Recent Arrivals

Recent Arrivals – Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

A substantial coup for Audible.com (and the iTunes Audiobook Store) this Hugo nominated and very popular novel is exclusively available as a download.

Old Man’s War
By John Scalzi; Read by William Dufris
Audible Download – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: macmillan audio / audible.com
Published: October 2007

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First, he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce – and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So, we fight, to defend Earth and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea of what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine. And what he will become is far stranger.

posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Bradbury, LeGuin, Card

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals
We constantly get great stuff from Blackstone. Every few weeks we seem to get a title by Orson Scott Card or Lois McMaster Bujold. I decided to check their site to see how many audiobooks by these authors they have published recently. The tally:

Orson Scott Card-13 unabridged audiobooks
Lois McMaster Bujold-13 unabridged audibooks

And the great authors keep coming in!

Something Wicked This Way Comes
By Ray Bradbury;
Performed by Jerry Robbins and the Colonial Radio Players
2 CDs – 2 Hours [AUDIODRAMA]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210792

“By the pricking of my thumbs…something wicked this way comes.”

Ray Bradbury has dramatized his literary classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes, into this first-class audio drama, produced by The Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air, complete with a full cast, sound effects, and original music.

“Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show” comes to Greentown, Illinois, one week before Halloween. Two boys, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, soon discover the evil of this carnival, which promises to make your every wish and dream come true. But with those wishes and dreams comes a price that must be paid. Behind the mirrors and the mazes is the nightmare of a lifetime.

Invasive Procedures
By Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston;
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs, 12 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210822

George Galen is a brilliant scientist, a pioneer in gene therapy. But Galen is dangerously insane. He has created a method to alter human DNA, not just to heal diseases, but also to “improve” people: make them stronger, make them able to heal more quickly…and make them compliant to his will.

Frank Hartman is also a brilliant virologist, working for the government’s ultra-secret biohazard agency. He has discovered how to neutralize Galen’s DNA-changing virus. Now he is the one man who stands in the way of Galen’s plan to “improve” the entire human race.

This taut thriller takes the listener a few years into the future and shows the promise and danger of new genetic medicine techniques.

Rocannon’s World
By Ursula K. LeGuin; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
5 CDs, 5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210822

This debut novel from preeminent science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin introduces her brilliant Hainish series, set in a galaxy seeded by the planet Hain with a variety of humanoid species, including that of Earth. Over the centuries, the Hainish colonies have evolved into physically and culturally unique peoples, joined by a League of All Worlds. Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

New Arrivals-Hamilton, Saberhagen, Bujold, Greenwood

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals
New titles from Brilliance and Blackstone Audiobooks.

A Lick of Frost
By Laurell K. Hamilton; Read by Laural Merlington
8 CDs -9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audiobooks
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423340393

I am Meredith Gentry, princess and heir apparent to the throne in the realm of faerie, onetime private investigator in the mortal world. To be crowned queen, I must first continue the royal bloodline and give birth to an heir of my own. If I fail, my aunt, Queen Andais, will be free to do what she most desires: install her twisted son, Cel, as monarch…and kill me.

Dark Lord: Book One of the Falconfar Saga
By Ed Greenwood; Read by Christopher Lane
11 CDs – 14 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423348917

When he mysteriously finds himself drawn into a world of his own devising, writer Rod Everlar is confronted by a shocking truth – he has lost control of his creation to a brooding cabal of evil. In order to save his creation – and himself – he must seize control of Falconfar and halt the spread of corruption before it’s too late.Dark Lord is the first epic installment in The Falconfar Saga from bestselling author Ed Greenwood.

Berserker Fury
By Fred Saberhagen; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
10 CDs – 12.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207525

Before George Lucas’s Death Star, before Star Trek’s Doomsday Machine, came the Berserkers, intelligent, space-faring killing machines whose sole purpose is to destroy all life. The Berserkers have developed a new trick: Berserker units that can pass for human-created androids. They’re gambling on the advantage this gives them and massing for an all-out attack on human-held space.

But the humans have developed a trick of their own. They’ve cracked the Berserkers’ basic codes and know what their battle plans are. Both sides are betting everything they have. For one of them, it will be the beginning of the end.

The Sharing Knife; Vol. 2, Legacy
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Bernadette Dunne
11 CD, 13 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207792

Here is volume two of this gripping adventure-romance filled with heroic deeds and wondrous magic. Fawn Bluefield, the clever young farmer girl, and Dag Redwing Hickory, the seasoned Lakewalker soldier-sorcerer, have been married all of two hours when they depart her family’s farm for Dag’s home on Hickory Lake Camp. But their arrival is met with prejudice and suspicion, setting many in the camp against them and threatening permanent exile for Dag.

Then Dag is called away by an unexpected and vicious malice attack on a neighboring hinterland, threatening Lakewalkers and farmers both. What his patrol discovers there will not only change Dag and his new bride but will call into question the uneasy relationship between their peoples and may even offer hope of a less divided future.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Full Cast Audio releases an audiobook original! Yup, Melting Stones isn’t available in any format other than this audiobook. In fact, the novel was created “with specific voices in mind”, and directed for audio by Pierce herself. The novel’s description from the website:

This time the focus is on Evvy, the young stone mage Briar and Rosethorn befriended in Street Magic. She’s accompanied Rosethorn to Starns Island, where Rosethorn is to investigate a plant die-off. What they find is vastly worse, and leads Evvy into a wild adventure that features some of Tammy’s most fantastic characters ever.

From Random House, we’ve got Dreamsongs, the first of three volumes of audio containing a whole bunch of George R.R. Martin’s short fiction, arranged in sections corresponding to periods of his career. Each section is introduced by Martin himself, in his own voice, and the stories are read by an all-star cast of narrators. Definitely a must-have. I’m not sure why the powers behind great audio like this won’t list a Table of Contents anywhere on the inside or the outside of the packaging. It must be the same reasoning that prevents them for including maps in epic fantasy audiobooks.

And here’s an Audible exclusive audiobook – L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol 23. These new writers must be thrilled to have an audiobook made of their work – and one of high quality to boot, judging from the list of narrators. The Writers of the Future is on it’s 23rd volume, and is still going strong. This audiobook is an unabridged reading of all the stories included in the print version. And Audible didn’t forget the Illustrators of the Future, either – after you purchase the audiobook, download the illustrations for the stories in PDF format. Bravo, Audible!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals – Rucker, Bujold, Card, and Moning

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals
A good week at SFFaudio!

Space Boy
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
2 CDs -2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207648

Is it space travel that children dream of, or merely visiting other worlds? Todd had always set his heart on being an astronaut, but when he meets an alien and travels to another world, he doesn’t use a spaceship; he just hangs out in his own back yard.

In Space Boy, Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, takes listeners into a strange and wonderful future, where people from another world regularly visit Earth, usually without being noticed. And when humans travel to their world, they find themselves dangerously weak and powerless, until Todd finds a way to set both worlds to rights.

By turns funny and painful, Space Boy is Card at his best, exploring human nature for the entertainment of readers young and old.

A Civil Campaign
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
16 CDs – 19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207099

Lord Miles Vorkosigan has a problem that all his new power can’t solve: unrequited love for the beautiful Vor widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Ekaterin is violently allergic to marriage as a result of her first exposure. But as Miles learned from his late career in galactic covert ops, if a frontal assault won’t do, go to subterfuge.

Miles has a cunning plan, which, of course, has to be worked out in between District succession scandals and plans for the Emperor’s wedding. And if no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, just imagine what all Miles’s friends and relatives can do to his romantic strategy.

Master of Space and Time
By Rudy V. B. Rucker; Read by Scott Grunden
5 CDs – 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207709

Madcap inventor Harry Gerber is hopeless when it comes to surviving in the real world. So he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe. Assisted by his straight-men co-conspirators, Joe Fletcher and the comely Sondra Tupperware, and powered by gluons—the stuff that holds our very atoms together—Gerber creates a blunzer, enabling him to change the very nature of reality.

From a mirror-image world where sluglike parasites make slaves of humanity, to trees and bushes that grow fries and pork chops, to a rain of fish, Master of Space and Time takes listeners on the ultimate joyride. But once the gluons at the core of Harry’s creation run out, disaster looms for Harry and his friends.

High physics and high jinks combine for a wild voyage that blurs the line between science and magic.

Blood Fever
By Karen Marie Moning; Read by Joyce Bean
8 CDs – 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423341932

MacKayla Lane’s ordinary life underwent a complete makeover when she landed on Ireland’s shores and was plunged into a world of deadly sorcery and ancient secrets.

In her fight to stay alive, Mac must find the Sinsar Dubh – a million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, which holds the key to power over both the world of the Fae and of Man. Pursued by Fae assassins, surrounded by mysterious figures she knows she cannot trust, Mac finds herself torn between two deadly and irresistible men: V’lane, the insatiable Fae who can turn sensual arousal into an obsession for any woman, and the ever-inscrutable Jericho Barrons, a man as alluring as he is mysterious.

For centuries the shadowy realm of the Fae has coexisted with that of humans. Now the walls between the two are coming down, and Mac is the only thing that stands between them….

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

New Arrivals – Ben Bova and Shannon Hale

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals

Two more new arrivals!

The Aftermath: Book Four of The Asteroid Wars
By Ben Bova; Read by Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Stephen Hoye, and Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2007

The final volume of The Asteroid Wars – superior hard SF!

Princess Academy
By Shannon Hale; Read by a Full Cast
8 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Full Cast Audio
Published: 2007

A 2006 Newbery Honor Book. Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl (also produced by Full Cast Audio) was an Audie Award winner last year.

posted by Scott D. Danielson