SFFaudio essential – Page 4

Review of The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential The Stainless Steel Rat
By Harry Harrison; Read by Phil Gigante
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
ISBN: 9781441881076
Themes: / Science Fiction / Crime / Espionage / Galactic Civilization / Humor /

Jim DiGriz is caught during one of his crimes and recruited into the Special Corps. Boring, routine desk work during his probationary period results in his discovering that someone is building a battleship, thinly disguised as an industrial vessel. In the peaceful League no one has battleships anymore, so the builder of this one would be unstoppable. DiGriz’ hunt for the guilty becomes a personal battle between himself and the beautiful but deadly Angelina, who is planning a coup on one of the feudal worlds. DiGriz’ dilemma is whether he will turn Angelina over to the Special Corps, or join with her, since he has fallen in love with her.

As I write this dilatory review of Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat I am just a few minutes away from finishing the follow up, The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge. Thus I feel doubly guilty. For while the intellectual mulling over of a book is a natural part of the reviewing process – it is but certainly ungenerous to actually begin the sequel without having delivered the original its full due. Worse, listening to this lightweight series is very much like gobbling down fisfull after fistful of a delightful confection – I am enjoying it immensely but can`t say it is particularly good at nourishing my intellect.

The Stainless Steel Rat very much deserves its due! The Stainless Steel Rat is a rollicking first person perspective adventure set amongst the resplendent plenitude of an interstellar empire. Slippery Jim DeGriz, our convivial protagonist, has a heart half filled with the milk of human kindness and half filled with a contempt of rules and rituals that the social contract requires of him. Thus he is a both anti-hero and hero, and twice as virtuous in his roguish thievery. In this, his first recorded adventure, Slippery Jim outlines the shape of his variegated and thoroughgoingly criminal career thus far, is quickly inducted into a corps of criminal conspirators that`s working for the galactic government (it`s funded by bank robberies), and falls in love (with a mortiferous murderess). The adventure is slick, quick and comic – the many scenes composing the plot are portrayed in an almost cartoonish manner (in the best possible sense of that term). And when Slippery Jim finally catches the arch-criminal he`s after – the plot follows the centuries old axiom of ìt takes a thief to catch a thief – and Slippery Jim finds that Angelina, his Lady MacBeth, is no fan of the milk of human kindness, thinking it rather distasteful stuff.

Narrator Phil Gigante reads the first person perspective tale with a transparency that`s expected of a professional narrator – his wry delivery follows the text, and gently brushes the voices of all the other speaking characters with the aural equivalent of a glistening gloss. This is the first audiobook publication of The Stainless Steel Rat, which was first published in its complete form nearly 50 years ago. The audiobook is an utter delight, being fun and funny, short, to the point, and utterly, utterly consumable. Highly recommended!

Update:

Here are the very first illustrations of The Stainless Steel Rat, from the August 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (which contained the original short story):

The Stainless Steel Rat - Illustrated by Frank Kelly Freas - from Astounding Science Fiction, August 1957

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: SFSignal Mind Meld on the best of 2010

SFFaudio Commentary

JP Frantz, of the wonderful SFSignal blog, recently asked me to participate in their annual year end “Mind Meld.”

Here’s the topic:

Q: What were the best genre-related books, movies and/or shows you consumed in 2010?

Here was my answer:

Audiobooks in 2010:
The year isn’t over yet, and I’m really enjoying the new Brilliance Audio (Audible Frontiers) reading of The Speed Of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. Of the audiobooks I’ve reviewed this year I’m pleased to report the first audiobook released in the Gabriel Hunt series, Hunt: Through The Cradle Of Fear |READ OUR REVIEW|, and it’s bonus short story “Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye” have really scratched the Fantasy Adventure itch that I occasionally get. Another pair of novels released by Blackstone Audio, written by the recently deceased John Steakley, were designated SFFaudio Essentials. As read by the powerful Tom Weiner Armor |READ OUR REVIEW| and Vampire$ |READ OUR REVIEW| make for a very interesting pair of novels – they have multiple character names in common and yet one is Science Fiction (in the tradition of Starship Troopers) and the other is Fantasy (with vampires). Similarly, Full Cast Audio’s unabridged reading of Robert A. Heinlein’s Red Planet is, in my mind, now the definitive telling of the novel. It features a full cast of actors performing the entirety of the novel’s text (minus attributions). This brings the story to life in a way no TV or movie adaptation ever could – it doesn’t change a single golden word. Finally, George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides, available through Audible.com and Brilliance Audio, was perhaps the highlight of my audiobook year. Earth Abides had me reconsidering much of my outlook on life – that’s a powerful piece of SF.

Audio Drama in 2010:
In the audio drama department BrokenSea‘s expansive adaptation of Escape From New York |READ OUR REVIEW| blew my socks off! It’s a hardcore retelling of the movie of the same name with enhancements and inspiration from the novelization of the script. And, as always, the ever dependable Red Panda Adventures |READ OUR REVIEW|, now in it’s fifth season, is ramping up to a wonderful World War II arc – turning Toronto superheroes against the baddest baddies of them all – those evil Nazi scum. 2010 was a very good year for audiobooks and audio drama.

In the 2010 comics department:
I’ve been swept up in Eric Shanower’s epic quest to retell the entirety of the Trojan War in his Age Of Bronze series of graphic novels. I am also currently reading The Walking Dead and enjoying it very much. But I am not yet ready to admit that either The Walking Dead comics or on the TV show are even half as great as the zombie freaky awesomeness in the Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows series Crossed (which I read in the spring). Crossed is one scary good comic. I also thoroughly enjoyed Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou. It’s kind of about Bertrand Russell and kind of about the only part of philosophy that I am really bad at, natural deductive logic.

Movies and TV in 2010:
The only movies that I’ve seen, worthy of the designation Science Fiction, in 2010, were Moon and Inception. If you made me pick which was superior I’d take Moon over Inception and not just because I root for the underdog. In TV, Spartacus: Blood and Sand turned out to be well worth wading through – it’s 300-style green screen visual effects nearly drowned me, but I stuck with it, and the story and acting paid-off supremely.

You can read it |HERE| along with a bunch of other folk’s own lists.

And, I participated in the 2009 Mind Meld on the same topic too!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear by Gabriel Hunt (aka Charles Ardai)

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Hunt: Through The Cradle Of Fear (#2 in the Adventures Of Gabriel Hunt series)
By Gabriel Hunt (aka Charles Ardai); Read by Jim VanDusen
6 CDs – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: November 2009
ISBN: 9781897304761
Themes: / Adventure / History / Mythology / Fantasy / Hungary / New York / Egypt / Greece / Sri Lanka / Libya / Noir /

From the towers of Manhattan to the jungles of South America, from the sands of the Sahara to the frozen crags of Antarctica, one man finds adventure everywhere he goes: GABRIEL HUNT. Backed by the resources of the $100 million Hunt Foundation and armed with his trusty Colt revolver, Gabriel Hunt has always been ready for anything – but is he prepared to enter… The Cradle Of Fear? When a secret chamber is discovered inside the Great Sphinx of Egypt, the mystery of its contents will lead Gabriel to a remote Greek Island, to a stone fortress in Sri Lanka … and to a deadly confrontation that could decide the fate of the world!

Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear is a fast paced, well researched, modern adventure tale in the vein of Indiana Jones or Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter. The adventure never flags or gets bogged down in the equipment porn many of the other adventure series I’ve read have. Instead, the story both figuratively and literally jets from scene to scene – with a narration that almost as velocitous. Adding to the fun is Sheba, a distressed damsel who is no mere mcguffin – she’s got skills that both Lajos DeGroe, the billionaire heavy, and Hunt both need. When Gabriel Hunt, the titular hero/author, isn’t stowed away on a private jet, chasing after Sheba to who-knows-where, he’s doing battle from the seat of New York taxi or jumping off ramparts into shadowy abysses. Spanning three-quarters of the circumference of the Earth, this story threads together a plot explaining the various archaeological connections between Greece, Egypt and Sri Lanka. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.

In Chapter 19 there’s a delightful little scene that shows just how playful this book is. Gabriel Hunt, and his buxom companion, are set to meet a shadowy hacker in an Istanbul landmark when they bump into a pair of married writers – one is named Naomi, and she write historical fantasy, the other, her husband, writes adventure stories. If your a bit familiar with Charles Ardai, who wrote Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear you’ll instantly recognize, as I did, that that was a cameo by both Charles Ardai and his wife Naomi Novik (author of His Majesty’s Dragon |READ OUR REVIEW|! Fun heh? Also promising is the serial but standalone nature of this book. Each book in the series stands alone, but offers callbacks to the earlier adventures as well as advancing the plot and/or revealing more about the Hunt family fortune. This is book 2 in a series, all attributed to Gabriel Hunt, but all ghost-written by various authors. One brief scene referring to events in book 1 Hunt At The Well Of Eternity, for example, made me want to pick up the first book in the series.

If you’re looking for painterly descriptive passages, or angsty characters, you’d do well to avoid this romp. Gabriel Hunt is an adventurer first and foremost. But, if you, like me, enjoy a little back-story – slowly revealed – between hard-fought gun battles and perilous plunges from high places – you’re in for a real treat. When I talked to Fred Godsmark, of Audio Realms, in SFFaudio Podcast #078 I asked him why he produced book 2 in the Gabriel Hunt series, rather than book one. He told me that its was what he was suggested he start with. If Hunt At The Well Of Eternity is half as good as Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear it’ll definitely be worth picking up too!

Narrator Jim VanDusen is an absolute keeper. His voice perfectly suits the care-free Hunt. But he’s also able to voice the black-hearted villains, the variously accented henchmen, as well as the brainy but busty beauty Sheba (the female lead). It’s always a delightful surprise to find a new narrator, Jim VanDusen is one of these.

But that’s not all! Tacked on to the end of this novel is a bonus 83 minute novelette by Charles Ardai, also read by Jim VanDusen, called Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye (the etext for which is |HERE|). Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye is a terrific adventure tale set in post WWII Libya and starring a shattered mercenary named Malcolm Stewart who is looking for a reason to live. It reminded me of a cross between one of Robert E. Howard’s ghost stories and the 1943 movie Five Graves To Cairo. Like Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear it is also well researched, fast paced and truly thrilling. Unlike Cradle it’s grim, a meaty noir tale, in the way that a series story never could be. Highly recommended!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir review of Downtown by Ed McBain

Aural Noir: Review

Here’s the first review by a long time internet ally, fellow proponent of all things Donald E. Westlake, and soon a guest on The SFFaudio Podcast.

SFFaudio Essential Downtown
By Ed McBain; Read by Michael Prichard
8 Cassettes – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books On Tape
Published: 1992
ISBN: 0736621423
Themes: / Crime / New York / Humor / Murder / Mistaken Identity /

Michael Barnes is in New York on business. He has a couple of hours to kill before his plane leaves. It’s Christmas Eve. When he stops for a drink, he finds a young woman very attracted to him. He swells with masculine pride. But soon Michael’s wallet and then his rented car are stolen – only to resurface on the other side of town in unexpected company – a corpse!

There’s nothing quite like picking up a book (metaphorically) you’ve never heard of and know nothing about and discovering that you’ve stumbled across a classic. This was my experience with Ed McBain’s Downtown.

A classic? Strong words, there, Trent. But I mean it. I just recently read Donald Westlake’s The Hot Rock, which I loved and which is considered the classic comic crime novel. Downtown is nearly if not just as good (although very different).

Our protagonist is Michael Barnes, an orange-grower from Florida who is about to fly out of New York City on Christmas Eve, after a meeting with his advertising agency, when he gets hustled by a gorgeous woman and her fake police detective accomplice in an airport bar. His drivers license, credit cards, and money now gone, he goes downtown to report the crime to the police, getting his rental car stolen along the way. From there, he ends up on the lam accused of murder, running hither and thither meeting all sorts of strange people and ending up in all sorts of strange situations as he tries to figure out just what the hell is going on.

Tempering this craziness is the fact that Michael Barnes has some serious emotional baggage–he’s a cuckold and bitter about it, has issues with his mother, and was scarred by his combat experience in Vietnam (although he’s not an offensive psycho stereotype, thank God). These emotional scars are played upon masterfully by McBain, for dark humor or for grounding moments of pathos as appropriate, and they give Downtown a humanity that makes the whole farce unexpectedly powerful.

I don’t know why Downtown isn’t better known. Maybe Ed McBain just pumped out so many books that lots of his stuff falls through the cracks while readers get stuck trying to read the 87th Precinct and Matthew Hope novels in order. Maybe it’s because nobody made a movie out of it (although see below). Maybe, and this is a strong possibility, the style of humor doesn’t appeal to a broad enough audience.

Whatever the reason, Downtown deserves much better than obscurity. It’s clever, witty, touching, and terrific.

That’s the book review portion of this write-up, but I don’t want to end without bringing up something that struck me while listening to Downtown.

With a movie director figuring prominently in the plot, Downtown is loaded with film references (including to Evan Hunter/Ed McBain films The Birds and Fuzz). A movie not mentioned is one that Downtown bears a great resemblance to–Martin Scorsese’s After Hours.

If you’re not familiar with this film (too few people are), After Hours is a comedy about a fairly-average Joe who meets all sorts of strange people and ends up in all sorts of strange situations in late-night Manhattan. Oh, and he also gets accused of a crime he didn’t commit.

The setting and several story elements in After Hours are very similar to Downtown. The style of humor (dry with repetitive absurdity) also bears a marked resemblance. Both even feature prominent references to The Wizard Of Oz.

Coincidence? Homage? Rip-off (I doubt that)? Subconscious borrowing? We’ll likely never know. But if you liked After Hours, you’ll probably like Downtown, and vice versa. And if you’re not familiar with either, do yourself a favor and check them both out.

I listened to the 1992 edition of Downtown from Books on Tape, read by Michael Prichard. When I started the book, I thought his reading was stiff, but I quickly recognized that he had done a great job capturing the somewhat-uptight, neurotic lead character. Mr. Prichard is also quite skilled in creating voices to distinguish the many other characters without resorting to ridiculous exaggerations or outrageous accents (in a book with a lot of ethnic characters, no less). Downtown is written in a highly rhythmic style, with lots of short sentences and lots of repetition. Prichard grasps this and captures the novel’s rhythms superbly. It’s a really good reading.

There are two other editions of Downtown (both available at Audible.com), an abridged version from Phoenix Books read by Stephen Macht and an unabridged version from Brilliance Audio read by David Regal. For the sake of comparison, I listened to the available samples of both.

Downtown is a lousy candidate for abridgment, but even if it wasn’t I wouldn’t care for Stephen Macht’s reading, which is overdramatic.

David Regal’s reading is considerably better. His interpretation is quite different from Michael Prichard’s, making Michael Barnes sound like a traveling salesman. I would have to hear more to have a real sense of how well this works but I heard enough that I think I can judge it a solid effort. Go with the Books on Tape edition if you can find it, but if you can’t, Regal’s version will likely do as a substitute.

Posted by Trent Reynolds

Review of Escape From New York AUDIO DRAMA

SFFaudio Review

WARNING: This review is a bit of an aberration, it’s a bit more gonzo. It was written this way out of necessity and it is thus perhaps only suitable for those who… ‘heard he was dead.’

Escape From New York
Based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Nick Castle; Adapted by Bill Hollweg; Performed by a full cast
5 MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 15 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: BrokenSea Audio Productions
Podcast: April 2009 – March 2010
Themes: / Crime / Dystopia / Science Fiction / Alternate History / WWIII / Prison / Horror / New York /

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3|

In the year 1988 the crime rate in the United States rises 400%. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem river, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. The prison’s name: New York Maximum Security Penitentiary, Manhattan Island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners, and the worlds they have made. The year now… 1997.

In the opening crawl (detailed above) we are given a world rife with Science Fiction glory. Escape From New York has a premise full of promise. It is a story pregnant with possibilities – nearly all of which are fulfilled. Escape From New York, my friends, is both a powerful satire of our times and a powerful cinematic experience movie. Now, thanks to the creative love and attention by fans at BrokenSea Audio Productions it is a wondrous audio drama made by fans for fans.

Now hang with me on this. I hope I don’t end up seeming like a crazed french film critic, arguing for the superiority of the second Star Wars trilogy (The Phantom Menace et. al) over the original Star Wars and Empire. Take that first statistic: “the crime rate in the United States rises 400%” – how would that be possible? It certainly wouldn’t match any conventional trend or shift in population growth. Might it then be categorized under some sort of Freakonomics-style explanation? Maybe. But, I think we could argue, quite convincingly, that the only way to increase the crime rate 400% overnight would be to make a whole lot more human behaviors crimes. Disrespecting authority, sharing files with friends, or as the trailer for Escape From L.A. puts it “No talking, no smoking, no littering, no red meat, no freedom of religion. And remember all marriages must be approved by the Department of Health.” So, the world of Escape From New York is really fun. But a world is not enough. You need a plot and a set of characters. As to the latter…

The anti-hero takes many forms but I have a special fondness for Snake Plisken. As in an IMDB grendelkhan says:

“Snake Plissken is the classic anti-hero, ala Clint Eastwood’s Man-with-no-name. Plissken is an ex-soldier turned criminal, recruited/blackmailed into rescuing a hostage president from the prison of New York City. Plissken is a walking ball of anger and a survival machine.”

Indeed, a survival machine who’s been betrayed, lied to shat on by his own government – and he’s got a cool eye-patch, a reverse tramp stamp of a cobra, and a gravelly voice. He is a great character.

“But what of his motivation?” You ask.

Read on…

Plisken, call him Snake, lives in a parallel universe – a USA run like a fun-house-lensed double craptoberfest of moral hypocrisy. If you’ve seen the movie Escape From New York, you’re seeing the 1980 zeitgeist of Manhattan as the epitome of ghettoic urban decay. This fear, that your neighbors are out to get you, the horror that politicians so often rely upon, works great in movies (and in the opening credits to The Equalizer). But this isn’t only a horror story. The prison genre is one of my favorites (check out Animal Factory). Like westerns, these genre stories have a certain set of conventions or constraints that make a story told within those constraints far more satisfying. But neither is Escape From New York just a prison story. For it
is also a quest story, a revenge story, an all out action adventure. There are MacGuffins galore for Plisken to chase after: First up is a world peace conference that is about to end in disaster lest a certain audio cassette is retrieved, then there’s a kidnapped President Of The United States to be rescued, and of course there’s a jet glider (don’t think too hard about that one) as their only escape, but to top it all off there’s a pair of ticking time-bombs in Snake’s body! That’s not just motivation, that’s entertainment folks!

Snake, now motivated, has enough-knock-down-drag-out adventures in the course of just less than 24 hours, so as to numb any thoughy you had about suspending any disbelief. Or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued: “[if a writer could infuse a] human interest and a semblance of truth [into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative].” If you look at it another way this is the original 24, but with a hard-assed biker veteran saving the USA instead of a Kiefer Sutherland. In the course of just over 2 hours Bill Hollweg and the folks at BSAP have created a faithful and loving tribute to one of 1981’s best movies.

Speaking of 1981, I look forward to hearing BSAP adapt Clash Of The Titans (1981), Excalibur (1981) and Body Heat (1981). They’re already working on a Mad Max II (1981)-inspired series.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Red Panda Adventures – Season 5

SFFaudio Review

The Red Panda Adventures – Season 5
By Gregg Taylor; Performed by a full cast
12 MP3 Files via podcast – Approx. 6 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Decoder Ring Theatre
Podcast: 2009 – 2010
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Mystery / Crime / Nazis / Adventure / Toronto / Magic / Dinosaurs / Telepathy / Amnesia / Airships / Time Travel / Caribbean / New York / Los Angeles / Espionage /

Of the many terrific episodes in this season’s dozen, I think Just Like Clockwork is my overall favourite. It’s an exemplary episode and it’s probably as close as Gregg Taylor will come to adapting a Philip K. Dick story. Events in any given Red Panda show can stand completely alone, but they’ll still often add to a developing story. Like in all the previous seasons villains rise, and fall, rise and then fall again. But sometimes the villains aren’t really villains, and sometimes the heroes are more frightening than we’d like them to be. By the final episode of Season 5 we know were heading towards some serious World War II stories. Here’s my description of each episode:

Episode 1 – “Nightshade” |MP3|
The newly married super-couple, August Fenwick (aka The Red Panda) and Kit Baxter Fenwick (aka The Flying Squirrel), are returning from their honeymoon in Europe. It was a working holiday, but they’re looking forward to a relaxing flight home aboard a Zeppelin. But there is a mysterious passenger aboard, and she has other plans.

Episode 2 – “Flight Of The Bumblebee” |MP3|
Doctor Darius, an earnest rooming-house tenant with a “felonious past,” is having trouble paying his rent. If he can only perfect his “royal jelly” formula … well, let’s just say that not all super-villains, it seems, are motivated by megalomania.

Episode 3 – “The Puzzle Master” |MP3|
A fiendish deathtrap, in the form of a labyrinth, faces any victim of The Puzzle Master. Can RP and FS, with the help of “Doc Rocket”, navigate the maze?

Episode 4 – “Just Like Clockwork” |MP3|
An amnesiac awakes in a dark alley. He meets a young woman, she wants to help, and he’s definitely in need of it. Meanwhile, the Red Panda is hunting for someone or something that poses a threat to someone or something somewhere in Toronto. It’s a mystery! It’s a love story! And it has all got to end either with a bang, a twist, or in tears!

Episode 5 – “Murder Wears A Mask” |MP3|
An old debt must be repaid with a trip to New York City. But unlike in Toronto, NYC has licensed superheroes, the mayor has given them badges and charged them with tracking down one of their own. But two crusaders from the Great White North don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Episode 6 – “Terror Walks The Night” |MP3|
A cold spell, and a series of suicides isn’t likely to be a dastardly plot. Not during the 1930s depression. But when those suicides coincide with a series of disappearances then a certain something must be up. Right? Add in a snake cult and this looks like a job for a certain married couple, in thermal tights!

Episode 7 – “The Secret City” |MP3|
A dozen unsolved “society” kidnappings are followed up by an “impossible” $80,000 jewel robbery – the police are baffled but Red Panda (and wife) are on the case. Perhaps one jocular simian and his Oliver Twist-like crew are responsible?

Episode 8 – “A Dish Best Served Cold” |MP3|
A stakeout, some “ritualistic nonsense” and a gravelly voiced villain leading a covert cabal of criminal creeps may spell the extermination of both Panda and Squirrel. Can anyone stop The Red Panda Revenge Squad?

Episode 9 – “Song Of The Siren” |MP3|
A Caribbean vacation for Mr. and Mrs. August Fenwick is cut short when a Havana based pleasure boat, reported in distress and then missing, proves irresistible to this power couple. Could a mysterious high pitched cry, and an inconspicuous island deep in the epicenter be signs of a secret testing base? But testing for what? And for whom?

Episode 10 – “Eyes Of The Idol” |MP3|
Late one night in Los Angeles two security guards pass the time by talking. One has a strange tale to tell. It seems there was once an uninhabited island off the coast of India. On that island was an ancient ruined city. In that city was a certain eldritch idol. And that idol had two jewels for eyes, now called the “Eyes of Doom.” Now one of the guards has one. Two means doom.

Episode 11 – “Sins Of The Father” |MP3|
Is it only coincidence when Fenwick Industries is plagued by accidents? After all, accidents happen. But sometimes accidents aren’t actually accidents at all! And a sniper assassin is no kind of accident. Its all very hush hush, but what exactly does the suspicious Colonel Fitzroy know about it?

Episode 12 – “The Great Fall” |MP3|
Set in late August 1939, with a recently signed non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. One hero, and her husband, will fight one final holding action in a losing war, the Occult War. Their opponent is Professor Friedrich Von Schlitz and a division of SS scum.

Happy Canada Day everybody, go celebrate with some RED PANDA!

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://decoderring.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis