Full Cast Audio SFF for 2006

Full Cast Audio LogoBruce Coville the force behind Full Cast Audio has announced a number of 2006 upcoming Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobooks and we’re salivating all over the list, check them out…

Airborn
By Kenneth Oppel
“An incredible swashbuckling adventure, set in a world where great airships ply the skies. You’ll love the characters, and the story has the drive and verve of a Saturday morning serial. We can’t wait to get into the studio with this one, because it’s just so darn much fun!”

*This novel was broadcast as an abridged reading on CBC Radio One’s Between The Covers in 2004. This isn’t that version, FULL CAST AUDIO will be doing it with – a full cast and a complete and unabridegd production. Woo-hoo!

Wolf-Speaker
By Tamora Pierce
“The second novel in Tammy’s beloved Immortals Quartet pulls Daine into new adventures, and reveals more about the special nature of her magic. Great characters, piles of magic, and breath-taking adventure. You’re gonna love it!”

The Will of the Empress
By Tamora Pierce
2006 Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobooks and we’re salivating all over the titles”Tamora Pierce returns to the world of Circle of Magic for this smashing novel that brings the four young mages back together as teens. Suspense! Court intrigue! Romance! Fights! All the things that you love about Tammy’s books are here in abundance. We plan to release this simultaneously with the hardcover. Be listening for it!”

Enna Burning
By Shannon Hale
“This spine tingling companion to The Goose Girl is as wildly imaginative as its predecessor. Romantic, wise, unexpectedly dark in places, it has already developed a passionate following among Shannon Hale’s fans.”

The Star Beast
By Robert A. Heinlein
“Another beloved novel from the same period as Have Space Suit, Will Travel and The Rolling Stones. This one pits bureaucrats against John Thomas and his beloved alien pet, Lummox—a conflict that brings Earth to the edge of an interplanetary catastrophe. Filled with Heinlein’s crackling dialogue, which is just made to be read by a full cast.

Bruce has also lined up some very savory treats for 2007 and “beyond”…

Emperor Mage
By Tamora Pierce
“Book 3 of The Immortals Quartet.”

The Realms of the Gods
By Tamora Pierce
“Book 4 of The Immortals Quartet.”

The Red Planet
By Robert A. Heinlein

Between Planets
By Robert A. Heinlein

The Last Hunt (Book 3 of The Unicorn Chronicles)
By Bruce Coville
“(All right, all right—I’m still working on it. But once it’s written, we’ll also be recording it. I can tell you this much: it’s going to be a long one, probably as big as the first two books put together. Not everyone lives through it, and there are a few surprises about characters we know. And, yes, I’m very embarrassed that it wasn’t finished two years ago.)”

I’m holding in my hands, right now, the February…

News

Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine February 2006 CoverI’m holding in my hands, right now, the February 2006 treeware issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It’s just so damn cool!

The Feb 2006 “On The Net” column by James Patrick Kelly (pages 13 to 16) are all about what we all love – ‘Science Fiction and Fantasy Audiobooks, Online Audio and Podcasting’! About the experience of audiobooks, what listening to them is like, what is available and where to find it all. JPK talks about the revolution that is Audible.com, then gushes over Escape Pod, Tell Tale Weekly and Seeing Ear Theater as well he mentions our own humble website, something he considers “the best audiobook resource on the web!!!*”

w00t! Seeing our names in Asimov’s is way-waycool. We are immortal now. Thanks JPK and thank you SFFaudio readers, 2006 is going to be our best year yet!

*exclamation points added by me, for effect.

posted by Jesse

Podiobooks.com, has finally finished beta-test…

Online Audio

Podiobooks.com Banner

Podiobooks.com, has finally finished beta-testing and has now OFFICIALLY launched! In honor of this, they’ve added two more speculative fiction related podcast novels to the roster:

Podiobooks.com's How To Disappear CompletelyHow To Disappear Completely
By Myke Bartlett
Which bills itself as… “part film noir detective story, part fantasy adventure, part East End gangster tale.”

Podiobooks.com's Amber Page And The Legend Of The Coral Stone Amber Page And The Legend Of The Coral Stone
By Stacey Cochran
By the numbers this podiobook has… “1 creepy old man, 27 exploding cars, 4 gunfights, 2 car chases, 1 cruise ship, 5 evil bad guys, 1 school bus, 1 fiery Harley-Davidson motorcycle, 2 massive earthquakes, 1 tropical Hawaiian Island, 1 super-evil criminal organization known as the S.H.R.O.U.D., and 1 broken family that must come to love one another again…”

Check it out!

Review of A Colder War by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - A Colder War by Charles StrossA Colder War
By Charles Stross; Read by Pat Bottino
1 CD – 80 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612482
Themes: / Science Fiction / Horror / Alternate History / Politics / War / Evil / Cthulhu Mythos /

“Warning. The following briefing film is classified SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM. If you do not have SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM clearance, leave the auditorium now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense. You have sixty seconds to comply.”

The biggest single threat to NATO may be the Shoggoth Gap. The wild card is Lt. Col Oliver North, President Reagan’s man. Roger Jourgensen, CIA operative, is at the center of this crisis. If all the political wrangling doesn’t work out perfectly there will be hell to pay, or worse, far, far worse.

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! A modern novellete in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, rich in detail, frightening in execution! Stross’ stunning tale will pull you back into that old cold war era embalming fear and then magnify it into non-euclidian infinities. Imagine David Cronenberg directing Dr. Strangelove based on a script by H. P. Lovecraft. Imagine an alternate history in which nuclear bombs are not the ultimate weapon, but instead they are merely a stepping stone to eldritch technologies accessible through certain trans-dimentional forces first encountered in 1920s Antarctica, technologies which neither the USA nor the USSR can quite contain. Stross has admitted A Colder War is directly inspired by Lovecraft’s novel At The Mountains Of Madness. The amount of research and historical mastery Stross sprinkles throughout the narrative creates a verisimilitude necessary for truly effective alternate history. Insert the CD and then shudder in horror as the concept locks you in for the duration.

Pat Botino’s tremulous voice isn’t at all typical for professional narrators, but when it comes to subverting heroic self-assurance, he’s got no equal. Here it works extremely well. The production is loud and straight, the way I like it. A few voice effects are used to distinguish documentation bookmarks of each section. Nothing flashy, nothing distracting. I’d be satisfied if every straight reading single narration audiobook was done this way. For a while now I’ve been telling just about anyone who would listen that editor and producer Alan Kaster at Infinivox has been picking out the best modern short science fiction and tunring it into fabulously read audiobooks. This latest wave of Infinvox’s GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES includes three Charles Stross audiobooks.Lobsters, Antibodies and A Colder War. Each of these is available for just $7.99 right now on the Infinivox website. There’s nary a better value on the web!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling. He’s larg…

Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling. He’s largely responsible for the Cyberpunk movement. His humor is as dry as his mind is sharp. We’ve found an MP3 online that features him speaking on an interesting SF theme, The Singularity. It runs nearly 50 minutes, not surprisingly it was done for the Long Now Foundation, a foundation itself right out of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Click HERE to download it. Be aware the sound quality is poor even though the ideas are rich.

Do you like Ninjas? Do you like Mystic Ninjas?…

Do you like Ninjas? Do you like Mystic Ninjas? How ’bout Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas? Yah, we like them too! In fact we’ve flipped over them. With just half a dozen podcasts under their black belts The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas have stealthily stolen our hearts! Summer Brooks, Joe Murphy and David Moldawer are talking old school Science Fiction and Fantasy with a special emphasis on the literary. Podcasts on venerable Science Fiction and Fantasy released so far include:

PODCAST # 5The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
PODCAST # 3Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny
PODCAST # 2Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
PODCAST # 1Hyperion by Dan Simmons