Online Audio – Page 278

A plethora of pleasures from BBC7

OnlineAudio

The next will be one of the busiest weeks ever heard on BBC7, with dramatizations and readings galore! Thankfully, all will be available through the BBC7 ‘listen again’ service. There are two novels by John Wyndham, a vintage Sherlock Holmes vs. vampire story (there have been severals by many hands over the years) as well as a rebroadcast of a popular new original drama (fans of which will be pleased to hear that a second series is set to air in early 2008)…

Undone
By Ben Moor; Performed by a full cast
5 Broadcast (5 Episodes) – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sundays at 6pm and midnight (for 5 weeks)
Edna Turner has just moved to London to work on a listings magazine and is naturally excited. Her boss is the friendly Carlo and while her bedsit isn’t exactly a palace, she gets down to work. An encounter at a music club with the strange Tankerton Slopes leads her to travel to the bizarre parallel city of “Undone” and a mission to send radical TV developer Marlboro Fagpacket back home. Read more about Undone on Ben Moor’s site.

A “gripping dramatisation by John Constable”, first broadcast in 1998 airs this Saturday…

Chocky
Based on the novel by John Wyndham; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – 90 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7
Broadcast: Saturday @ 12pm (rerun @ 1am) UK Time
Many children have imaginary friends but one father becomes rather concerned that his son, Matthew, is a bit old to have one. His concerns deepen as his son becomes increasingly distressed and blames it on arguments with this unseen companion. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the friend is far from imaginary, but is an alien consciousness residing inside Matthew’s mind—a fact that is of intense interest to shadowy government forces.

First broadcast on Saturday Night Theatre back in 1981…

Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula (AKA The Case of the Sanguinary Count)
Based on a novel by Loren D. Estleman; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7
Broadcast: Sunday at 10am and 8pm
Doctor Watson’s account of how the great detective Sherlock Holmes battled the evil forces of Count Dracula.

A “chilling” 1982 production that first aired on BBC Radio World Service…

The Midwich Cuckoos
Based on the novel by John Wyndham; Performed by a full cast
3 Parts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Wednesday – Friday at 6pm and midnight
Another alien impregnation theme – but this is where it all started – a sleepy English village may be the birthplace for the end of the world.

A season of four tales from around the world exploring the weird and the wonderful, first broadcast as a special commission on BBC 7 earlier this year…

Fantastic Tales – Hell Screen
By Ryunosuke Akutagawa; Read by Togo Igawa
2 Parts – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday – Tuesday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
A horror story set in medieval Japan in which a powerful Lord clashes with an arrogant painter, leading to tragedy.

Fantastic Tales – Alarm Clock On The Night Table
By Zoran Zivkovic; Read by Anna Massey
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Wednesday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
An unusual occurrence forces an elderly woman to confront a tragedy from her past.

Fantastic Tales – The White People
By Arthur Machen; Read by Ioan Meredith and Louise Collins
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Thursday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
An intriguing tale which explores the nature of good and evil and the origins of sin.

Fantastic Tales – Delhi
By Vandana Singh; Read by Shiv Grewal
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
A man living in present-day Delhi is haunted by visions of the city as it was in the past and how it will be in the future.

Posted by Jesse Willis

2 FREE shorts from 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

OnlineAudio

Two free short stories are available from the collection 20th Century Ghosts, the first, which is available as an MP3 is entitled Scheherazade’s Typewriter. It is a hidden track, a story tucked out of sight in the acknowledgments page – don’t look for it in the book’s table of contents. The second is Dead-Wood, which is available for free to Audible.com members.

Horror audiobook - short story - Scheherazade’s Typewriter Scheherazade’s Typewriter
By Joe Hill; Read by David Ledoux
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: October 2007
Elena’s father died an unpublished, unsuccessful writer. But his dream of literary success didn’t die with him, and one night not long after his passing, his electric typewriter comes banging back to life, spinning new stories all on its own.

Horror audiobook - short story - Dead Wood Dead-Wood
By Joe Hill; Read by David Ledoux
1 DRM’d download* – Approx. 4 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
AVAILABLE FROM: Audible.com
RELEASED: October 2007
If people can be ghosts, why not trees? After all, something that doesn’t know it’s alive, obviously can’t be expected to know when it’s dead….
*On Audible.com’s page for this story you can play the entire story in the “listen to a sample” player.

Posted by Jesse Willis

ABC Radio National airs vintage Australian Ghost Story: The Illumined Grave

SFFaudio Online Audio

ABC Radio National’s Book Reading show is airing a new season of nineteenth century crime fiction, from both Australian and foreign authors. The crimes this week are all supernatural and horror related…

The Illumined Grave
By Mary Fortune; Read by Bill Young
3 Parts – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcast: Monday October 29th, Tuesday October 30th & Wednesday October 31st
Broadcaster: ABC Radio National / Book Reading
Born Mary Wilson in Ireland, Mary Fortune traveled with her father first to Canada and then to the Australian gold fields in 1855. She lived a colourful and precarious life in colonial Australia, a life reflected in her choice of pseudonym “Waif Wanderer”. Fortune made a living as a poet, wrote articles and stories and has become known as the earliest Australian crime writer. The Illumined Grave appears to be one of her ghost stories.

After the Accident
By Edward Dyson; Read by Gabriel Andrews
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcast: Thursday November 1st
Broadcaster: ABC Radio National / Book Reading
Edward Dyson was born near Ballarat in Victoria in 1865, and he received an interrupted education as his family frequently moved in search of work. But his experience of growing up in the company of miners became a creative store for the short stories and poems he would write as an adult.

The Cask of Amontillado
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by ????
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcast: Friday November 2nd
Broadcaster: ABC Radio National / Book Reading
First published in the November 1846 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book which was, at the time, the most popular periodical in America.

No podcast feed is available for these, but online listening is available for a few days via either RealAudio or WindowsMedia streams. Check that out HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7 For Halloween Week

OnlineAudio

BBC 7’s The 7th Dimension has two ghoulishly good readings airing this week as well as a lengthy radio dramatized version of the most famous vampire story ever told:

The Fall Of The House Of Usher
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Sean Barratt
STREAMING AUDIO – Approx. 30 Minutes – Stereo – [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday October 28th and Sunday November 4th
Poe’s chilling short story about a family’s descent into madness.

Trouble With Lichen
By John Wyndham; Read by Joanna Tope
5 Parts – [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday through Friday at 6.30 pm and 12.30am
“Biochemist Diana Brackley and her boss Francis Saxover have discovered that a rare strain of lichen can slow the ageing process. Idealistic Diana embarks on a lifelong mission to ensure that their discovery will benefit man-, and more particularly, woman-kind. But the trouble with lichen is that there’s not enough for everyone…”
Directed by Eilidh McCreadie.

Dracula
Adapted from the novel by Bram Stoker; Performed by a full cast
7 Parts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday – Friday at 6pm and midnight (concludes Tuesday 6th Nov)
A chilling dramatisation of Bram Stoker’s vampire tale. Young solicitor Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania and his encounter with Count Dracula has unsettling consequences. Frederick Jaegar stars as Dracula, and the cast includes Bernard Holley, Phyllis Logan, Sharon Maharaj and Finlay Welsh. Dramatized for radio in 7 parts by Nick McCarty and first heard on Radio 4 in 1991, the director was Hamish Wilson.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox short stories galore!

SFFaudio Online Audio

A “few” short hidden gems from Librivox.org. Among their short story collections, now up to number nineteen, are some very good short Fantasy, SF, and Horror stories. These stories run from two and a half minutes to nearly fifty two minutes long. All are good for a short listen between audiobooks.

Bread Overhead
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Cori Samuel
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 25th 2007
The Staff of Life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings — and mankind had to eat crow!

The Masque of the Red Death
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Juan Carlos Bagnell
1 |MP3| – 16 Minutes
Death comes to visit a prince who is trying to avoid a plague.
Themes: / Horror /

Dracula’s Guest
By Bram Stoker; Read by Dimitri Fotopoulos
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A prequel to Dracula.
Themes: / Horror /

Ligeia
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A haunting tale of lost love.
Themes: / Horror /

The Damned Thing
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Greg Elmensdorp
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
It shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward….
Themes: / Horror /

Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Smokestack Jones
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A tale of unusual genealogy.

The Cats of Ulthar
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Feline revenge.
Themes: / Horror / Cats /

Charon
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Steven Collins
1 |MP3| – 2 Minutes 30 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Fantasy /
The ferryman Charon’s last duty.

The Music of Erich Zann
1 |MP3| Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Smokestack Jones
A college student wonders about the strange music played by an old man.
Themes: / Horror / Music /

In the Year 2889
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
1 |MP3| – Approx 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Verne’s story about life in America a thousand years in the future.
Themes: / Science Fiction /

Crossroads of Destiny
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Trask
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Science Fiction /
Parallel universes and a television show.

The Gifts of Asti
By Andre Norton; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| Approx. 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Fantasy /
Varta, the last priestess of Asti, lives alone with Lur, a telepath of the lizardfolk, in Asti’s isolated mountain retreat. Decadent Memphir has long since drifted away from the austere paths of Asti, and now the barbarians of Klem are sacking the city, and the smoke of its burning drifts up to the temple.

The Street That Wasn’t There
By Clifford D. Simak and Carl Richard Jacobi; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Science Fiction /
Classic pulp action.
Read by Peter Yearsley

The Hoard of the Gibbelins
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Mark F. Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Horror /
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man.

A World Is Born
By Leigh Brackett; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 52 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio’s men. Bolts of it fastened on gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell.
Themes: / Science Fiction /

Posted by Dave Tackett

LibriVox: Greylorn by Keith Laumer

SFFaudio Online Audio

More goodies from the LibriVox audiobook collective… Greylorn was the first published Science Fiction story by Keith Laumer. It went to press in the April 1959 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories. The 41 page novelette gets a reading by veteran amateur narrator Mark F. Smith. Smith may be familiar SFFaudio visitors as he was the reader for LibriVox’s releases of Tarzan Of The Apes and The Mysterious Island. The Keith Laumer blog, a fan blog for the late author, had this to say about Greylorn:

“It’s a typical Laumer story … My impression though is that it’s not one his best stories. It’s pretty cliche. It has a great prologue, a fairly good middle, but the end is pretty bad and not very convincing. Instead of a twist we get a story from the hero, in his old days, how he saved the earth in a not so convincing explanation of the events layed out in the middle of the story and in such a way that the reader is not interested anymore anyhow. There are however many memes in the story which can find it’s way to the subconsciousness of the reader, of which the trade of human flesh is probably the greatest one.”

Mark F. Smith says of it:

“Written in an era when radios used vacuum tubes, the scientific component of the story is quaint and dated. But Laumer makes the centerpiece of his tale the retelling of how, four years out on the voyage, his crew decides it wants to give up and go home when it meets an alien race… that apparently breeds humans in captivity as food animals! Beating the aliens, shanghaiing the crew, finding the colony and saving Mother Earth – just the ingredients for a rattling good yarn!”

Greylorn
By Keith Laumer; Read by Mark F. Smith
Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 24th 2007
Commander Greylorn has a problem. No, actually he has two of them. It’s not enough that the remaining residents of Earth have pinned their last hope of salvation on him and his mission. He has to find a colony that presumedly was established at an unknown star two centuries before and beg their help. But first, he has the small matter of a mutiny on board his starship, and people are trying to kill him!

You can download the MP3s individually, in one big zipped folder or get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/greylorn-by-keith-laumer.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis