SFFaudio – Page 794 – 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.

New SFF radio talk show to air in Florida

SFFaudio News

A new radio program, “That Sci-fi Show” premieres tomorrow (Friday night), September 14th at 10pm, EDT in the USA on WWNN-AM 1470 in Florida. This is a two hour program from the creator of Sci-fi Overdrive, Joey Donovan. Listeners outside of Florida can listen via the Streaming Audio feed on the station’s website. No word on whether this show will be podcast.

That Sci-fi Show will feature “news on developments in the
entertainment industry in regards to science fiction, fantasy, comics, collectibles, role playing games, Japanese animation, genre conventions, and also on news of spaceflight and hard science.” Live interviews will allow listeners to call in with questions (1-888-565-1470).

For more information on That Sci-fi Show, or to book guests, contact Joey Donovan at [email protected] or call 561-752-6986

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

SFFaudio Review

Eifelheim
By Michael Flynn; Read by Anthony Heald
2 MP3-CDs – 17.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 1433206129
Themes: / Science Fiction / Philosophy / Religion / Catholicism / Aliens / Physics / First Contact / Black Death /

“Eifelheim” is a novel that’s not in a hurry. It’s a multiple course meal that offers helpings of philosophy, science, and religion at a leisurely pace that’s refreshing in today’s hurry-up climate. It was also a Hugo nominee for Best Novel of 2007.

The novel takes place in two times. In “Now”, two live-in scientists discuss and compare their findings on seemingly different subjects. One of them is investigating the absence of people in Eifelheim, a German town whose population disappeared during the 14th century. According to calculations of population patterns, this is a mathematical anomaly. The other scientist, a physicist, is trying to figure out why the speed of light is slowing down. That these two things are related is part of the story.

In the 14th century, a parish priest named Father Deitrich, who is dealing with the beginnings of the Black Death in his area, experiences first contact with an alien race that appears in his town of Eifelheim. Father Deitrich is a smart, compassionate priest, and, as he considers the aliens God’s children, he befriends them and cares for them as he can.

The focus occasionally switches back to the two scientists from “now”, who have conversations that shed light on the happenings in Eifelheim in the past. The main charm of this novel for me was the realistic portrayal of this honorable priest, and his culture. It portrays a medieval religion that was considered the source of all knowledge, and as such, the priest’s logical reasoning makes for compelling listening. To readers who enjoy philosophy and speculative science, and the history of both, it would be hard to find a modern novel more interesting.

Author Michael Flynn provides historical and physics notes at the end of the novel, and thanks should go out to Blackstone Audio for including them here in the audiobook. Narrator Anthony Heald does a tremendous job with the narration. He’s an excellent match with the material, handling accents and characters with unobtrusive skill. Choices he made with the alien voices were particularly effective.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of The Plant People by Barnes and Engle

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Plant People
By Johnny Ray Barnes Jr. and Marty M. Engle; Multicast recording
2 CDs – 2 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423308508
Themes: / Science fiction / Alien Invasion / Intelligent plants /

Rachel Pearson is a loner. Her only close friend, Tess, now lives in another city, and her life is measured in the days and hours between phone calls. One afternoon, as she is exploring the house under construction in a wooded lot near her home, she spies a strange plant from which something large has hatched, and its smell lures her to the edge of disaster. Two months later, the house is completed and a new family with teenaged children moves in. But strange things begin to happen around them, and Rachel wonders if they aren’t more than just odd people. Could they be something else entirely, something inhuman, with dark designs for mankind?

Plant People has a spunky heroine with a delightful upper-Midwestern twang, and an entertaining little dash-about plot that is short and mindlessly fun. Even the prose mostly soars, though not without frequent bumps. The worst occur during action sequences, when phrases like “…and just at that moment, what should I find but…” appear with distracting frequency. But it also borrows a little too heavily from classic works like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Day Of The Triffids, and strips the borrowed elements from their deeper subtext. On the whole, Plant People is like a sugar-free chocolate meringue: Briefly enjoyable, but ultimately empty of even the calories it took to chew.

[Editor’s Note: Plant People was originally written as part of the “Strange Matter” series (created by Marty M. Engle and Johnny Ray Barnes Jr.). The series takes place in the fictional town of Fairfield. Stories in the series generally center on the children attending Fairfield Middle School who encounter paranormal situations.]

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Public domain audiobook from LibriVox: Tarzan Of The Apes

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox, that massive library of public domain audiobooks, has just catalogued its first public domain reading of the first Tarzan novel, Tarzan Of The Apes. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan is arguably the most enduring pulp fiction character in history. Its on its digital shelves now, go get it in a zipped download, by individual file or even easier for portable listening via the podcast feed. This audiobook/podiobook, completely narrated by the savagely swashbuckling reader, Mark F. Smith, who previously performed Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island. Details follow…

Tarzan Of The Apes
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Mark F. Smith
28 zipped MP3s or podcast – 9 Hours 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: Sept. 7th 2007
The exciting, if improbable, story of an English lord, left by the death of his stranded parents in the hands of a motherly African ape who raises him as her own. Although he is aware that he is different from the apes of his tribe, who are neither white nor hairless, he nevertheless regards them as his “people.” When older, larger, stronger apes decide that he an undesirable to be killed or expelled from the tribe, it is fortunate that Tarzan has learned the use of primitive weapons.

You can get the entire novel in podcast form, via this handy url:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/tarzan-of-the-apes.xml

posted by Jesse Willis

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

New Arrivals- Richard Matheson, Card & Brooks

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals

This first one has me chompin’ on the bit!

I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson; Read by Robertson Dean and Yuri Rasovsky
10 CD, 11 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433203299

In Matheson’s vampire classic I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and transformed the unfortunate survivors into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire, hungry for Neville’s blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?
This recording also includes a sampling of other horror stories by Richard Matheson, some comic, all scary: “Buried Talents,” “The Near Departed,” “Prey,” “Witch War,” “Dance of the Dead,” “Dress of White Silk,” “Mad House,” “The Funeral,” “From Shadowed Places,” and “Person to Person.”

Heartfire; Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 5
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Full Cast
10 CD, 12 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207730

Peggy is a Torch, able to see the fire burning in each person’s heart. She can follow the paths of each person’s future, and know each person’s most intimate secrets. From the moment of Alvin Maker’s birth, when the Unmaker first strove to kill him, she has protected him. Now they are married, and Peggy is a part of Alvin’s heart as well as his life. But Alvin’s destiny has taken them on separate journeys. Alvin has gone north into New England, where knacks are considered witchcraft and their use is punished with death. Peggy has been drawn south, to the British Crown Colonies and the court of King Arthur Stuart in exile. For she has seen a terrible future bloom in the heartfires of every person in America, a future of war and destruction. One slender path exists that leads through the bloodshed, and it is Peggy’s quest to set the world on the path to peace.

Genesis of Shannara; Elves of Cintra, Book 2
By Terry Brooks; Read by Phil Gigante
12 CD, Approx. 14 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brillance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423322658

Across the ruined landscape that is America – hopelessly poisoned, plague-ridden, burned, and besieged by demon armies bent on exterminating all mortal life – two pilgrims have been summoned to serve the embattled cause of good. Logan Tom has journeyed to desolate Seattle to protect a ragged band of street urchins and the being known as the gypsy morph, who is both mortal and magical, and destined to save mankind unless he is destroyed. Likewise, Angel Perez has her own quest, one that will take her from the wreckage of Los Angeles to a distant, secret place untouched by the horrors of the nationwide blight – a place where the race of Elves has dwelled since before man existed. But close behind these lone Knights of the Word swarm the ravening forces of the Void.

As the menacing thunder of war drums heralds the arrival of the demons and their brutal minions in Seattle, the young survivors who call themselves the Ghosts are forced to brave the dangerous world of gangs, mutants, and worse to escape the invasion. And Logan Tom must infiltrate a refugee compound to rescue Hawk, the leader of the street urchins, who has yet to learn the truth about who and what he is. Meanwhile, Angel Perez has joined an equally urgent mission: to find the Ellcrys, a fabled talisman crucial to protecting the Elven realm against an influx of unspeakable evil from the dread dimension known as the Forbidding. But Angel and her Elven allies must beware – for a demon spy, with a monstrous creature at its command, walks among them.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show