alternate history – Page 5

Podiobooks.com: Some Other Scotland by Mick Bordet

SFFaudio Online Audio

It’s been a while since we talked about a Podiobooks.com podiobook, so here’s one that popped into my email just today. Mick describes his podcast like this:

…you might be interested in my podcast fiction story Some Other Scotland, which includes many SciFi elements whilst being set in the present day.

Some Other Scotland is a weekly podcast story of ancient advanced civilisations, clan wars & conspiracy in an alternative modern Scotland.

Every week listeners can vote for changes to the latest news which will affect the ongoing plot, making for a compelling and ever-changing story.

Gravestones across Scotland are being defaced. An ancient advanced civilisation is discovered under the remains of Skara Brae. Bonnie Prince Charlie returns to Scotland, two hundred years after his death. Edinburgh police unearth a mysterious surveillance operation on the Queen’s residence and the Scottish Parliament. All these events take place in a Scotland which is both familiar and yet slightly twisted.

Detective Jim Sykes’ investigation into hidden cameras and a long-dead pretender to the throne uncovers a sinister plot that dates back centuries before the term ‘terrorism’ was coined. Archaeologist Erica Wallis digs up more than she bargained for when she encounters an underground civilisation that has existed since before the pyramids of Egypt were built. When one of their misplaced, but deadly artifacts falls into the hands of young street-poet ‘Razer’, he is launched into the middle of a clan war that has been waged across the World for millenia.

Events triggered thousands of years ago are about to reach a climax that not only threatens Scotland, but could finally hand the modern World the tools of its own destruction.

The story has been running for 13 weeks to date and this week has been added to Podiobooks.com.

The feed at the main website includes spin-offs, news items and feedback episodes. That’s here:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SomeOtherScotland

The Podiobooks.com feed, which includes just the story itself, is here:

http://www.podiobooks.com/title/some-other-scotland/feed/

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – Wonder Audio; Fredric Brown & Keith Laumer

Aural Noir: New Releases

One mystery classic and one SF Alternate History classic. That’s like two classics, huh?

Fabulous Clipjoint

The Fabulous Clipjoint
By Fredric Brown; Read by William Coon
Audible Download – 5 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

Winner of the Edgar Award

You’ll hear the soft, lazy voice of a dame who’s been around, and you’ll meet up with a beautiful heller. You’ll learn the lurid secrets of a man’s locked past, and you’ll prowl dark alleys with two men–two men turned hunters. And you’ll wonder–why Ed and his Uncle Am didn’t level with the cops; what business a gang would have with Ed’s dead father; and where the killer thought the hunters would go wrong. Here are your answers, in this fast-spinning, two-fisted mystery about thugs, molls, and carnival folks.

And now the SF Alternate History classic by

Worlds of the Imperium
By Keith Laumer; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
Audible Download – 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

When Brion Bayard was kidnapped and brought to the alternate world where Earth’s history took a different turn, it was not a pleasant experience. It was, however, a startling experience. Here was a world that was just like the Earth he was taken from–with just a few subtle changes. On top of all this, Brion was given a puzzling assignment by his captors. He was to secretly enter a palace, and kill a dangerous and tyrannical dictator. There was one, small catch–the hated dictator in this world was the mirror image of Brion Bayard. For on an Alternate Earth, Brion’s is his own worst enemy!

Posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Free online steampunk audio: The Shattered Teacup

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Shattered Teacup

Anyone up for a belated brass goggled Christmas pressy? UK indie publisher Snowbooks.com have commissioned an original Newbury and Hobbes story – The Shattered Teacup – set in the alternative London of George Mann’s The Affinity Bridge. Tor Books editor Lou Anders has lots of praise for this Steampunk series:

The book follows the adventures of Maurice Newbury, detective for the Crown, and his assistant, Ms. Veronica Hobbes, a team who sit somewhere between a classic Sherlock Holmes and Watson pairing and that of Doctor Who’s Doctor and one of his more capable companions. They inhabit a wonderfully-realized steampunk London, replete with clockwork butlers, airships in the skies, and zombies in Whitechapel. The book is a must for steampunk fans, as well as anybody who liked The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (graphic novel, not film, natch). [via Tor.com]

The Shattered Teacup serves as a bridge between books one and two of the series and as an introduction into the world of Maurice Newbury and Veronica Hobbes. It is available as a PDF download or as an mp3 audio version, and best of all it’s free! At first glance both production quality and quality of the narration seem to be quite good, so steampunkers should give it a try.

Download is available from the snowbooks.com homepage. Streaming does not work so you need to use ‘save file as’…

Posted by Carsten Schmitt

Fatherland

SFFaudio Online Audio

Fatherland
Full cast audio drama in five parts
Based on the novel by Robert Harris
Adapted by John Dryden
Monday, Dec. 15 through Friday, Dec. 19
9:30AM, 8:30PM & 1:30AM GMT

The year is 1964, and it’s a week before Hitler’s 75th birthday. Nazi Germany won the Second World War, Churchill is living in exile in Canada, Joseph Kennedy is President of the United States, and King Edward and Queen Wallis are puppet monarchs of the United Kingdom. In this dimension, history took a very different turn in 1942 to the one we are familiar with.

If you enjoy alternate histories be sure to check out this audio drama adaptation of Robert Harris‘s novel set in an imaginary post-war Germany. In the story, Berlin cop Xavier March begins to uncover a terrible secret at the heart of the totalitarian state. See, nazis…they really needed to lighten up a bit, but they didn’t and they certainly don’t in this chilling story. Fatherland stars Anton Lesser, Peter Ellis and Andrew Sachs, is very well produced and gets a solid recommendation from yours truly.

Remember that all BBC7 programs stay online for six days so if you miss one just check the schedule.

Posted by RC of Radio Tales of the Strange & Fantastic

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #005

SFFaudio Online Audio

The “Short Science Fiction Collections” from LibriVox are FREE and FUN! Here’s the latest, which includes mostly new stories (a couple of stories previously recorded by other narrators). My recommended listens from this collection include: Summit, Crossroads Of Destiny and A Matter Of Magnitude. Also, listen to The Untouchable and Quiet, Please, if only for the voice of new narrator Jerome Lawson. Lawson is trying and achieving distinctive voices for each character – it’s not polished to perfection yet, but he’s really got something there. Lawson also has great sound set-up too. I’d like to hear more of his work in the next collection – or in novella or novel length work. And, thanks to all the narrators and the administrators at LibriVox for these! We appreciate it folks!

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 005
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 5.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
“Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science or technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories, originally published between 1931 and 1962, that entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.”

Stories included:

2BR02B
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; Read by Hoosemon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
In the not so distant future an over-populated planet requires that every birth be balanced by a death. When Edward K. Whelig, Jr.’s wife births triplets he needs to find three people willing to enter a local suicide booth and give him the receipt…

The Burning Bridge
By Poul Anderson; Read by Alex C. Telander
1 |MP3| – Approx. 52 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
Usually there are two “reasons” why something is done; the reason why it needs to be done, and, quite separate, the reason people want to do it. The foul-up starts when the reason-for-wanting is satisfied … and the need remains! This story was first published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine’s January 1960 issue.
*From Worlds of If, January 1962.

Circus
By Alan E. Nourse; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
Not a strange-looking man, Morgan thought. Rather ordinary, in fact. A plain face, nose a little too long, fingers a little too dainty, a suit that doesn’t quite seem to fit, but all in all, a perfectly ordinary looking man. *First published in 1963 in “The Counterfeit Man -More Science Fiction Stories”.

Crossroads of Destiny
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Alex C. Telander
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
No wonder he’d been so interested in the talk of whether our people accepted these theories! *First published in the July 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe Science Fiction magazine.

Egocentric Orbit
By John Cory; Read by Elanor
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn’t the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn’t it? It may not take so long for a spaceman to learn … First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s May 1960 issue.

A Matter Of Magnitude
By Al Sevcik; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
When you’re commanding a spaceship over a mile long, and armed to the teeth, you don’t exactly expect to be told to get the hell out … *First published in the pages of Amazing Science Fiction Stories, January 1960.

Quiet, Please
By Kevin Scott; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
Groverzb knew what he wanted—peace and quiet. He was willing to scream his head off for it!
*First published in Worlds of If magazine’s November 1961 issue.

The Untouchable
By Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
“You can see it—you can watch it—but mustn’t touch!” And what could possibly be more frustrating … when you need, most violently, to get your hands on it for just one second… *From Analog magazine’s December 1960 issue.

Summit
By Mack Reynolds; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
Almost anything, if it goes on long enough, can be reduced to, first a Routine, and then, to a Tradition. And at the point it is, obviously, Necessary. *First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s February, 1960 issue.

The Yillian Way
By Keith Laumer; Read by John Larmour
1 |MP3| – Approx. 37 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2008
The ceremonious protocol of the Yills was impressive, colorful—and, in the long run, deadly!

Subscribe to the podcast feed via this url:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-vol-005.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – S.M. Stirling, Mary Shelley, Frank Herbert

New Releases

Another in S.M. Stirling’s alternate planet series (a parallel world first introduced in The Sky People), have a listen to the Dragon Page interview/chat with Stirling |MP3|, it too sounds like a cool book, The Sky People earned an SFFaudio Essential designation…

In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings
By S.M. Stirling; Read by Todd McLaren
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400106103 (CDs), 9781400156108 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
On Mars, early hominids evolved civilization earlier than their earthly cousins, driven by the needs of a harsh world growing still harsher as the initial terraforming ran down. Without coal, oil, or uranium, their technology was forced onto different paths, and the genetic wizardry of the Crimson Dynasty united a world for more than 20,000 years. Now, in a new stand-alone adventure set in this world’s 2000 AD, Jeremy Wainman is an archaeologist who has achieved a lifelong dream: to travel to Mars and explore the dead cities of the Deep Beyond, searching for the secrets of the Kings Beneath the Mountain and the fallen empire they ruled.

Unhyped, unbalyhooed, and probably the last novel that needs to be re-recorded, never the less I think the fact that Simon Vance is narrating makes this a worthy edition…

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley; Read by Simon Vance
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: February 2008
EAN: 9781400106349 (CD), 9781400156344 (MP3-CD)
Mary Shelley’s tragic story of a scientist who created a monster is perhaps even more compelling today than when it was written nearly two centuries ago. The brilliant Victor Frankenstein fashions a new form of life only to discover, too late, the irreparable damage he has caused.

Here’s the first in a new batch of old, non-Dune, Herbert novels getting their first unabridged releases…

Hellstrom’s Hive
By Frank Herbert; Read by Scott Brick
10 CDs, 1 MP3-CD – 4 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400105649 (CDs), 9781400155644 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects. First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as “Project 40,” Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

Posted by Jesse Willis