looks like Speaking Volumes will have quite a number of Roger Zelazny audiobooks published! But this new publisher doesn’t only have Zelazny, Speaking Volumes is doing some other titles that look very cool:

Medicine Cup / Microbe by Bill Clem (two medical thrillers paired as double novel along the lines of the old Ace and Tor doubles)

Three novels by Max Allan Collins novels

We’re going to try to get some of these in as review copies too.

[Thanks Neill!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

This Week in Tech, Windows Weekly, MacBreak Weekly

SFFaudio Online Audio

Windows WeeklyMacBreak WeeklyThis Week in Tech - TWiTIs it kind of sick that I listen to the Windows Weekly and MacBreak Weekly podcasts mostly for their Audible.com commercials?

While listening to the latest Windows Weekly show Leo Laporte referenced a recent episode of This Week In Tech (TWiT) (#223) in which they had SF author Jerry Pournelle as a guest. Now I’m going to have to add yet another TWiT show to my podcatcher. Here’s the Jerry Pournelle episode |MP3|

MacBreak Weekly Podcast feed: http://leoville.tv/podcasts/mbw.xml
Windows Weekly Podcast feed: http://leoville.tv/podcasts/ww.xml
This Week in Tech Podcast feed: http://leoville.tv/podcasts/twit.xml

[via my mom]

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE @ Audible.com: RINGWORLD by Larry Niven

SFFaudio Online Audio

Drop that tasp and grab this link! I’ve got a FREE and UNABRIDGED version of Larry Niven’s Ringworld! You’ll need an Audible.com account. Hurry now, there’s no telling when this offer will dry up so grab it while you can!

Audible.com - Ringworld by Larry Niven (Blackstone Audio)Ringworld: Free Version
By Larry Niven; Read by Tom Parker (aka Grover Gardner)
FREE Audible Download – Approx. 11 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 1996
Provider: Audible.com
Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. It is 93 million miles in radius – the equivalent of one Earth orbit or 600 miles long – 1,000 meters thick, and much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. What other advantages are there to this world? The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping.

Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld won the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmars, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.

|READ OUR REVIEW|

[via This Week In Tech]

Posted by Jesse Willis