eMusic.com is now selling down oadable audiobooks in the MP3 format! Only 52 Science Fiction and Fantasy titles are available at launch, mostly from Blackstone, Random House Audio and Naxos. Some users are complaining about the monthly fee being rather hard to find on the site (either $9.99 or $19.99 USD).
[via BoingBoing and their comment thread]
Baen Books has FREE audiobooks! I knew that several of Baen’s hardcover first editions over the last few years had been coming with BONUS CD-ROMS full of eBooks. And I thought that was pretty cool, and clever too, but it was a big surprise to me to learn that they have often also included MP3 audiobook readings (complete novels and short stories). Even cooler, one thoughtful collector has archived the CDs on his/her website! And here are links to each…
Novels:
Hell’s Faire
By John Ringo; Read by ????
21 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2003
With the defenses of the Southern Appalachians sundered, the only thing standing between the ravening Posleen hordes and the soft interior of the Cumberland Plateau are the veterans of the 555th Mobile Infantry. Dropped into Rabun Pass, with a couple of million Posleen behind them and fourteen million to the front, the only question is which will run out first: power, bullets or bodies. But they have a hole card: far to the north the shattered SheVa Nine, nicknamed “Bun-Bun,” is undergoing a facelift. Rising from its smoking ashes is a new weapon of war, armed with the most advanced weaponry Terra has ever produced, capable of facing both the Posleen hordes and their redoubtable space-cruisers. Capable of dealing out Hell as only SheVa Nine can. But when push comes to vaporization, if Mike O’Neal and the other members of the 555th are going to survive, it will come down to how much Posleen butt Bun-Bun can kick. Prepare to eat antimatter, Posleen-boy.
The Far Side Of The Stars
By David Drake; Read by ????
35 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2003
While the Republic of Cinnabar is at peace with the Alliance, warriors like Lt. Daniel Leary and Signals Officer Adele Mundy must find other work—like escorting a pair of wealthy nobles on an expedition to the back of beyond! The Princess Cecile, the corvette in which they carved their reputations in letters of fire, has been sold as a private yacht, but she still has her guns, her missiles, and her veteran crew. Daniel and Adele will need all of those things as they face winged dragons, an Alliance auxiliary cruiser, jealous lovers, and a mysterious oracle which really does foresee the future. That won’t be enough, though, when they penetrate a secret Alliance base and find a hostile fleet ready for a war that will sweep Cinnabar out of a strategically crucial arm of the galaxy. Preventing that will involve skill, courage, and more luck than a sane man could even pray for; and it will require a space battle on a scale that a tiny corvette like the Princess Cecile has no business being involved in. But she’ll be in the middle of it anyway, because Daniel, Adele, and their Cinnabar crew would never turn their backs on a fight!
There Will Be Dragons
By John Ringo; Read by ????
45 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2003
n the future there is no want, no war, no disease nor ill-timed death. The world is a paradise-and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive. But scattered across the face of the earth are communities which have returned to the natural life of soil and small farm. In the village of Raven’s Mill, Edmund Talbot, master smith and unassuming historian, finds that all the problems of the world are falling in his lap. Refugees are flooding in, bandits are roaming the woods, and his former lover and his only daughter struggle through the Fallen landscape. Enemies, new and old, gather like jackals around a wounded lion. But what the jackals do not know is that while old he may be, this lion is far from death. And hidden in the past is a mystery that has waited until this time to be revealed.
Short Stories:
A Ship Named Francis
By John Ringo and Victor Mitchell; Read by ????
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2003
Sean Tyler, a corpsman in the Royal Manticoran Navy, thought that a stint as a loaner in the explosively-growing Grayson Navy would boost his career. So, when he heard there was a slot vacant on board the cruiser Francis Mueller, he volunteered. Unfortunately for Corpsman Tyler, no one told him that almost everybody on board the Francis — from the clueless captain to the psychotic XO and the panicky chaplain — had been sent there because no one else in the entire Grayson Navy wants them.
Let’s Go to Prague
By John Ringo; Read by ????
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Baen
Published:
A pair of Manticoran Marines discover that a holiday can be even more fun if it involves spoiling StateSec’s day.
Beam Me Up, has an very fun reading of a vintage Harry Harrison story called The Repairman. in the latest show (Episode 69). The short first appeared in Galaxy magazine’s February 1958 issue. The host of the Beam Me Up podcast/radio show, Paul Cole, describes the story as a “If anything a precursor to [Harrison’s] Stainless Steel Rat character.” It also features an early description of the concept of hyperspace and hyperspace beacons. The same idea and term were used on Babylon 5 – the idea being, without beacons, ships would drift endlessly through featureless hyperspace, unable to discern their location relative to real space. I very much enjoyed this tale too, it’s sharp, funny and well read.
The Repairman
By Harry Harrison; Read by Ron Huber
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Beam Me Up
Podcast: September 2007
The Mark III Hyperspace Beacon was the earliest type of beacon ever built–by Earth, no less. It was located on one of the Proxima Centauri planets, and it wasn’t working. This was one of those jobs when being an interstellar trouble-shooter wouldn’t have been so bad–if he could have shot the trouble!
Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:
http://beameup.podomatic.com/rss2.xml
Dial P For Pulp is a podcast for anyone interested in any aspect of the pulp magazines and books. Show No.1, just released, features a book review of Hardboiled Cthulhu, an interview with illustrator Tom Roberts about his work on Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent and also a reading of the first part of Red Shadows a Solomon Kane story by none other than the legendary pulp-master Robert E. Howard!
The first show is available for download |MP3|or you can subscribe to the RSS feed and get and all subsequent shows automatically:
http://dpfp.libsyn.com/rss/podcasts
The Words At Large podcast, an amalgam of book related tidbits from CBC radio programs, has an in-depth interview with William Gibson about his latest novel Spook Country. This originally aired in the NXNW Studio One Book Club slot on Saturday September 15th. You can download the |MP3| direct or get the file by subscribing to the podcast feed:
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/wordsatlarge.xml
Also, there was a great interview with William Gibson on NPR’s “On Point” program, in which Gibson speaks about Spook Country. From the introduction…
“Now the man who coined the term cyberspace is writing wild fiction set in the here and now”
Gibson’s recent writing (starting with Pattern Recognition) is a swing away from futuristic science fiction – about this, Gibson later remarks, “One of the conclusions that I’ve come to is that science fiction is never about the future, really . . . it’s always about the day in which it was written.” Gibson also predicts “within a decade from now cyberspace with be a nostalgic term”; much in the same way that the use of “electric” as a prefixed adjective in the 19th century went away when electric devices became commonplace, so will the term “digital” be subsumed.
Here’s the direct link to the |MP3| file for the interview.
[Special thanks to Moriond]
And of course, this post mentioning CBC means I must mention that… Apocalypse Al must be freed!
Futureshock! The Story Of 2000AD is a half-hour documentary about the long running weekly comic book series that spawned such iconic British SF characters as “Judge Dredd”, “Rogue Trooper” and which also revived old ones, like “Dan Dare.” Comics writing greats like Alan Moore, Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison all got their start working on 2000AD “progs.” This should be a very informative show.
Futureshock! The Story Of 2000AD
1 Broadcast -30 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Saturday 22 September 10:30am – 11:00am
“Phill Jupitus tells the story of 2000AD. Over the past 30 years, the weekly British comic’s distinctive visions of the future have shaped the imaginations of a generation of young readers. Its dark and gritty tales, often set in a near future of post-apocalyptic urban decay, have changed the tone of science fiction.”