CBC Radio One begins re-airing Canadia: 2056

SFFaudio News

Canadia 2056Matt Watts, long silent (hard at work), has posted some welcome news on his blog

Canadia: 2056

If you notice a complete lack of publicity surrounding a show – if you hear or read absolutely nothing at all about a particular program – the chances are that it’s premiering within a matter of days. It’s CBC Radio’s anti-publicity campaign, their ‘publicity-nouveau’ if you will. If you think about it, it really challenges the listener to ‘discover’ programming. It’s rather brilliant and progressive, actually.

“Our silence and lack of acknowledgment indicates that some thing is about to happen… Maybe.”

But, for the neophobes who can’t get on board with this whole “anti-publicity” fad, and for those who have duly noted that the CBC Program schedule says that Afghanada is still airing on the 2nd of January:

Canadia: 2056 starts airing on Wednesday. Yes, this Wednesday, January 2nd at 11:05PM, repeat on Friday January 4th at 11:30AM. The first season will run through until March, and then the second season (the episodes we’re currently writing/recording) will begin airing.

Also, for those of you enquiring about CD’s of the first season: I think it’s safe to assume at this point that they will not be available for Christmas. I’m assured that they will be available for pre-order by the time the show starts airing on Wednesday… But if you go by my convoluted logic regarding the publicity for the show – if you don’t order the CD’s at all, they will arrive on your doorstep sometime last week.

As for podcasting… Don’t even ask. It’s hopeless at this point. The idea of downloading any radio drama from the CBC website looks like it’ll probably happen around the time digital media is considered out-dated and archaic. Incidentally, I tried to get the phrase ‘now available on the compact disc format!’ on the cover of the CD’s, but they didn’t go for it.

We’re halfway through recording the new season, which I’m really enjoying writing. Although the focus is primarily the characters and their relationships, we’re pushing the SF story-lines as far as we can… For the record, if you think I’ve stolen something from either Douglas Adams or Grant Naylor, it’s an homage…

Not theft.

(Fine, I ‘borrowed’ some ideas… But at least I ADMIT IT!)”

Cool! I’ll be tuning in for the re-running of Season One. Listeners outside of Canada will have to make due with the online listening service provided through the CBC Radio One site. It really pisses me off that CBC can’t get their act together when it comes to podcasting their in-house radio drama. Its the ideal format for the stuff.

We’ll be talking more about Canadia: 2056 as Season Two approaches.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. Free The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al!

Robert J. Sawyer @ audible.com

SFFaudio News

Audible.comSeven Robert J. Sawyer novels are going to be released exclusively through audible.com. Sawyer writes:

“I’ve been a very satisfied Audible.com customer since March 2001, and so I’m particularly delighted to report that Audible.com has jut bought audio-book rights to seven of my novels.”

The titles are: Calculating God, Hominids, Humans, Hybrids, Wake, Watch and Wonder. The last three there haven’t been released in print form yet.

No word on when they’ll all be released or who’ll be narrating them yet. The narrator definitely won’t be RJS though.

It’s kind of too bad they didn’t contract for his first novel (and my favorite RJS book) Golden Fleece, it’s a Hard-SF murder mystery set aboard an interstellar ship powered by a Bussard-ramjet.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Podiobooks.com’s TOP 20 for 2007

SFFaudio News

The Podiobooker Blog, the blog for Podiobooks.com, has posted the 20 most popular podiobooks of 2007. They are, in alphabetical order:


7th Son: Book 2 – Deceit
J.C. Hutchins

The Arwen
Timothy Callahan

Badge Of Infamy

Lester Del Rey


Billibub Baddings
Tee Morris

Crescent
Phil Rossi


Eastern Standard Tribe
Cory Doctorow


The Failed Cities Monologues
Matt Wallace


Forever Fifteen
Kimberly Steele


Full Share
Nathan Lowell

Half Share
Nathan Lowell

Heaven – Season 2: Hell
Mur Lafferty


Heaven – Season 3: Earth
Mur Lafferty

How to Disappear Completely
Myke Bartlett


The Immortals
Tracy Hickman

In The Service of Samurai
Gloria Oliver

Jack Wakes Up

Seth Harwood


Number One with a Bullet
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

Quarter Share
Nathan Lowell


Shadow Falls: Season One
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff


The Silk Code
Paul Levinson

As you can see there’s quite a few podiobooks that still need our attention. Which of these have you enjoyed? Which have you loved? Which have you hated?

Personally, I’ve got my eye on those Nathan Lowell titles.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC 7 has Blake’s 7

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC 7's The 7th DimensionWait! wait! Don’t miss it! BBC7 is broadcasting the Sci-Fi Channel UK’s audio drama series of Blake’s 7! This was the show we told you about back in May, written by Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovitch this series is morally complex, deeply noir, and sounding slicker than ever in its now feature length format (it previously aired in 5 minute segments). Go right now and get the first part of the first series before its gone from the site, starting with…

Blake's 7Blake’s 7: Rebel
Episode 1 of 3 – Approx. 1 Hour [AUDIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: December 26th 2007

Get it now, via the “listen again” feature.

Exiled to the notorious prison planet of Cygnus Alpha, the Federation thinks it has seen the last of Roj Blake.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Escape Pod for Xmas: In The Late December by Greg van Eekhout

OnlineAudio

Escape Pod has a Nebula award-nominated story about Santa Claus and the end of the universe.

Escape Pod - The Science Fiction Podcast MagazineIn The Late December
By Greg van Eekhout; Read by Stephen Eley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: December 25th 2007

They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile launchers, and a rounded cone emerges from a cavity in his chest. Once there were many silver boys, fleets of them, protecting the outermost parts of inhabited space against things that came from outside inhabited space. But now, there is only the silver boy.

“You, sir,” the silver boy says, “are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me.”

“My value system is hardly binary,” Santa says. “In between naughty and nice I’ve made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?”

And be sure to stick around for the closing rendition of Chiron Beta Prime.

Subscribe to the podcast feed via this url:

http://escapepod.org/podcast.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC Canada Reads and Nalo Hopkinson

OnlineAudio

CBC Radio One - Canada Reads 2008Canada Reads is relatively new tradition in Canada. An annual ‘battle of the books’ competition, it is organized and broadcast by CBC Radio One. During the week of February 25-29, 2008, for the first time, CBC’ll be podcasting the shows and you’ll be able to subscribe here. In the 2008 batch there’s one Science Fiction title. Brown Girl In The Ring by Nalo Hopkinson.

Listen to Canada Reads producer Ann Jansen talking to Nalo Hopkinson about it |WMV|.

Listen to Nalo reading a two minute excerpt from her novel |WMV|.

Keep track of the battle on the official site.

Also, I wrote a review of the audiobook back in 2004. Check it out HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. Free Apocalypse Al!