Recent Arrivals

Recent Arrival from Macmillan Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Big science fiction from David Weber!

By Schism Rent Asunder
By David Weber; Read by Oliver Wyman
20 CDs – 25.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781427204295

The world has changed. The mercantile kingdom of Charis has prevailed over the alliance designed to exterminate it. Armed with a multitude of small technological improvements—better sailing vessels, better guns, better devices of all sorts—Charis faced the combined navies of the rest of the world at Darcos Sound and Armageddon Reef, and broke them. Despite the implacable hostility of the Church of God Awaiting, Charis still stands, still free, still tolerant, still an island of innovation in a world in which the Church has worked for centuries to keep humanity locked at a medieval level of existence.

But the powerful men who run the Church aren’t going to take their defeat lying down. Charis may control the world’s seas, but it barely has an army worthy of the name. And as King Cayleb knows, far too much of the kingdom’s recent good fortune is due to the secret manipulations of the being that calls himself Merlin—a being that, the world must not find out too soon, is more than human. A being whose very existence is the result of a centuries-ago final desperate roll of the dice. A being on whose shoulders rests the last chance for humanity’s freedom.

Now, as Charis and its archbishop make the rift with Mother Church explicit, the storm gathers. Schism has come to the world of Safehold. Nothing will ever be the same.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals – Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

A pentaverate from Blackstone Audio! :)

Journey to the Center of the Earth
By Jules Verne; Read by Simon Prebble
7 CDs – 7.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433243806

Geologist Otto Lidenbrock is perusing an ancient Icelandic manuscript when he discovers a mysterious encrypted note. The message reveals the account of a sixteenth-century explorer who claims to have found a passageway to the center of the earth.

In his quest to penetrate the planet’s primordial secrets, the impetuous professor, together with his quaking nephew, Axel, and their devoted guide, Hans, sets off immediately for Iceland. Descending through the belly of a volcano into the bowels of the Earth, they discover an astonishing subterranean world of prehistoric proportions.

A classic of science fiction that helped give birth to the genre, this imaginative speculation on the earth’s nature is both a rousing adventure story and an apt portrait of the psychology of the questing scientist.

Wyrms
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Emily Janice Card
9 CDs – 11.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433218542

The sphere is alien in origin but has been controlled by Man for millennia. A legend as old as the stars rules this constructed world: when the seventh seventh seventh human heptarch is crowned, he will be the Kristos and will bring either salvation or destruction.

Patience is the only daughter of the rightful heptarch, but she, like her father, serves the usurper who has destroyed her family, for she believes that duty to one’s race is more important than duty to one’s self. But the time for prudence has passed, and Patience must journey to the heart-soul of this planet to confront her own destiny and her world’s.

The Man in the High Castle
By Philip K Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
7 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433214523

It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that first established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction, breaking the barrier between genre fiction and the serious novel of ideas. Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.

Already Dead
By Charlie Huston; Read by Scott Brick
8 CDs – 9 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433235795

From the Battery to the Bronx, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe Pitt is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. Now some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. It ain’t easy going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan. But it’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition and finds himself searching for a little rich girl who’s gone missing. Now anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, a crazy cult is stalking him, and Joe’s got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the sun comes up.

Winterfair Gifts
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
2 CDs – 2.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433250170

This Hugo-nominated novella adds a delightful extra chapter to Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, describing the wedding of Miles and Ekaterin and events leading up to it.

In the festive season of Winterfair on the planet Barrayar, Lord Miles Vorkosigan is making elaborate preparations for his wedding. The long-awaited event stirs up romance and intrigue among his eccentric family and friends, particularly for bioengineered space mercenary Sergeant Taura and shy, diffident Armsman Roic. But Miles also has an enemy who is plotting to turn the romantic ceremony into a festival of death.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Three new arrivals to share today; all anticipated sequels!

Starseed
By Spider and Jeanne Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
7 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433245558

This sequel to Stardance returns to the rarified world of Top Step, an asteroid in orbit above 21st-century Earth. There, for the price of all one’s worldly possessions, humans are able to live in a vaccum indefinitely by joining with a symbiotic lifeform that provides all needed nourishment. For Rain McLeod, a 46-year-old dancer whose failing body is about to end her career, the Starseed program is the only way to continue living her dream. But for others, including several religious groups and power hungry countries back on earth, the existence of Stardancers represents a threat to all humanity. When a missle attack threatens Top Step and Morgan’s lover, Robert, is implicated as a prime suspect, Rain must choose between her private dream and the greater good in a world poised on the verge of an evolutionary leap.

The Ashes of Worlds: Book 7 of The Saga of Seven Suns
By Kevin J. Anderson; Read by David Colacci
17 CDs – 20 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781423357513

The culminating volume in The Saga of Seven Suns weaves together the myriad story lines in a spectacular grand finale. Galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and the factions of humanity are pitted against one another. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale eight years in the making. The Saga of Seven Suns is one of the most colorful and spectacular science fiction epics of the past decade.

Brad Lansky and the Face of Eternal Fire
By J.D. Venne; Performed by a full cast
1 CD – 1 hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Protophonic
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780976045946

Brad and Alex spent two years exploring the Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way when they received a classified message from the Sol Ambassador to the Trilux System. Fifty Earth-years have elapsed since they parted ways with Giri Null in Trilux, and much has happened in that short time; Giri Null somehow managed to win over most of the Grefim and execute his plans for a new culture with alarming speed. Those who opted not to follow their new Lord promptly invaded planet Lithom, destabilizing all of Trilux.

His latest intent – to equip the formidable Grefim with A.I. minds – was interpreted as a hostile act toward Sol by hawkish elements within G.A.I.A. Subsequent events only served to spiral the star systems into a technical state of war.

Not knowing whom to trust, Giri Null insisted his old friends and the Full Advantage form the Sol ambassador‘s entourage in a last-ditch effort to negotiate a peace accord.

Brad and Alex feel duty-bound to act as agents for peace but are well aware that they are merely pawns in a deadly chess game between at least three mighty A.I. groups, and possibly two Grefim factions.

Alex is quick to point out that a pawn’s odds are never good, even with only two players. But if they can make it to the other side and survive until the end game, they might just be able to tip the scales for peace. Worth a try, and besides, they have the Advantage!

Protophonic has a samples page |HERE|. Ringtones, too! Check them out…

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals – Recorded Books New Science Fiction Audio Imprint

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Introducing a New Science Fiction Imprint from Recorded Books!

These are the first titles we’ve received from this new imprint, and, like the previous science fiction published by Recorded Books, these are high-quality works!

Blindsight
By Peter Watts; Read by T. Ryder Smith
10 CDs – 11.75 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781436119474

From the Blindsight pages on Peter Watts’ website:

Who you do send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities carved surgically into her brain. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra-sound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior whose career-defining moment was an act of treason. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist — an informational topologist with half his mind gone — as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…

The Accidental Time Machine
By Joe Haldeman; Read by Kevin R. Free
7 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781436120418

Joe Haldeman is the esteemed Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Forever War. Things are going nowhere for lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller—especially not after his girlfriend drops him for another man. But then while working late one night, he inadvertently stumbles upon what may be the greatest scientific breakthrough ever. His luck, however, runs out when he finds himself wanted for murder—in the future.

Now and Forever
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Paul Hecht
4 CDs – 4.75 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781428198258

A legend in American science fiction, Ray Bradbury has penned such landmark works as Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man. In 2007 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. The evocative collection Now and Forever features two previously unreleased novellas, “Somewhere a Band Is Playing” and “Leviathan ’99.”

These books and three more, Carnival by Elizabeth Bear, Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery, and Plague Year by Jeff Carlson, mark the beginning of this new imprint. Long may it live!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals – More from Audio Realms

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Little Fuzzy
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Brian Holsopple
5 CDs – 5 hours, 53 minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304617
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it, and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people…

Shadow Kingdoms: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Brian Holsopple, Bob Souer, Bob Barnes, and Charles McKibben
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304129
The first volume of the Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting much of Howard’s work for the pulp magazine Weird Tales meticulously restored to its original magazine texts featuring stories with King Kull and Solomon Kane.

This volume contains:
“The Lost Race”, read by Charles McKibben
“The Dream Snake”, read by Bob Souer
“The Hyena”, read by Bob Souer
“Red Shadows”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Skulls in the Stars”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Rattle of Bones”, read by Bob Barnes
“The Shadow Kingdom”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Voice of El-Lil”, read by Bob Barnes

Voodoo Planet
By Andre Norton; Read by Chuck McKibben
3 CDs – 3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304372
The sequel to Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet finds the Solar Queen banned from trade and starting her supposed quiet two-year stint as an interstellar mail carrier. But instead her crew accepts a visit to the safari planet of Khatka, where they find themselves caught in a battle between the forces of reason and the powers of Khatka’s mind-controlling wizard.

The Land That Time Forgot
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Brian Holsopple
3 CDs – 3.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304334
Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known for his Tarzan and Mars series of books, also created the lost island of Caprona, where American Tyler Bowen is stranded in a lost world where prehistoric animals and people have flourished unchanged since the beginning of time.

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
By Michael Moorcock; Read by Jeffrey West
5 CDs – 5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304020

The Second Book in the Elric Saga
… and leaving his cousin Yrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek an unknown goal in the world of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were at best, disliked.

Hide and Seek
By Jack Ketchum; Read by Wayne June
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304402
Hide and Seek is a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you’re with the right people. But shouldn’t. Not ever… Dead River’s a sleepy little town on the coast of Maine without much going for it. The Great Depression hit hard and never let go. Even now, sixty-odd years later, there’s not much to do, not much going on. So that when a trio of friends, rich college kids, arrive there on a forced march with their parents for summer vacation they have to make their own amusements. And they do, in spades. Dan’s a local and didn’t get a chance to go to college. There was never the money. He works in a lumberyard hauling two-by-fours and furring around all day with a forklift. He’s even more bored than he knows. When the college kids arrive, that changes.
The most daring of the three is a beautiful, troubled girl name Casey. She’s not opposed to stealing caviar or cars or running around naked in graveyards. For Casey the thrill’s the thing and the riskier the better. Dan falls for her, hard. And gradually becomes the fourth member of the group–the poor relation. But the games need escalation. It’s a need that finds them at last in an old abandoned house at night, a house reputed to be haunted, where phantom lights burn in broken windows. Where something lurks waiting in the dark…

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals – Mike Resnick, Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently plopped into the SFFaudio Audible Account…

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours and 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

Starship: Pirate, Book 2
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. There, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules. But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole’s principles limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players: the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, the enigmatic alien fence David Copperfield, and the fearsome alien pirate known as the Hammerhead Shark.

Starship: Mercenary, Book 3
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Military discipline and honor have been a poor match for Capt. Wilson Cole’s life of pillaging and plundering. Seeking a better way of life, the Teddy R. has become a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it’s evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way, they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters. The life of a mercenary is not always predictable. Circumstance now pits Cole and the Teddy R. against the former Pirate Queen, Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

And received by mail from Audio Book Case…

Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre Volume II
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase
Published: June 2008
Includes four tales of the supernatural, shock and horror:
The Conqueror Worm, The Tell Tale Heart, The Imp Of The Perverse and Hop Frog

Posted by Jesse Willis