I’ve been listening to StarShipSofa‘s Sofanauts reports on Worldcon 2009 so I knew Paul Krugman and Charles Stross were at the convention. But, what I didn’t know was that they had had a public conversation there.
Here it is |MP3| There’s also a transcript available |TRANSCRIPT|.
[via BoingBoing]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Escape Pod X is a new podcast audio drama series. Despite the title, the website indicates no affiliation with the long running Science Fiction podcast magazine “Escape Pod.” It therefore seems likely that Escape Pod X is merely using EP‘s cachet in order to ride some prestigious coat-tails in google and iTunes searches. Clever, but perhaps not clever enough. Escape Pod uses creative commons licensing, Escape Pod X is “© 2009 by Stefan Claypool. All rights reserved.”
Says Stefan Claypool:
“I am the founder and president of a performing arts ensemble called the Interstellar Broadcasting Corporation. We are a group of young adults with a shared passion for classic radio theater and contemporary audio drama. We have performed together for years under the moniker of the Middlebury Radio Theater, which remains active at Middlebury College. Since we have graduated, however, we decided to embark upon a new endeavor in the hope that we might have something else to offer the world of audio drama.”
Their first podcast episode, The Man Who Stole a Planet, is a re-working of an episode of the Mutual Broadcasting show Quiet Please. The OTR Plot spot calls this episode “One of the best of the series. ” I agree, the script is solid. This production however is not perfect. While the acting is descent, the sound effects are virtually non-existent. Music runs throughout, some of it too familiar, the mic balance is also very poor. This is near ruinous, I can’t hear one of the two actors in the piece.
Have a visit to the site, listen |MP3| to the first episode or subscribe to the podcast feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/EscapePodX
Posted by Jesse Willis
The first ever audio dramatization of Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast is available again!
Broken Sea Audio Productions’ fan produced programs were non-commercial, released for free, and 100% legal (being derived from public domain stories) had been unavailable for several months due to the “false copyright notice and we turn-off your internet” provisions of New Zealand’s copyright legislation. This is the same anti-judicial oversight provisions that anti-circumvention DRM lobbyists in Canada are asking for in the current Canadian Copyright Consultations.
But now two of the three Howard-dervied stories are available other than on Broken Sea’s website. Some fan seems to have uploaded two of the three BSAP Howard productions to the Archive.org servers. And a PirateBay.org search turns up a torrent version of the audio drama. It seems to me that given Archive.org’s size it will be better able to fight off any false claims of copyright ownership over the original stories than was BSAP, but I’m not 100% sure. The torrented audio drama is probably even more bulletproof. But I’d recommend that if you haven’t already you get them both earlier rather than later.
Queen Of The Black Coast
Based on the story by Robert E Howard; Performed by a full cast
7 MP3s – Approx. 3 Hours 30 Mintues [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Broken Sea Audio Productions
Podcast: June 2008 to December 2008
Provider: Archive.org
|READ OUR REVIEW|
Red Nails – A Tale Of Conan
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Mark Kalita
7 MP3s – Approx. 3.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Broken Sea Audio Productions
Published: December 2007 – January 2008
Provider: Archive.org
“Red Nails, a tale featuring the legendary Conan the Barbarian, was written by Robert E. Howard and began its written serialization in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales. This thrilling audio novella begins with pirate-adventuress Valeria of the Red Brotherhood on the run after slaying a notable brigand. She is followed by Conan and the two soon fight their way to a great, walled city inhabited by two warring peoples. The adventure seekers soon find themselves embroiled in the feud and mayhem ensues as the city’s rulers make unholy plans for the mighty Cimmerian and his feisty female companion. Listen now as an ancient evil returns from oblivion and a wicked sorceress seeks to gain immortality at the cost of our Hyborian heroes!”
[Thanks internet!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Canadian Copyright Consultations are being made available in MP3. But there hasn’t been an official podcast feed for them announced. So, I’ve made one using HuffDuffer. Let’s hope any new legislation to come out of these consultations doesn’t make such an unofficial podcast feed a copyright crime.
Podcast feed:
http://huffduffer.com/tags/canadian_copyright_consultations/rss
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Posted by Jesse Willis
More news out of Montreal and Worldcon 2009! Amy H. Sturgis, a frequent columnist on StarShipSofa’s Aural Delights is reporting that Audible.com “has agreed to sell” Cory Doctorow’s next two audiobooks without DRM!
Here’s the relevant passage from her blog:
“One particularly interesting (and, to my mind, heartening) tidbit was Cory Doctorow’s news about his forthcoming audiobooks. As you may know, Doctorow disagrees with the way in which Audible, for example, imposes its digital rights management [DRM] system on those who purchase its wares. When Little Brother came out, he attempted to negotiate with Audible so that the company would offer a download without DRM, but Audible refused, and so Doctorow’s Little Brother is not available through its site, which is the largest seller of audiobooks in the world. But due to the success of Little Brother, Audible now has agreed to sell his next two audiobooks without DRM, which will be the very first time Audible has ever sold any such files.”
[via Audiobook DJ]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Hard Case Crime has a near stranglehold on my paperback budgeted dollars. One reason is that they’ve got so many great titles that never get audiobooked. Another is their choice of cover art. A Hard Case Crime cover never fails to please. This is probably why I’m doubly excited to see they’re doing one book that is already an audiobook! Their choice for a December 2009 release, a classic reprint, surprised me and made me laugh.
Check out this accurate (but very misleading) description from HCC editor Charles Ardai’s email:
“It’s the very hard-boiled story of a man murdered by a blast from a sawed-off shotgun to the face at point-blank range; of a criminal on the run from Chicago who comes to a dirty Pennsylvania coal-mining town and winds up locking horns with the corrupt Masonic lodge that runs the town; of a Pinkerton detective who sets out to clean up the town; and of the doom that pursues a man across an ocean and leaves him at the mercy of the world’s most ruthless criminal mastermind. It’s a story narrated by a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, whose partner in investigating the twisted plot is a drug addicted private investigator with a brain like a steel trap.
And wait till you see the cover — Glen Orbik has really outdone himself here, with his portrait of a gorgeous, bosomy dame in a transparent negligee watching with horror as a man with a brand on his arm appears in her doorway.
And the author — it’s one of the best-selling authors in the world. His books have been made into movies, computer games, comic books; they’ve sold tens of millions of copies. He’s not someone you’d think of as a Hard Case Crime author in a million years!
Now, I can hear you out there, saying, ‘Come on, Ardai — if you’re gonna spill, spill already. What’s the name of the damn book?'”
Did you guess it?
Awesome!
The Valley Of Fear
By A.C. Doyle (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Published: December 2009
ISBN: 084396295X
-The legendary classic re-presented, Hard Case Crime style
-Edgar Award winner Leslie Klinger on The Valley Of Fear: “The first real hardboiled detective story.”
-By the best-selling author of The Lost World
-Inspired by a true story!
Here’s my own review of this book (from a now unavailable podcast version):
The Valley Of Fear is one of the least adapted of the original Sherlock Holmes novels, it has only appeared on screen three times, as opposed to the eighteen adaptations of The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Likely much of the reason for the disparity lies in the structure of The Valley Of Fear, which breaks the traditional narrative mystery to go into a massive backstory that preceded the crime in question, this backstory includes neither Watson nor Holmes and so when adapted it would have the primary characters off-screen for more than half the film!
Looked at as a novel and a mystery on its own The Valley Of Fear works very well. There are in fact two mysteries in it. The first mystery I was able to ratiocinationalize quite satisfactorily but the second which took me by surprise, it was by means of a clever misdirection. The story itself is set in 1888 London and in the USA a few years prior to the extended flashback sequence. In the first half of the novel Holmes and Watson employ their typical inductive detection strategy, then after solving the primary crime we are treated to a lengthy explanation as to how the murder they have solved came to happen in the first place. The second half, was inspired by true events and is quite enjoyable once you get into the change of pace.
Here are just a few of the audio versions currently available:
|RECORDED BOOKS| |BLACKSTONE AUDIO| |TANTOR MEDIA| |BBC RADIO COLLECTION (Radio Drama)| |NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS|
Posted by Jesse Willis