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

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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.

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.

Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum FREE and UNABRIDGED!

Hey cool! Maureen O’Brien has also recorded…

Maria Lectrix - Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. WeinbaumDawn of Flame
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Maureen O’Brien
10 Zipped MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: April 2006

After a worldwide plague breaks civilization, Joaquin Smith and his sister build an empire up the Mississippi Valley. Who would be brave or foolish enough to stand in their way? Who but a young backwoodsman named Hull Tarvish?

Review of American Gods by Neil Gaiman

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Fantasy Audiobook - American Gods by Neil GaimanAmerican Gods
By Neil Gaiman, read by George Guidall
2 MP3-CD’s/20 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2001
ISBN: 060836253
Themes: / Fantasy / Modern fantasy / Mythology / Legend / Americana / Picaresque / Gods /

A storm is coming. From his prison cell, Shadow can feel it bearing down on him, but he has no idea how it shred his already tattered life and cast the pieces into realms both familiar and mythical.

Shadow’s journey across the real and imagined terrain of America is the gravitational mass around which the rest of the novel accretes. We follow him out of prison, to a portentous meeting with his eventual employer Mr. Wednesday, back to his home town, and beyond to a magical carousel in a bizarre roadside attraction, to a small Wisconsin town peopled by a hundred unique, quirky characters, down to little Egypt, across a barren Indian reservation, and even to the geometric center of the contiguous states. His discoveries of the languishing deities brought to this continent and abandoned by assimilating immigrants are our own, and the questions he faces about the nature of human faith and the fulfillment of ourselves in mystical sacrifices are questions we find ourselves struggling to answer.

But Shadow’s story is not the only one. The mercurial Mr. Wednesday also has a tale to tell, as do a half-dozen or so other deities, spirits, leprechauns, and phantasms. Their stories are tough, tender, tragic, uplifting, and ultimately doomed. But even they are not the full measure of this book. There are also newly-minted gods of television, computers, covert operations, and other creations of modern angst. They represent a malevolent opposition to the old gods, and the storm Shadow has foreseen is the clash between the old and new gods in a battle for the devotion of an attention-deficit populace.

American Gods is one of the great novels of modern fantasy, and lands just short of the fence as a great American novel. Much of its power is derived from its complexity: It is composed of religion, adventure, a small-town thriller, a road novel, history, con-games, Native American myth, early American legend, intimate portraits of immigrants finding their small way in a huge new country, and sprawling adventure across the entire face of America. Written by an imported Englishman, it offers both an outsider’s attention to quirky detail and a native’s casual acceptance of all that comprises this slow-simmered stew of a country. Gaiman’s prose is graceful, simple, and his pacing is slow enough to nurture our sympathy, yet brisk enough to remain consistently exciting.

George Guidall’s narration is also excellent. His portrayals are groaning, snippy, kvetching and distinct. He conjures a pantheon of note-perfect Eastern European accents for a group of little-known gods, a crisp con-man’s coarseness for Mr. Wednesday, a mischievous African charm for Anansi, and a quiet desperation for Shadow. The only misstep is Shadow’s wife Laura, whose voice seems too fawningly girlish for the part. The MP3 CD format is the best so far invented, and the sound quality is crisp. Maybe too crisp, as you can clearly hear the edges of many of the edits.

After the multi-threaded end of the story, there is an extended interview with Gaiman which provides a delightful look at the man and the origins of his story. While I found it fascinating to see how such a large collection of ideas coalesced into a single transcendent work, the interview also rubs off just a little of the luster. Overall, though, the entire production is a pleasure from the first ominous chapter to the last. It will make an enviable centerpiece to your audio fiction collection.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Escape Pod Podcast has a Robert J. Sawyer story!

SFFaudio Online Audio

Escape PodEscape Pod is proving that it can draw the biggest names in Science Fiction! This week’s story is by Hugo and Nebula award winning Robert J. Sawyer. This is amazing. Is there anything Escape Pod can’t do?

EP078: The Shoulders Of Giants
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Stephen Eley
1 MP3 File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: November 2nd 2006

The Pioneer Spirit was a colonization ship; it wasn’t intended as a diplomatic vessel. When it had left Earth, it had seemed important to get at least some humans off the mother world. Two small-scale nuclear wars—Nuke I and Nuke II, as the media had dubbed them—had already been fought, one in southern Asia, the other in South America. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Nuke III, and that one might be the big one.

SETI had detected nothing from Tau Ceti, at least not by 2051. But Earth itself had only been broadcasting for a century and a half at that point; Tau Ceti might have had a thriving civilization then that hadn’t yet started using radio. But now it was twelve hundred years later. Who knew how advanced the Tau Cetians might be?