LibriVox release of Jules Verne’s The Fur Country

SFFaudio Online Audio

More happy CANADA DAY releases! Completed a full month ahead of schedule, The Fur Country is a lenghty unabridged novel from LibriVox and public domain audiobook narrator extraordinaire Esther (AKA Starlite). Set at “Seventy Degrees North Latitude” in Canada’s far north, this is one of Jules Verne’s least known novels. The perfect choice for a July 1st release!

The Fur Country by Jules VerneThe Fur Country
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
47 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1st 2007
“In 1859, officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company are given the mission to found a fort at 70 degrees north of the polar circle. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are not where they are supposed to be.”

Get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-fur-country-by-jules-verne.xml

Bruce Sterling’s The Hacker Crackdown gets podcast

Podcast - The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce SterlingCory Doctorow has started recording Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling‘s The Hacker Crackdown. The book is non-fiction, but deals with some speculative fiction themes. About it Cory writes:

“I’ve been podcasting my fiction since September 2005, and I’ve basically caught up. There are a couple of novels in the can that will be coming into print shortly, and some collaborative stories, but apart from them, I’ve read it all. So now I’m reading other people’s stuff — at least while I get more in the can. I’m starting with Bruce Sterling’s brilliant, seminal book The Hacker Crackdown, a 1992 book that recounts the events that led to the founding of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, my former employer. Bruce released the book as a free electronic download nearly 10 years before I did the same with my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This book changed my life — and the lives of countless others. It inspired me politically, artistically and socially. Last week, I saw Bruce at his home in Serbia and asked him if he minded my reading this aloud for the next 20 weeks or so. He gave me his blessing — so here it is.”

Subscribe to the feed or download |MP3| the first installment:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

SFFaudio Challenge title: Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse COMPLETED

SFFaudio Online Audio

Meta SFFaudio - SFFaudio Contest - Make audiobook win an audiobookScott D. Farquhar from Prometheus Radio Theatre has written in with some exciting news. He tells me that his unabridged reading of Alan E. Nourse’s novel Star Surgeon has been completed! This is one of the titles from in our SFFaudio Challenge! Scott took slightly longer than he’d expected to, but it was well worth the wait, the extra and attention Scott put into it has really paid off. The 1959 novel is now a 2007 audiobook!

This is one of those rare novels that tells its story from the point of view of an alien. One of those novels that make you dig deeper. It is the kind of Science Fiction that makes you think harder about human attitudes and prejudices, to really look beyond the surficial.

Star Surgeon is the story of Dal Timgar, a medical student, the first alien to attend a universally prestigious earth medical school. If Dal is to become the first fully-fledged star surgeon, he must fight the prejudices of his superiors, and then the rigors of an interstellar emergency.

This novel is widely respected by readers who’ve read it, and many think it represents Alan Nourse at his very best. In writing it, Nourse is expressing a subject dear to his heart as he himself was a doctor.

LibriVox Science Fiction Audiobook - Star Surgeon by Alan E. NourseStar Surgeon
By Alan E. Nourse; Read by Scott Farquhar
14 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – 5 Hours 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 2007
When Dal Timgar, of all in his medical class, was denied assignment to a general practice patrol ship going out from Hospital Earth to serve the medical needs of the Galactic Confederation, it seemed to him that his eight years of study in the great medical center of the galaxy had ended in failure. He had worked hard and stood at the head of his class, but Dal was different from his medical colleagues in one important way. Born on a planet of a distant star, he was the first son of an alien race to attempt to become a qualified physician of Hospital Earth. Dr. Thorvold Arnquist, a power in Earth’s medical council, is determined that Dal Timgar shall have an equal chance with his Earth-born classmates to prove his skill as a physician and to earn his rank as Star Surgeon. He succeeds in getting Dal assigned, under protest, to the patrol ship Lancet, where Dal is faced with the full responsibilities of a patrol physician as well as the hostility of some of his crewmates. As the Lancet responds to calls of all kinds on planets of distant and unknown star systems, Dal’s skill and judgment as a surgeon are tested to the utmost. But it is not until he is confronted with a dreadful decision, which he alone must make, that Dal faces the final test–a test that will determine once and for all whether he is ever to become a Star Surgeon.

Subscribe to the podcast feed via this URL:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/star-surgeon-by-alan-edward-nourse.xml

Scott also sez:

“FYI… I’m doing another edit of the recording to submit to Podiobooks.com. It will be mostly the same, but I’ve cleaned up some minor issues and I’m adding only a bit of effects in some places like filters for loudspeaker and radio dialogue and such. Nothing really fancy, but just a bit cleaner and slicker. If I get a little batch of donations through podiobooks I may just have to pick another one to read….!”

Way to go Scott! Your hear that everybody? As soon as Podiobooks gets a copy of the revised edition of Star Surgeon hit that donation button!

CBC R1: Dates for Steve I & Steve II, no word on JMS’ Al

SFFaudio News

CBC Radio OneCBC producer Joe Mahoney, on his blog, has dropped two dates for the summer 2007 rebroadcasts the two earlier comedy Science Fiction series he had a hand in making:

Monday July 23rd to Friday July 27th for Steve the First

and Monday July 30th to Wednesday August 1st for Steve The Second.

Unfortunately, Joe still doesn’t have have much info on when J Michael Straczynski’s CBC Radio series The Adventures of Apocalypse Al will air. Joe writes:

“…there was talk of taking the ten five minute episodes [of The Adventures of Apocalypse Al] and stringing them all together and perhaps broadcasting them as two twenty-five minute long episodes… on two consecutive Saturday mornings, perhaps. But that’s probably just idle talk and speculation. Plus it was designed to be broadcast in five minute segments… I’m not sure it would sustain at a greater length.”

Hey CBC honchos, why not make The Adventures of Apocalypse Al the world’s first ever public radio drama podcast? 5 minute episodes would work splendiferously as podcast!

Not only would this be cooler than hell, it’d be a great way to gauge the effectiveness of advertising a CBC podcast on CBC radio stations to see what kind of traffic flow such a campaign would make. I’m willing to bet it’d be huge PR coup too. C’mon guys we need our JMS!

Mister Ron’s Basement – Fortunate Island by Max Adeler

SFFaudio OnlineAudio

Podcast - Mister Ron's BasementMister Ron’s Basement podcast has completed the serialization of the 1880 novelette Fortunate Island by Max Adeler. Ron has even built a special webpage that makes it easy to listen to. The tale concerns a contemporary American professor (contemporary to 1880) and his daughter who find themselves stranded on “a mysterious island filled with castles, knights, and descendants of King Arthur’s kingdom.” Apparently, Adeler was convinced that Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court published eight years after Fortunate Island, had plagiarized much from his tale. Mister Ron himself thinks there are “certainly some compelling arguments to be made for Adeler’s case.” Have a listen and decide for yourself.

Fortunate Island by Fortunate Island
By Max Adeler; Read by Ron Evry
8 MP3s – Approx. 4? Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: Apr – May 2007
This novelette originally appeared as “Professor Baffin’s Adventures” in Beeton’s Christmas Annual (1880). All subsequent printings are under the title Fortunate Island

And don’t forget, you can subscribe to Mr. Ron’s podcast, and visit the basement daily, via this feed:

http://slapcast.com/rss/revry/index.xml

Audio Hugo Nominees

Escape Pod LogoEscape Pod continues what it started last year – they are offering audio versions of some of this year’s Hugo nominees. Available right now are these nominees for Best Short Story:
Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt – |MP3|
The House Beyond Your Sky by Benjamin Rosenbaum – |MP3|
Eight Episodes by Robert Reed – |MP3|
Kin by Bruce McAllister – |MP3|

And over on Neil Gaiman’s site, you can get an audio version of the other Short Story nominee, How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman