SFFaudio – Page 867 – 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.

SFFaudio Challenge meets a challenger who is releasing a Lester del Rey audiobook

SFFaudio News

I’ve got big Big BIG news! It appears we may very soon have a winner in the SFFaudio ‘make an audiobook, win an audiobook’ challenge!

I was contacted late last night by Steven H. Wilson, author and narrator of the recently reviewed Taken Liberty – A Tale From The Artiber Chronicles. Steven said:

“I’ve recorded all of [Lester] del Rey’s BADGE OF INFAMY, and the first five chapters have been uploaded to podiobooks.com.”

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey |Gutenberg Project| was one of the novels on the challenge!

If you don’t recall, back in mid November I challenged anyone to turn any one of a number of previously unreleased public domain novels into an unabridged single voiced audiobook. As an incentive, I offered a BRAND NEW unabridged audiobook to the first person to complete and release one.

If as I suspect, Steven is the first complete the challenge and meet the requirements of it, he’ll be the winner of his choice of one of three BRAND NEW unabridged audiobooks from Blackstone Audiobooks (For those curious, these audiobooks were purchased by me – and were not given away as a promotion by Blackstone). Basically now that he’s finished recording it, all Steven needs to do is get Badge Of Infamy out there, either on Podiobooks, as he said, as a commercial release or wherever he’d like – just so long as I can verify its completeness he’ll win his choice of one of these:

Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick

Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Animal Farm by George Orwell

But, if you areCURRENTLY, or were PLANNING, on making your own novel based on the challenge you can still let me know. I’d like to know what you’re doing! And, we might even be able to scrounge up a BRAND NEW commerical audiobook for you too! SFFaudio wants you to make Speculative Fiction audiobooks, and we aren’t above out-and-out bribery to make it happen.

In the meantime, look forward to seeing this logo or one similar up on podiobooks.com very soon:

posted by Jesse Willis

Recent arrivals

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals

Triplanetary
Lensman Series #1
By E.E. “DOC” SMITH; Read by Reed McComb
CDs and MP3 editions- Aprox. 10 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books in Motion
Published: 2006
ISBN: MP3 – 1596074507/CDs – 1596074493

By the father of the Space Opera genre.

From the back cover:

From the atomic age in Atlantis to a world remote in space and time, two incredible ancient races, the Arisians and the Eddorians, are in the midst of an interstellar war with Earth as the prize. The Arisians, using advanced mental technology, have foreseen the invasion of their galaxy by the corrupt and evil Eddorians, so they begin a breeding program on every planet in their universe. Their goal…to produce super warriors who can hold off the invading Eddorians.

Guardians of the West
Book #1 of the Malloreon
By David Eddings; Read by Cameron Beierle
CDs and MP3 editions- Aprox. 15 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books in Motion
Published: 2006
ISBN: MP3 – 1596072377/CDs – 1596072369

From the back cover:

Garion has slain the evil God Torak and been crowned King of Riva. The Prophecy has been fulfilled–or so it seems. While the strange child Errand was growing up in the Vale of Aldur with Polgara and Durnick, showing only occasional flashes of inexplicable knowledge and power, Garion is learning to rule and be a husband to his fiery little Queen, Ce’Nedra.

posted by

The Time Traveler

Jim Baen’s Universe partners with a podcast

Jim Baen’s Universe, a bimonthly genre subscription webzine edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, has “teamed-up” with the Parsec Award winning podcast The Future And You. This is a futurist related show hosted by “transhumanist”, “futurist” and SF author Stephen Euin Cobb. As a part of their agreement Euin Cobb is adding another 10 minutes of content to his podcast. This will be Jim Baen’s Universe created content and may include authors reading excerpts from their stories. In exchange Euin Cobb now has two columns in the JBU e-zine.

I like the guests and some of content on The Future and You but I find the format quite stiff. In the live interviews Euin Cobb comes off as a affable and interested, but during the news and commentary segments, which takes up a lot of the show, his reading is formal, like he’s reading a royal proclamation. This, coupled with the more than two hour long shows, makes me wish for a segmented prodcast or at the very least an “enhanced podcast” that would be set into segments. As it stands The Future And You podcasts come out regularly, on the 1st of each month in fact. The guests are varied and many are famous SF authors. Also included in the show is a segment in which Euin Cobb reads from his novel Bones Burnt Black.

You can try it out for yourself, subscribe to the podcast via this feed:

http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/rss

posted by Jesse Willis

The Sci Phi Show interviews Paul Levinson

The Sci Phi Show podcast, the show that investigates the connections between Science Fiction and Philosophy, will be posting a cool interview with Science Fiction author, university professor and philosophy enthusiast Paul Levinson. Sci Phi Show host Jason Rennie talks to Levinson about his latest novel The Plot To Save Socrates [which SFFaudio recently reviewed]. They also talk about the intersection between the media and Philosophy – apt this, because Levinson is a professor of Media studies at Fordham University. Also cool, Levinson tells of the inspiration for his acclaimed novelette The Chronology Protection Case, which itself has been dramatized for audio.

You can subscribe to the podcast feed via this link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSciPhiShow

Look for it in your podcatcher Friday or Saturday!

posted by Jesse Willis

Author for Variant Frequencies Podcast Lands Screenplay Deal

SFF Audio News

Matt Wallace, Parsec-Award winning author for the Variant Frequencies podcast, had some bragging to do on MySpace:

“I can safely announce that one of my stories, which originally appeared on the Variant Frequencies podcast, has been optioned by an Australian producer. What’s more, I’ve signed on to adapt it into a feature-length screenplay myself for his production company.”

[snip]

“This is a huge gig for me, creatively and professionally. It’s hardly a million dollar studio deal, but it’s certainly 300 times more than I’ve been paid for any of my other stuff. And it’s a shot, however slim, to break into an industry I honestly never thought I’d have access to. I have no idea if the thing will ever sell, much less be made into an actual movie; I’m dealing with an independent producer here. But so far he’s delivered on everything he said he would. If he can deliver the contacts, who knows? The one thing I do know about Australian filmmakers is that they’re resourceful bastards.”

Congratulations Matt!

Check out more of Matt’s stories in the Failed Cities Monologues, which can be found on Podiobooks.com.

http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/book.php?ID=110

posted by Dani Cutler

Author Focus: Robert R. McCammon

SFFaudio Author Focus

The elusive Robert R. McCammon is one of the most admired living writers of Horror fiction. His output has diminished since he renounced deadlines and the pressures from publishers in 1999. But during his writing career McCammon wrote more than a dozen novels and about as many short stories. Not only an admired writer, he was also in great part responsible for the creation of the Horror Writer’s Association. There are just six commercially audiobooks that we know of that either contain one or more of McCammon’s short stories or abridge one of his novels. Here they are:

Audiobooks:

Nightcrawlers: Stories from Blue World
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by William Windom
2 Cassettes – 180 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: 1989
ISBN: 0671881426
Includes Night Calls the Green Falcon, Nightcrawlers and Yellowjacket Summer.

Something Passed By: Stories from Blue World
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by Michael O’Keefe
2 Cassettes – 180 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: 1990
ISBN: 0671700502
Includes Something Passed By, Makeup, The Red House, Pin, and Chico.

Boy’s Life
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by Richard Thomas
2 Cassettes – 180 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: 1991
ISBN: ??????????

Gone South
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by Will Patton
2 Cassettes – 180 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: 1992
ISBN: 0671760165

The Best Horror Stories of The Year, 1989
Edited by Orson Scott Card and Martin H. Greenberg; Read by ???
4 Cassettes – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Dercum Audio
Published: 1989
ISBN: 1556561458
Includes McCammon’s Lizardman and stories from eight other authors.

Stalkers
By Dean R. Koontz and Robert R. McCammon; Read by Various
4 Cassettes – 2 hours, 30 minutes. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Dove Audio
Published: 1992
ISBN: 1558004904
Very rare! A collection of nineteen original tales by “today’s masters of terror” includes the McCammon tales Lizardman read by David Dukes.

Audiobooks for the Blind and Visually Impaired:*

*These audiobooks are not available to the general public, listeners must qualify by visiting the National Library Service website.

Swan Song
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by David Palmer
? – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: National Library Service
Published: ????
Product #: RC 26498
In a future world born of nuclear rage, an ancient evil as old as time roams a devastated, nightmare wilderness. He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, the Man of Many Faces, gathering under his power the forces of human greed and madness. He is searching for a child who has the gift of life, a child named Swan, the child who must be destroyed.

Stinger
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by Rick Foucheux
4 NLS Cassettes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: National Library Service
Published: 1988
Product #: RC 34841
It is dawn in Inferno, Texas, and Cody Lockett is making plans to leave town right after next week’s graduation. Teacher Tom Hammond sees nothing but despair ahead for Cody and others like him, now that the copper mine has closed down and everyone is moving away. Then an indescribable fireball rolls through Inferno, stalking the residents with a terror worse than anyone can imagine.

Mine
By Robert R. McCammon; Read by Pam Ward
3 NLS Cassettes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: National Library Service
Published: 1990
Product #: RC 35540
Dangerously disturbed Mary Terrell still worships Lord Jack, the leader of a sixties radical underground group. Meanwhile, journalist Laura Clayborne has given birth to a son just as her marriage is falling apart. Mary, believing she’s received an order from Lord Jack, steals Laura’s baby and sets off on a murderous cross-country trek to find her idol, with Laura in hot pursuit.

posted by Jesse Willis