SFFaudio – Page 721 – News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.

Aural Delights and the SOFA

SFFaudio Online Audio

This week we see the StarShipSofa open up her box of Aural Delights to UK SF writer Gwyneth Jones and her short story La Cenerentola.

This is what Gwyneth Jones says of the tale. ” La Cenerentola (the name is from the Rossini opera) is about fairytales, like C21 magical technology, being part of a global, not a national culture; but deep down it’s secretly a travelogue, nostalgic for campsite, beach and culture summers on the Mediterranean.”

If you want to listen to this great story then get yourself over to the StarShipSofa and treat yourself to one fine story.
Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:http://www.starshipsofa.com/rss

Posted by Tony C. Smith

Review of Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce

SFFaudio Review

Melting Stones
By Tamora Pierce; Read by Grace Kelly and the Full Cast Audio family
8 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Full Cast Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9481394180051
Themes: / Fantasy / Young Adult / Magic / Earth / Volcano /

I’m always excited when a new audiobook from Full Cast Audio comes across my desk, but this one was special, because the book doesn’t even exist in print at this time. Nope – this is an audio exclusive, folks! Tamora Pierce wrote this book with the Full Cast Audio family in mind, and it’s a wonderful audiobook.

The book’s main character is Evvy (a short form for Evumeimei), a young girl who is a stone mage. The book begins with her traveling on a boat, which is a difficult thing for a stone mage, because the separation between her and the rocky ground where here magic is effective is too great. She is accompanied Luvo, a heart of a mountain, who has very powerful magic, and a water mage named Dedicate Myrrhtide. The group ends up on an island called Starns Island after being drawn there by earth movement felt when the water was shallow enough. From there the adventure really kicks in, as the small band of mages try to calm the moving earth.

The audiobook is done in the distinctive Full Cast Audio style – it’s unabridged, but read by a full cast. I fear sounding like a parrot, but every review I write of a Full Cast Audio audiobook needs to convey the absolute quality of the audio experience that you get with one of these books. Full Cast Audio consistently enhances the text they are performing. Their audiobooks are unique, and a joy to hear.

Melting Stones is no exception. Grace Kelly performs Evvy, and therefore has the main narrating duties, since the book is told from Evvy’s point of view. Tamora Pierce gave Grace much to work with, and work with it she does. She offers a captivating and believable performance as the plucky young stone mage. Surrounding her is a large cast that, without exception, performs well. Seamless editing makes it all work together, giving us another excellent piece of work from Full Cast Audio.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals from Random House Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

This pair of Random House Audio titles just in, including Infected by podcaster extraordinaire Scott Sigler!

Infected
By Scott Sigler; Read by Scott Sigler
9 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780739328859

Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families.

Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.

Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected.

The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.

The Crystal Skull
By Manda Scott; Read by Susan Duerden
5 CDs – 6.5 hours – [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9780739328859

In a spellbinding blend of history, myth, and science, bestselling novelist Manda Scott unleashes a thriller that sweeps from the secrets of the Mayans to the court of a sixteenth-century queen to a shattering end-times prophecy.

“It’s a lump of rock, Stella; nothing more. No stone is worth dying for.”

Except it’s not just a lump of rock. It’s a blue crystal skull made by the Maya to save the world from ruin; a sapphire so perfect, so powerful that for centuries men have killed to own or destroy it.

Ancient prophecies say that if the thirteen skulls already in existence are not reunited, the world will end on December 21, 2012. Cedric Owen, the skull’s last Keeper, died so that it might keep its secret for the next four centuries. Now Stella Cody has found it, and someone has already tried to kill her. Like Owen, she’s being hunted—but by whom?

Desperate to unravel the mystery of the crystal skull, Stella must decode Cedric Owen’s coded writings, sketches and ciphers no scholar has been able to unravel. What she discovers is astounding: a shocking secret prophecy…and the staggering puzzle of four terrifying creatures, thirteen precious stones, and what will happen if Cedric Owen’s crystal skull falls into the wrong hands. But time is against Stella. She has only days—hours—left to uncover the only secret that may yet save the world.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

SFFaudio Visitors

SFFaudio News

We’ve been pretty excited to see the numbers of visitors to SFFaudio.com going up of late. Its very hard for us to gauge the exact volume of readers of the site – but we’ve got a few numbers we can throw at you.

On an average day we typically see the following…

An average of about 1,500 page loads.

An average of about 1,000 unique visitors.

An average of about 150 returning visitors.

Here’s is a breakdown of the kinds of browsers used by the last 500 visitors to view the website:

# -|- % -|- BROWSER -|- VERSION

169 33.80% MSIE 7.0
160 32.00% Firefox 2.0.0
-60 12.00% MSIE 6.0
-51 10.20% Safari 1.2
-37 7.40% Opera 9.26
–6 1.20% Mozilla 5.0
–3 0.60% Firefox 3.0b5
–2 0.40% Mozilla 4.0
–2 0.40% [Google.com – Mountain View, CA]
–2 0.40% Netscape 7.2
–2 0.40% Firefox 1.5.0
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.5
–1 0.20% MSIE 5.5
–1 0.20% Firefox 2.0
–1 0.20% Opera 9.25
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.0.2
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.0.7

The kinds of operating system being used typically breaks down something like this:

38.24% Windows XP
32.35% Mac OS X
17.65% Windows Vista
5.88% Linux
4.90% Unknown
0.98% Windows 2000

We have a few other factoids for you too…

Did you know SFFaudio is valued at more than two million dollars? Yep, it’s wiki-true, according to a page on Blogshares.com SFFaudio is currently valued at B$2,081,828.32! Woot! Where do we cash that in? Maybe nowhere – BlogShares.com is only a simulated (fantasy) stock market for blogs. Players invest fictional money to buy stocks in an artificial economy. Blogs are the companies, and instead of issuing shares and producing products they issue an obscure and likely valueless commodity known as ‘Ideas’. In our industry (Science Fiction Literature Blogs) we’re currently ranked as the 51st most successful blog! In your face Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas (just kidding, please don’t hurt us).

Another blog valuation service, created by a blogger who blogs about making money by blogging (here’s another mirror for you pal) – sez that SFFaudio is worth $44,034.12 USD (as of the time of this post).

Also, on our right hand column, you can now see a couple of stats tracking things – one, is a number, currently at 0191884 (at the time I wrote this). That’s the number of unique visitors since about this time last year. The other thing, nearby that big number, is something called an “IP2Map” – which will show the last 100 visitors to the site on a map. Kind of cute.

So, as the folks at Engadget would say “How Would You Change SFFaudio?”

Posted by Jesse Willis

Geek By Night – a podcast comic book

SFFaudio Online Audio

Geek By Night - Issue #1 - The Perks Of Being An Underdog

Scott Carelli, the creator/producer of a new audio series on Geekshow.us tells us about his new show: Geek By Night…

Geek By Night is about a group of friends and comic geeks who gain superpowers after an accident. It’s about what having special abilities would mean to a geek, and how it would affect their lives.

Two episodes of the bi-weekly show are out now, with the third one on it’s way on tomorrow. Grab the podcast feed via this url:

http://www.geekshow.us/?feed=rss2&cat=36

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mr. Ron: A Jules Verne SPOOF & Twain’s Connecticut Yankee

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mr. Ron, of Mister Ron’s Basement podcast, has some exciting listening on offer. First up, and being serialized over the next four shows, is an extremely rare story. It’s a spoof of Jules Verne’s Science Fiction, written while Verne was still in his prime. Though it was credited to “Jules Verne, Jr.” it was actually written by Stanley Huntley. Huntley was an immensely popular 19th century newspaper humorist – though today he is now nearly forgotten. This tale, A Trip to the South Pole; Book One, was serialized for three weeks in 1880 in the legendary Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. Mr. Ron will offer it over the course of four episodes. Of it, he sez: “It is an insanely funny spoof of Verne, and the more familiar you are with Verne’s works, the funnier it is.” – and indeed it sounds like a dead -on parody of Verne!

A Trip to the South Pole; Book One
By Stanley Huntley; Read by Mister Ron
4 Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: April 2008

Also, starting with Episode #1038, Mr. Ron will begin his serialization of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. At the rate of one chapter a week, it will take nearly a year to complete it.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
By Mark Twain; Read by Mister Ron
? Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: Begun April 2008 –

You can subscribe to this long running podcast , and get daily dispatches from the basement, via this feed:

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

Posted by Jesse Willis