Online Audio – Page 21

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood FREE AUDIOBOOK (for a limited time)

SFFaudio Online Audio

My favourite audiobook narrator, Wayne June, has recorded and released as a FREE MP3 AUDIOBOOK one of the greatest horror tales ever written.

The Willows was H.P. Lovecraft’s favourite story. He wrote this about it:

“In delineating the extremes of stark fear, yet infinitely more closely wedded to the idea of an unreal world constantly pressing upon ours is the inspired and prolific Algernon Blackwood, amidst whose voluminous and uneven work may be found some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age. Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood’s genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences, or the preternatural insight with which he builds up detail by detail the complete sensations and perceptions leading from reality into supernormal life or vision. Without notable command of the poetic witchery of mere words, he is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere; and can evoke what amounts almost to a story from a simple fragment of humourless psychological description. Above all others he understands how fully some sensitive minds dwell forever on the borderland of dream, and how relatively slight is the distinction betwixt those images formed from actual objects and those excited by the play of the imagination.

Foremost of all [his works] must be reckoned The Willows, in which the nameless presences on a desolate Danube island are horribly felt and recognised by a pair of idle voyagers. Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a, single strained passage or a single false note.”

Get the complete audiobook of The Willows, it’s two hours in six chapters, HERE.

But hurry, the FREE version will soon become the pay version.

And if you like what you hear in The Willows be sure to check out one of the greatest novels you’ve never read, The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson – Wayne June’s reading of it is unbelievably great.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. An illustrated |PDF| of The Willows is available too!

The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany

Very comparable in theme to H.G. Wells’ The Door In The Wall is The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany. It’s a Fantasy about the silliest young man in Business, and his foolish acquisition of a small leaded glass window from an oriental vagrant. It was first published in Saturday Review (UK), February 4, 1911.

And here’s the cleaned up LibriVox version, read by Greg Elmensdorp. |MP3| Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany |PDF| 11 Pages

The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany |PDF| 4 Pages

Posted by Jesse Willis

The City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Online Audio

The City In The Sea

The City in the Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

Here’s the audio, as narrated by Mister Jim Moon:

The City In The Sea was published in this form in the Broadway Journal, August 30, 1845:

The City In The Sea: A Prophecy by Edgar Allan Poe

The City In The Sea

Posted by Jesse Willis

Dark Waters by M. Ludington Cain

SFFaudio Online Audio

First published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1947, this poem has never been reprinted.

Dark Waters
by M. Ludington Cain

The spring moon swells the river,
The Waters clutch like hands
Where willow branches quiver
Above the pebbly sands.

But no moon knows the secret
The swirling waters keep,
And whether the moon is new or full
The waters are dark and deep.

The summer moonlight lingers
On shimmering grasses there,
The zephyr’s gentle fingers
Comb out their shining hair….

But no moon saw the gypsies come,
And no moon saw them go,
And only the midnight shadows
Guess what the waters know-

Some say there was a lover,
Some say there was a child,
But whatever the shadows cover,
The waters are dark and wild.

Dark Waters by M. Ludington Cain - from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1947

Listen to Mister Jim Moon‘s reading of it: |MP3|

And here’s a |PDF|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Death by Clarence E. Flynn

SFFaudio Online Audio

First published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1947, this short poem has never been reprinted.

DEATH
by Clarence E. Flynn

Why do you fear me?
I am your friend.
I but guide trav’lers
Rounding the bend-
Lead them to freedom
From time and age,
Help them start writing
On a new page….

Seek for me never,
Keep your course true-
When I am needed
I’ll come to you,
Then I will show you
Roads without end-
Why do you fear me?
I am your friend.