Review of The Red Panda Adventures – Season 1

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Podiobooks Audio Drama: The Red Panda Adventures - Season OneThe Red Panda Adventures – Season One
By Gregg Taylor; Performed by a FULL CAST
12 MP3 Files – Approx. 5.5 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: DecoderRingTheatre.com / Podiobooks.com
Published: 2005/2006
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Supervillains / 1930s / Toronto / Secret Identities / Hypnotism /

Flying Squirrel: “We could have two super-power’d loons on our hands.” -Episode 11: Duality

Masks, grapple-guns, static boots, retractable membranes, ring-radios? Check. Supervillains with names like The Golden Claw, The Electric Eel and Diablo? Check. Okay then, tune your podcatcher to ‘pure pulp’ and break out the hockey organ because The Red Panda Adventures – Season One is ready to glide into justice. This first 12 episode season is full of flying kung fu fists, mesmerizing hypnosis, snappy dialog and mystery. Most memorable for me are the characters and the dialogue. Plot lines are reminiscent of comic-book and radio serials from yesteryear but the parlance is all modernistic as filtered through a roaring-twenties speech pattern paradigm. Episode 2: Night Mission and Episode: 7 Red Panda Wanted Dead Or Alive stood-out because these episodes highlighted the interaction between the love-blind hero, Red Panda, and his adoring sidekick The Flying Squirrel. The Panda’s superpowers are a cross between those of The Green Hornet and The Shadow. He’s a master hypnotist, able to cloud the minds of villains. Other fun aspects are the introduction of other superheroes and superhero groups, in a way the whole show reminds me of animated version of The Tick if it were played slightly straighter.

The Red Panda Adventures – Season One is a super-fun diversion delivered in delicious half-hour doses. The only thing better than the production of this fab audio drama series is the vocal talent. I get endless kicks out of the sexual tension between the oblivious Red Panda and his pining sidekick/driver Kit Baxter. Their city, 1930s Toronto, is quieter than many other audio dramas, I hear less foley and fewer sound effects, I like that they aren’t obsessed with putting in the sound of footsteps in every scene – it usually isn’t necessary. Also nice is that from episode one of this series this show really works. This is probably because of the experience gained during the previous Red Panda incarnation (a six episode series set during WWII). Season Two is already underway and I look forward to devouring it too.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Podshow launches OTR SciFi Podcast

Online Audio

Podshow: Old Time RadioPodshow has created 10 feeds comprising it’s “Old Time Radio Network.” The one that deserves our scrutiny is OTR SciFi. This is basically a stripped down version of the Spaceship Radio podcast no commentary, no interaction, just OTR. Here’s the official line:

“The Old Time Radio Network at Podshow.com presents vintage radio programs from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s and reflects the combined efforts of its creators, Dennis Humphrey and Bob Camardella, both of whom have spent their lives as enthusiasts of early radio’s Golden Age. Their combined years of research, experience, and their extensive collections, coupled with the innovation of podcasting, have afforded a vehicle to share these efforts with the world. Having engaged in podcasting for a year and a half, the two have joined forces to form the Old Time Radio Network. As a result of their recently signed contract with Podshow, Dennis and Bob are well established in the family friendly podcasting category with such notables as I-tunes family section, and Podomatic.com. Their latest development, scheduled to launch November 1st, is a Vintage Videos, in the videocasting category which will not only increase ratings, but afford advertisers a video alternative that will surely compliment their advertising program. The Old Time Radio Network, Where The Oldies Are Still Young !”

If interested you can subscribe via this feed:

http://www.podshow.com/feeds/otrscifi.xml

Before posting this story I wanted to wait a bit and see what programs they were going to get. I waited and now there are about 40 shows in the feed from the likes of…

Dimension X, X-Minus One, Dark Fantasy, Black Castle, Beyond Tommorow, and shockingly Vanishing Point which is a copyrighted non-public domain CBC Radio series from the 1980s.

posted by Jesse Willis

Links to 2 UNABRIDGED Kelly Link short stories

Online Audio

KQED The Writer's Block PodcastThe Writer’s Block is a radio show segment on Northern California’s KQED, it is also a podcast. The Halloween instalment is an unabridged reading of Kelly Link’s short story The Hortlak, which shall be shortly appearing in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology.

The Hortlak by Kelly LinkThe Hortlak
By Kelly Link; Read by Kelly Link
1 MP3 File – 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: KQED’s The Writer’s Block
Podcast: October 31st 2006
Eric and Batu work at the All Night Convenience store across the road from the Ausible Chasm, at the bottom of which lies a vast zombie city. Zombies stop in at the All Night on their way to the chasm. Are Eric and Batu part of some kind of “new retail” experiment designed to study the shopping habits of zombies? Will Eric ever get the nerve to talk to Charley, the woman who works at the local SPCA putting dogs to sleep?

Also…

Tell Tale WeeklyMore Kelly Link audio can be found at TellTaleWeekly.org including our previously posted Most Of My Friends Are Two Thirds Water as well as the previously unposted, and frankly baffling, The Girl Detective. I must be getting a lot dumber because Kelly Link’s fiction is getting harder and harder for me to grasp. Check it out for yourself…

The Girl Detective by Kelly LinkThe Girl Detective
By Kelly Link; Read by Alex Wilson
1 MP3 File – 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Spoken Alexandria Podcast
Podcast: August 30th 2006
“Think of the underworld as the back of your closet, behind all those racks of clothes that you don’t wear anymore. Things are always getting pushed back there and forgotten about. The underworld is full of things that you’ve forgotten about.”

posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7 has William Gibson’s Burning Chrome + Douglas Hill’s Blade Of The Poisoner

Online Audio

BBC 7's The 7th DimensionBBC7‘s has some good stuff for us this week. First up, a dramatized version of a late 1980s fantasy novel by Douglas Hill. Next an early 1980s short story by William Gibson. I heard the Gibson story when it we first broadcast on BBC a while back, it is a terrific listen with narration done by Adam Sims.

Blade Of The Poisoner
Based on the novel by Douglas Hill; FULL CAST
4 Parts – [RADIO DRAMA]
BROADCASTER: BBC 7
BROADCAST: Saturday at 6pm and 12am (UK Time)
Young Jarral narrowly escapes the slaughter of his village by the evil Prince Mephtik – the Poisoner. Adapted by Wally K Daly and first broadcast on BBC Radio 5 in 1991.

Burning Chrome
By William Gibson; Read by Adam Sims
2 Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
BROADCASTER: BBC 7
BROADCAST:Thursday and Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30am (UK Time)
Set in the world of cyberspace and computer hacking. Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack are trying to figure out a way of pulling off the one big score that will make them rich. But industrial espionage is a dangerous business, especially when they decide to rip off Chrome, the most ruthless figure in the local mob subsidiary.

posted by Jesse Willis

Hour 25 resurrected for Halloween

SFFaudio Online Audio

Hour 25Hour 25 has returned. But for a supposedly weekly show it sure is a long time in coming (the last show was in March). Host Warren James and his wife Suzzane Gibson have prepared a Halloween reading show. This year two tales are included…

The Tyburn Ghost
By The Countess of Munster
“[A] classic English haunted house story wherein a Mother and her daughters get a bit more than they were expecting while on a visit to London. But then, what would you expect to find in a house that was built on a hill previously used for hanging criminals?”

A Tropical Horror
By William Hope Hodgson
“[Features] a sailing ship that has an encounter with a horror from the ocean depths while traveling through the South Seas.”

Unfortunately the show is still operating in the m3u format, which does not make listening portable. If you’re able to sit in front of your computer and listen click HERE. I sure wish this show was podcast.

posted by Jesse Willis