Rocket Science 1960 – 1962

SFFaudio News

The Fix - Short Fiction ReviewPosted on March 1 at The Fix: Short Fiction Review is the latest Rocket Science column, which covers 1960 – 1961.

Audio versions of Hugo winners from those years:
 
 
 
1960:
Short Fiction: “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
I couldn’t find an audio version of the novelette version, but the novel version (which later won a Nebula Award) is available from Recorded Books.

Novel: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
There are two versions of this – one from Blackstone Audio and one from Recorded Books. See Jesse’s review of both of them for the full scoop.
 
 
1961:
Short Fiction: “The Longest Voyage” by Poul Anderson
This one was included in a Dercum Press collection called No Truce with Kings. |SFFaudio Review|.

Novel: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Amazon lists an out-of-print version from Books on Tape, and Wisconsin Public Radio produced a 13 part audio drama for NPR, which you may be able to find.
 
 
1962:
Short Fiction: The “Hothouse” series by Brian W. Aldiss
I couldn’t find this one on audio.

Novel: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Blackstone Audio has an unabridged production, read by Christopher Hurt.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show – New Plan

SFFaudio News

A letter from the editor has been posted along with the latest issue of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. Editor Edmund R. Schubert says that IGMS will be released bi-monthly (used to be quarterly), the number of stories in each issue will be reduced to five (used to be seven), and that, instead of writing a new story for each issue (which he was having trouble keeping up with), Orson Scott Card will record a story for each issue.

The audio story he records might be one of his own previously published stories; it might be a story by another author published in IGMS; or it might be something from a novel-in-progress.

The latest issue, which went live just yesterday, contains text and audio versions of “The Man in the Tree” by Orson Scott Card, a story from the upcoming novel The Lost Gate.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Tantor Media doing Robert E. Howard audiobooks

SFFaudio News

Meego ConanA February 28th, 2009 Paradox Entertainment press release (in Swedish), indicates that Random House/Del Rey has signed a deal with Tantor Media to release the “CONAN” licensed Del Rey’s series of paperbooks by Robert E. Howard as audiobooks. Paradox is the parent company for Conan Properties International.

I expect Tantor to do a terrific job with these. Tantor already has many other public domain texts in its audiobook catalogue, including works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Of course this whole situation still smells godawful coming as it does less than a week after Paradox’s subsidiary sent another bogus legal threat to Broken Sea Audio Productions (a non-profit fan audio group). Hopefully the horrific stink CPI’s put on the CONAN brand won’t rub off on Tantor’s R.E.H. productions.

Posted by Jesse Willis

No STEEL REMAINS for Canada?

SFFaudio News

When I first read the email I thought it was refering to some new twist in the ongoing “buy American” campaign. But no, this is about Richard K. Morgan‘s newest novel (a Tantor Media audiobook)…

No Steel Remains (by Richard K. Morgan) - Audible.com

Steen Hansen reports…

“I signed up like a good consumer to Audible, I have 2 monthly unused credits paid for and finally I see something I want. But I cannot buy ‘The Steel Remains‘ [Richard K. Morgan’s new novel] even though I am in Canada.

Hmm, maybe I should just download it now and then buy it later…

Kinda got scared of the ‘Gay Porn’ label by some reviews on Audible, probably fundies, but nobody made a big deal about it on Amazon so I think it is not a issue. Who knows maybe gay porn isn’t that bad anyway.”

What’s weird is even after figuring out what Steen was talking about it still sounds like American protectionism to me. Don’t we have a free trade agreement?

UPDATE:

The |PDF| sell sheet for The Steel Remains says Tantor has “North American” rights.

Posted by Jesse Willis

CONAN attacks fans

SFFaudio News

Meego ConanAn intellectual property company has been harassing fans that were making audio versions of public domain Robert E. Howard CONAN stories.

They’d keep going, but the new fucked-up New Zealand copyright law will shut down their whole operation if the company complains.

Broken Sea Audio Productions, headquartered in New Zealand, has shut down all their Robert E. Howard projects after receiving another threatening letter from the lawyers for Conan Properties International LLC (aka Paradox Entertainment).

CPI is the limited liability company that claims all licensing powers over works by Robert E. Howard worldwide.

The whole situation is absolutely rotten. CPI is muscling a non-profit audio drama fan group that makes audio dramas and audiobooks, for fun, out of public domain stories, all so it can defend its trademark on “CONAN: The Barbarian” (the stories for which are in the PUBLIC DOMAIN).

Things might look different were it not for the horrendous new legislation set to be implemented on February 28th, 2009 March 27th, 2009 in New Zealand. The new NZ law makes websites that are accused of infringement subject to arbitrary-ISP pulldowns.

Here is the most recent letter from CPI/Paradox Entertainment |PDF| in its entirety.

What make this all the worse is that its an echo of a fight BSAP, in NZ, had thought it had already won. See, back in August 2008 BSAP received a similar cease and desist letter from the same firm. In that letter CPI threatened a lawsuit over the use of “CONAN” (for which they claim a trademark)…

letter1565.jpg

In response to it BSAP removed their unique, but still offending, “CONAN” logo and the CPI lawyers sent a follow-up letter. Saying…

CPI Lawyer Letter #2

After that, with the Conan audiobooks and audio dramas no longer displaying any “CONAN” label, all seemed well for the non-profit audio drama group. Paul Mannering, and staff, continued to cast Conan fans as voice actors and work on the script for a new audio dramatization based on another Robert E. Howard public domain work, Hour Of The Dragon.

Later, in November 2008, something rather cool happened. Paul Mannering got an email from the CPI/Paradox’s branding department offering BSAP a free “CONAN” license. It was to be a “royalty free” license too, that would forever keep a threat of lawsuit from CPI/Paradox at bay and allow BSAP to brand its Conan audio as “CONAN” audio.

But then, just yesterday, an unexpected email from the CPI lawyers arrived…

letter3a565.jpg

…dashing the possibility of a license AND renewing the threat of a lawsuit…

letter3b565.jpg

It seems to me that given that the Robert E. Howard stories are PUBLIC DOMAIN, that Howard is 73 years dead, had no spouse, nor children, that Broken Sea is giving away their productions to Robert E. Howard’s Conan fans – only one judgment is reasonable:

CPI LLC/Paradox Entertainment is being an asshole.

And that’s the situation as it now stands. All future BSAP audiobooks and audio dramatizations based on the PUBLIC DOMAIN writings of Robert E. Howard are canceled – or at least it’s all put on hold until someone can offer some legal advice to Paul Mannering and the Broken Sea creative team.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Hugos!

SFFaudio News

SFFaudio MetaLots of Hugo Award talk, as this year’s nominating deadline rapidly approaches (Feb 28 is the final day to submit nominations). We’ve got a page here at SFFaudio that contains a list of audio versions of Hugo Award winning fiction. We compiled it over four years ago. Things have changed so rapidly over the last two years that the page fell embarrassingly out of date, so Jesse and I are rebuilding it using nothing but twine and an old screwdriver. Oh yeah, and the internet. We’re including cover art when we can find it, so the process is slow – but here is the first part which contains a list of Hugo Awards from the 2000’s. Find it |HERE|. If you spot any errors or omissions, please contact the nearest authorities, and then zip me an e-mail. Our hopes and dreams include getting a new decade added to this list each week.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson