Recent Arrivals – Page 22

Recent Arrivals from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Blood Oath: The President’s Vampire
By Christopher Farnsworth; Read by Bronson Pinchot
10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

In 1867, a sailor was caught drinking the blood of two dead men on a whaling vessel. He was pardoned for insanity and died in an asylum. At least, that’s the cover story. In fact, nineteen-year-old vampire Nathaniel Cade was secretly recruited by the president to defend the United States against “unnatural” threats. Cade is the ultimate secret agent, battling nightmares before they can break into the daylight world of the American dream.

When Zach Barrows, an ambitious twenty-six-year-old White House staffer, is assigned as Cade’s new handler and presidential liaison, he soon learns that the world is far stranger and far more dangerous than he ever imagined. Their mission reveals the truth about the real Dr. Frankenstein, a shadowy conspiracy within the government, and a plot to attack the United States with a gruesome biological weapon: an army of undying, unstoppable killers.

Enchantment
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir
16.7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

The moment ten-year-old Ivan stumbled upon the clearing in the Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed. Atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, a beautiful princess lay still as death, but a malevolent presence nearby sent Ivan scrambling for safety.

Years later, Ivan is an American graduate student, engaged to be married. Yet he cannot forget that long-ago day in the forest nor convince himself it was merely a frightened boy’s fantasy. Compelled to return to his native land, Ivan finds the clearing just as he left it. This time he does not run. This time he awakens the beauty with a kiss — and steps into a world that vanished a thousand years ago.

A rich tapestry of clashing worlds, Enchantment is an original novel of a love and destiny that transcends centuries and the dark force that stalks them across the ages.

The Bradbury Report
By Steven Polansky; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
11.7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

The year is 2071. It is a world very recognizable to our own, only now the United States has implemented a wide-scale, government-run cloning program that is tied directly to health insurance. Each U.S. citizen has a “Copy” living separately in a cleared zone in the Midwest. If an “Original” is sick or injured and requires surgery, whatever he or she needs is taken from their clone. In the two decades since the program’s inception, no person outside the government has ever seen their Copy or been inside the Clearances, and no clone has ever successfully escaped—until now. The Bradbury Report is a fascinating meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of as a race and society. It is a powerful work of speculative fiction, beautifully written, about love, identity, free will, aging, and intelligence that will linger with you long after reading.

The Musashi Flex
By Steve Perry; Read by Joe Barrett
9.3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

In the early twenty-third century, one of very few ways to rise above your caste is to become a player in the extreme martial-arts game known as the Musashi Flex. Now, three people will enter its violent culture.

Lazlo Mourn is ready to hang up his blades when his moves suddenly evolve toward a form of fighting unlike any the galaxy has ever seen. Journalist Cayne Sola is determined to get the big story on the games, and not even the most blood-hungry Flex fighter will stop her. Billionaire Ellis Mtumbo Shaw has everything money can buy except fame on the Flex fields of combat, but an untested drug may put that within his reach.

Their fates will entwine and be decided in the bloody arena of the Flex. And if they survive, their story will become legend.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals: More Stephen King from Penguin!

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Christine
By Stephen King; Read by Holter Graham
20 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2010

From the moment seventeen-year-old Arnie Cunningham saw Christine, he knew he would do anything to possess her. But Christine is no lady. She is Stephen King’s ultimate vehicle of terror.

IT
By Stephen King; Read by Steven Weber
45 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2010

They were just kids when they stumbled upon the horror within their hometown. Now, as adults, none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them all back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without end, and the evil without a name…

The Dark Half
By Stephen King; Read by Grover Gardner
15 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2010

Bestselling author Thad Beaumont would like to say he has nothing to do with the evil that has committed a series of monstrous murders. But he can’t-because he created it.

The Tommyknockers
By Stephen King; Read by Edward Herrmann
28 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2010

Bobbi Anderson and the other good folks of Haven, Maine, have sold their sould to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals: Jack Vance’s Dying Earth

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

“The Dying Earth and its sequels comprise one of the most powerful fantasy/science-fiction concepts in the history of the genre. They are packed with adventure but also with ideas, and the vision of uncounted human civilizations stacked one atop another like layers in a phyllo pastry thrills even as it induces a sense of awe [at] … the fragility and transience of all things, the nobility of humanity’s struggle against the certainty of an entropic resolution.” — Dean Koontz

“Cugel the Clever [is] a rogue so venal and unscrupulous that that he makes Harry Flashman look like Dudley Do-Right. How could you not love a guy like that? …. Judging from the number of times that Cugel has come back … you can’t keep a bad man down.” — George R.R. Martin

The Dying Earth
By Jack Vance; Read by Arthur Morey
7 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

The stories included in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisdom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes like Embelyon where, “The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues….”

The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun…. Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh—the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land … with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome.

The Eyes of the Overworld
By Jack Vance; Read by Arthur Morey
8 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

The Eyes of the Overworld is the first of Vance’s picaresque novels about the scoundrel Cugel. Here he is sent by a magician he has wronged to a distant unknown country to retrieve magical lenses that reveal the Overworld. Conniving to steal the lenses, he escapes and, goaded by a homesick monster magically attached to his liver, starts to find his way home to Almery. The journey takes him across trackless mountains, wastelands, and seas. Through cunning and dumb luck, the relentless Cugel survives one catastrophe after another, fighting off bandits, ghosts, and ghouls—stealing, lying, and cheating without insight or remorse leaving only wreckage behind. Betrayed and betraying, he joins a cult group on a pilgrimage, crosses the Silver Desert as his comrades die one by one and, escaping the Rat People, obtains a spell that returns him home. There, thanks to incompetence and arrogance he misspeaks the words of a purloined spell and transports himself back to the same dismal place he began his journey.

Cugel’s Saga
By Jack Vance; Read by Arthur Morey
13 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

“Vance sees himself in the tradition of popular fantasy writers, but his classic writing style is also comparagle to Homer’s Odyssey, and Cervante’s Don Quixote. Though the Cugel tales may lack the scope and pathos of the greatest adventure yarns, in the twenty-first century, they may be as close as one gets to the celebration of epic human perseverance.” — editor, Brilliance Audio

Cugel’s Saga, published 17 years after Eyes of the Overworld, is the second novel that features the scoundrel and trickster, Cugel. Again, Cugel tests wits with Iucounu and acquires rudimentary powers himself.

Rhialto the Marvellous
By Jack Vance; Read by Arthur Morey
8 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Rhialto the Marvellous takes up the personal and political conflicts among a conclave of two dozen magicians of Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. The shocking appearance of the Llorio the Murtha, a powerful female force from an earlier aeon threatens to unbalance nature by “ensqualming” or feminizing the magicians. This triggers a tremendous struggle for power and the other mages turn against Rhialto.

Hoping to reestablish his rightful place, Rhialto travels to other aeons to restore the missing Perciplex which projects the Mostrament, the constitution of the association. In his final adventure, Rhialto must, ultimately, travel to the very ends of time and space to confront an old adversary whom he had wronged and must commit further misdeeds to restore order.

Out of this welter of exotic politics, values systems, personal eccentricity, and magic, the figure of Rhialto slowly comes into focus and takes on dimension. He is a vain, apparently superficial man, not ashamed to demonstrate his melancholy to enhance his reputation. But he is courteous, patient, and subtle, even kind. He is self-aware and introspective as Cugel never could be—the wisest and most sympathetic of all of Vance’s wizards.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals from Tantor Audiobooks

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

City of Dragons
By Kelli Stanley; Read by Cynthia Holloway
13 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

February, 1940. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three-day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Miranda Corbie is a thirty-three-year-old private investigator who stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice—whatever it costs. From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor’s shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city—her city—seeking the truth.

I Am Not a Serial Killer
By Dan Wells; Read by John Allen Nelson
7.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

John works in his family’s mortuary and has an obsession with serial killers. He wants to be a good person but fears he is a sociopath, and for years he has suppressed his dark side through a strict system of rules designed to mimic “normal” behavior.

Then a demon begins stalking his small town and killing people one by one, and John is forced to give in to his darker nature in order to save them. As he struggles to understand the demon and find a way to kill it, his own mind begins to unravel until he fears he may never regain control. Faced with the reality that he is, perhaps, more monstrous than the monster he is fighting, John must make a final stand against the horrors of both the demon and himself.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Robertson Dean
24 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Robert E. Howard, renowned creator of Conan the barbarian, was also a master at conjuring tales of hair-raising horror. In a career spanning only twelve years, Howard wrote more than a hundred stories, with his most celebrated work appearing in Weird Tales, the preeminent pulp magazine of the era.

In this collection of Howard’s greatest horror tales, some of the author’s best-known characters—Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them—roam the forbidding locales of Howard’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.

Included in this collection is Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation—and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan,” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers—and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. Also included is the classic revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” as well as “The Cairn on the Headland.”

Beowulf
By A Group of Drunken Anglo-Saxons; Read by Rosalyn Landor
3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

When sleep was at its deepest, night at its blackest, up from the mist-filled marsh came Grendel stalking…

Thus begins the battle between good and evil, for lying in wait and anxious to challenge the ogre Grendel is a young man, strong-willed and fire-hearted. This man is Beowulf, whose heroic dragon-slaying deeds were sung in the courts of Anglo-Saxon England more than a thousand years ago.

Beowulf is our only native English heroic epic. In the figure of Beowulf, the Scandinavian warrior, and his struggles against monsters, the unknown author depicts the life and outlook of a pagan age. The poem is a subtle blending of themes—the conflict of good and evil, and an examination of heroism. Its skillful arrangement of incidents and use of contrast and parallel show it to be the product of a highly sophisticated culture.

This version of Beowulf is the translation by Francis B. Gummere.

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
By Paul Davies; Read by George K. Wilson
10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century of scanning the skies, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. The problem, argues leading physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, is that we’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way. Davies should know. For more than three decades, he has been closely involved with SETI and now chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. In this extraordinary book, he shows how SETI has lost its edge, then offers a new and exciting road map for the future.

Davies believes that our search so far has been overly anthropocentric: we tend to assume an alien species will look, think, and behave like us. He argues that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, and in this book he completely redefines the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact. A provocative and mind-expanding journey, The Eerie Silence will thrill fans of science and science fiction alike.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals: Robert J Sawyer

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

WWW: Wake
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jessica Almasy, Jennifer Van Dyck, A. C. Fellner, and Marc Vietor
12 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Caitlin Decter is young, pretty, feisty, a genius at math – and blind. Still, she can surf the net with the best of them, following its complex paths clearly in her mind.

When a Japanese researcher develops a new signal-processing implant that might give her sight, she jumps at the chance, flying to Tokyo for the operation.
But Caitlin’s brain long ago co-opted her primary visual cortex to help her navigate online. Once the implant is activated, instead of seeing reality, the landscape of the World Wide Web explodes into her consciousness, spreading out all around her in a riot of colors and shapes. While exploring this amazing realm, she discovers something – some other – lurking in the background. And it’s getting more and more intelligent with each passing day.

WWW: Watch
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jessica Almasy, Jennifer Van Dyck, A. C. Fellner, and Marc Vietor
12 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Sixteen-year-old Caitlin Decter was born blind. But, thanks to an implant in her head, she can now see the real world—and also see webspace, the structure of the World Wide Web. There, she’s found a nascent consciousness, which she’s helped bring forth, letting it, too, see the world for the first time.

The consciousness takes the name Webmind. Caitlin’s parents know about it, and so does WATCH, a secret US government agency that monitors terrorist activity on the Web (violating civil liberties as it does so). Caitlin is convinced that Webmind is benign, but her parents are afraid the public will view Webmind—which can now crack any password and read everyone’s email—as Big Brother.

Caitlin discovers that WATCH is on to them. She figures the best way to protect Webmind is by having it prove its benevolence to the world by eliminating all the spam from the Internet.

But Caitlin’s boyfriend accidentally reveals the secret of Webmind’s structure to WATCH. Armed with that information, the government tries to wipe out Webmind. Caitlin travels into webspace, helping Webmind overwhelm WATCH’s computers by redirecting all the billions of intercepted spam messages at them.

Webmind really is trying to help humanity, but Caitlin knows that they’ve only bought a little time. The dark forces of the government—the real Big Brother—will try again to wipe Webmind out. But Caitlin is determined to triumph: she’ll show them that her Big Brother can take their Big Brother.

Both of these audiobooks include an exclusive introduction read by the author.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #060

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #060 – Jesse and Scott talk about recently arrived audiobooks!

Talked about on today’s show:
Roger Ebert’s review of The Human Centipede, BoingBoing, World Horror Convention 2008, Salt Lake City, how the horror genre has changed, Hater by David Moody |READ OUR REVIEW|, anti-Americanism, Your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert, Awake In The Dark by Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert’s review of Reservoir Dogs, recent arrivals, Tantor Media, The Horror Stories Of Robert E. Howard, Pigeons From Hell, Worms Of The Earth, The Cairn On The Headland, I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, Dexter as a teenager, Columbine by Dave Cullen |READ OUR REVIEW|, the Writing Excuses Podcast, LUTE Brigham Young University, Mr. Monster by Dan Wells, The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies, science, SETI, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Goodreads.com, social networking that works, Beowulf by Anonymous, Seamus Heaney‘s translation, The Epic Of Gilgamesh BBC Audio Drama, RadioArchive.cc, City Of Dragons by Kelli Stanley, the Bish’s Beat blog, private investigation, San Fransisco, The Spanish Civil War, Brilliance Audio, High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz, The Tales Of Dying Earth, Rhialto the Marvelous by Jack Vance, Seeing Ear Theatre, The Moon Moth by Jack Vance |READ OUR REVIEW|, social science fiction, Tale Of The Thunderbolt by E.E. Knight, vampires, alien invasion, The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, Lifeforce, Vampires by John Steakley, what Steakley is doing with his novels (examining one small aspect of violence), The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman, Heist Society by Ally Carter, Luke Burrage’s review of Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God on the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, WWW: Watch by Robert J. Sawyer, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, the Nebula awards, reading the Hugo nominees, Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster |READ OUR REVIEW|, Lawrence Santoro, Eros Philia Agape by Rachel Swirsky, Blackstone Audio, Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, Stefan Rudnicki, Sleeping Beauty, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: Snow Glass Apples by Neil Gaiman, Snow White And the Seven Dwarfs, Bebe Neuwirth, The Dreaming blog, Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman, Nadya by Pat Murphy, werewolves, Poland, California, 19th century, Rachel In Love by Pat Murphy, Vampire Zero by David Wellington, civil war, The Bradbury Report by Steven Polansky, The Island, did Ray Bradbury write a cloning story?, what’s the best cloning novel you’ve ever read?, cloning doesn’t really live in fiction, Surrogates, Kiln People by David Brin, Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, Red Dwarf is a great hard Science Fiction series!, “what’s the best cloning novel?”, Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth, Bronson Pinchot, “shadowy conspiracy” = “secret secret”, The Bradbury 13 by Ray Bradbury, radio drama, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy isn’t audio drama’s best exemplar (The Bradbury 13 is), City Of Truth by James Morrow, satire, religion, The Invention Of Lying, This Is The Way the World Ends by James Morrow, PaperbackSwap.com, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense podcast, oligarchy, talking points, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Obamacare, “-gate” is not a suffix meaning scandal, the difference between English and French, words map the world, words are the magic in our world, ZBS Foundation, Dinotopia: The World Beneath (audio drama), Yuri Rasovsky, a kid who doesn’t like dinosaurs?, Blake’s 7: The Early Years: Zen: Escape Velocity, Robin Hood, Zen and the Liberator is like Blake’s Sherwood Forest! Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski’s City Of Dreams.

Posted by Jesse Willis