Category: News

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis AUDIO DRAMA

SFFaudio News

Focus On The Family, an “American evangelical tax-exempt non-profit organization” has been creating audio dramas that I’ve been completely ignoring (probably unjustly) for years.

It looks like they’ve got some terrific source material and some solid acting expertize for their most recent project, an audio dramatization of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. More details |HERE|.

It may be that The Screwtape Letters was written as a response to Letters From The Earth by Mark Twain – certainly the two books take the epistolary form and are set in a Bangsian Fantasy world. Twain’s take was skeptical athiesm, Lewis’s was was rational apologetic. Call and response?

In the June 6, 1962 issue of The Christian Century published C.S. Lewis’s answer to the question:

“What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?”

Here was C.S. Lewis’s list:

1. Phantastes, A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald |GUTENBERG|
2. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA|
3. The Aeneid by Virgil |LibriVox AUDIOBOOK|
4. The Temple: Sacred Poems And Private Ejaculations by George Herbert
5. The Prelude; Or, Growth Of A Poet’s Mind by William Wordsworth
6. The Idea Of The Holy by Rudolf Otto
7. The Consolation Of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius |GUTENBERG|
8. Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell |GUTENBERG (ABRIDGED VERSION)|
9. Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams |GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA|
10. Theism and Humanism by Arthur James Balfour

Given Lewis’ stuggle with both Christiainity and atheism is it not curious that The Bible doesn’t show up on that list? Probably not. It may have been #11.

[via the Audiobook DJ blog]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Auxiliary Memory: Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick

SFFaudio News

Auxiliary MemoryJames Wallace Harris of the Auxiliary Memory blog has written a thoughtful review of the audiobook of Mike Resnick’s Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge. Here’s a snippet:

“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge is the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella from 1994, that was produced as an audiobook two years ago by Audible Frontiers. I read the story when it came out and remembered being impressed, but I just couldn’t remember the details, so I listened to audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Jonathan Davis, and now it’s etched into my brain again. “

Check out the entire post |HERE|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Sir Walter Scott Prize

SFFaudio News

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter ScottA neat story from The Guardian this morning:

He is seen as the father of the historical novel, so it’s perhaps only fitting that a new literary prize honouring the genre is to be launched in the name of Sir Walter Scott.

The £25,000 award is being set up by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Scott. They hope the award will help to “properly honour” the author’s “immense achievements”, and “place as one of the world’s most influential novelists”.

Find the whole story |HERE|.

I recall an attempted read of Ivanhoe when I was but a wee man. A quick search for some Sir Walter Scott audio shows that Librivox is on the case.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Comics: Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast as adapted by Petri Hiltunen

SFFaudio News

Has your hard drive got room for 19.92 MB of pure awesome? If so be sure to download this AMAZING 46 page comic book adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast as illustrated by Petri Hiltunen.

It is available in the .CBR format (which is readable using a piece of software called CDisplay).

Queen Of The Black Coast |CBR|

Like the terrific, but quashed, BrokenSea Productions audio drama adaptation before it (which is still available via torrent and on Archive.org |HERE|) this will probably make the Conan Properties/Paradox Entertainment goons lament their ghoulishly spurious claims on all things Robert E. Howard.

Most of Robert E. Howard’s fiction is public domain, including Queen Of The Black Coast. This awesome adaptation shows exactly why it should be. Great art is made by artists building upon the art of the past, not by ghoulishly hoarding licensees.

The Cover:
Queen Of The Black Coast -Adapted by Petri Hiltunen

Page 1:
Queen Of The Black Coast -Adapted by Petri Hiltunen

[Thank CROM!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Asimov’s March 2010: On The Net: THE PRICE OF FREE Pt.1

SFFaudio News

Asimov's Science Fiction - March 2010James Patrick Kelly, SF author, has been a columnist for Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine for “ten plus years.” His “On The Net” column is about Science Fiction on the internet. You know it’s a good column when it mentions SFFaudio (check out the February 2006 issue). His latest column, in the March 2010 issue of Asimov’s, is titled:

On the Net: THE PRICE OF FREE [ Part I ] by James Patrick Kelly

For it Kelly took inspiration for it from an audiobook we told you about back in September (you can get Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson for FREE). Kelly points out, with links, the many of the ways that a radical price, $0.00, is being used on the internet.

Posted by Jesse Willis