audiobook – Page 122

LibriVox: D-99 by H.B. Fyfe

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox Jerry Pyle, one of the participants in the Fourth Annual SFFaudio Challenge writes in to say:

hey jesse…

good news! i just completed D-99! you can find it here:

http://librivox.org/d-99-by-h-b-fyfe/

this was such an amazing experience. i just want to thank you for letting me be a part of the sffaudio challenge.

jer

Thank you Jerry!

Jerry has that all backwards of course – it was Jerry, along with the other cool folks at LibriVox that deserve our thanks. He and they have made us all a public domain Science Fiction audiobook that we can both enjoy and share with our friends forever and ever! If there’s any gratitude left after Jerry and LibriVox take their fair share it should go to Rick Jackson of Wonder Audio. Rick both suggested and commisioned the proofing of the etext for the Challenge. H.B. Fyfe himself is beyond accepting our thanks personally – he was transmuted, in 1997, into a force more powerful than we can possibly imagine. Should we need to we could spread any other deserved thanks a little further afield – we could also thank one of the audiobook publishers who supplied the prizes from which Jerry can now pick!

So Jerry, which 4th Annual SFFaudio Challenge prize would you like?

D-99
By H.B. Fyfe; Read by Jerry Pyle
20 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 03, 2010
EARTHMEN IN TROUBLE Harris was caged in an underwater “zoo” by a pack of blue lobsters. Maria drew a five-year sentence on a puritanical planet for trying to buy a souvenir–and for being excessively feminine. Taranto and Meyers had committed the crime of being shipwrecked on a planet that didn’t like strangers. Gerson was simply kidnapped. And nobody had any idea why five citizens of Terra were being held on other worlds–and the ultra-secret Department 99 existed only to set them, and others like them, free. This tense novel is the story of one evening’s work for Department 99–their successes and failures–and of the strange crisis that almost wrecked D-99.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3755

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

The audiobook is also available in two etext formats |PDF | and |HTML| – in case you’d like to read along!

[Special thanks also to Barry Eads (aka KiltedDragon) and James Christopher (aka Steampunk) @ LibriVox and Rick Jackson @ Wonder Audio!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (as read by Nicol Williamson)

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s an auspicious first post for 2010!

There are several audiobook editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The most recent production would be the unabridged version for Recorded Books. It’s narrated by Rob Inglis. Prior to that, there was also an abridged DH Audio (Durkin Hayes) production featuring narrator Martin Shaw. It was released in the 1990s. Tolkien recorded a few segments himself, released through Caedmon records and later Harper Audio. The earliest actual audiobook version is also very highly regarded. That’s this one, narrated by Nicol Williamson. It never saw North American distribution. Williamson is going to be familiar to fans of John Boorman’s masterpiece Excalibur (he played Merlin).

The Hobbit
By J.R.R. Tolkien; Read by Nicol Williamson
Four 33 1/3 LPs – Approx. 3.5 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Conifer Records / Argo Productions
Published: 1973, 1974
Includes a 7 page booklet. The reading Includes some musical additions.

This is all apropos of some dude uploading it to Youtube (of all places).

Here is Part 1

[via The Silver Key, The Cimmerian and If I Only Had blogs]

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Robert E. Howard, Jack McDevitt, Joe Abercrombie, Michael Rubens, Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin

New Releases

Tantor Media has released about sixty Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobooks in the last six months.

That’s a staggering figure.

When we started SFFaudio, back in 2003, there were fewer than sixty SFF audiobooks released in an entire year from all the audiobook publishers combined!

Here are just a few 2009 and 2010 Tantor titles that are both previously unposted and personally interesting to me…

Kull: Exile Of Atlantis
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Todd McLaren
10 CDs – Approx. 12 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: December 2009
ISBN: 9781400112272
In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan the Cimmerian is indisputably Howard’s greatest creation, it was in his earlier sequence of tales featuring Kull, a fearless warrior with the brooding intellect of a philosopher, that Howard began to develop the distinctive themes and the richly evocative blend of history and mythology that would distinguish his later tales of the Hyborian Age. Much more than simply the prototype for Conan, Kull is a fascinating character in his own right: an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize. This groundbreaking collection brings together all of Howard’s stories featuring Kull: Exile of Atlantis, The Shadow Kingdom, The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, The Cat And The Skull, The Screaming Skull Of Silence, The Striking Of The Gong, The Altar and the Scorpion, The Curse of the Golden Skull, By This Axe I Rule!, Swords Of The Purple Kingdom, The King And The Oak, and Kings Of The Night

The Savage Tales Of Solomon Kane
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Paul Boehmer
10 CDs – Approx. 12.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: January 2010
ISBN: 9781400112289
With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century — he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan was not the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard’s fertile imagination. He was…a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan…. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things…. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane. Collected in this volume are all of the stories that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan: Skulls In The Stars, The Right Hand Of Doom, Red Shadows, Rattle Of Bones, The Castle Of The Devil, Death’s Black Riders, The Moon Of Skulls, The One Black Stain, The Blue Flame Of Vengeance, The Hills Of The Dead, Hawk Of Basti, The Return Of Sir Richard Grenville, Wings In The Night, The Footfalls Within, The Children Of Asshur, and Solomon Kane’s Homecoming.

Time Travelers Never Die
By Jack McDevitt; Read by Paul Boehmer
12 CDs – Approx. 14.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
ISBN: 9781400114337
Publisher: Tantor Media
Publsihed: January 2010
When physicist Michael Shelborne mysteriously vanishes, his son Shel discovers that he had constructed a time travel device. Fearing his father may be stranded in time—or worse—Shel enlists Dave Dryden, a linguist, to accompany him on the rescue mission. Their journey through history takes them from the Enlightenment of Renaissance Italy through the American Wild West to the civil rights upheavals of the twentieth century. Along the way, they encounter a diverse cast of historical greats, sometimes in unexpected situations. Yet the elder Shelborne remains elusive. And then Shel violates his agreement with Dave not to visit the future. There he makes a devastating discovery that sends him fleeing back through the ages and changes his life forever.

Best Served Cold
By Joe Abercrombie; Read by Michael Page
22 CDs – 27.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: December 2009
ISBN: 9781400113279
Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll, and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests, and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king. War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso’s employ, it’s a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular—a shade too popular for her employer’s taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain, and left for dead, Murcatto’s reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die. Her allies include Styria’s least reliable drunkard, Styria’s most treacherous poisoner, a mass murderer obsessed with numbers, and a barbarian who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that’s all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started. Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

The Sheriff of Yrnameer
By Michael Rubens; Read by William Dufris
8 CDs – Approx. 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: August 2009
ISBN: 9781400113255
Meet Cole: hapless space rogue, part-time smuggler, on a path to being full-time dead. His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxy’s most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out of be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans. Reluctantly compelled to deliver these defenseless, fluidless children to safety, Cole gathers a misfit crew for a desperate journey to the far reaches of the galaxy. Their destination: the mysterious world of Yrnameer, the very last of the your-name-heres—planets without corporate sponsors. But little does Cole know that this legendary utopia is home to a murderous band of outlaws bent on destroying the planet’s tiny, peaceful community. Follow Cole’s adventures through a delightfully absurd science-fiction universe, where the artificial intelligence is stupid, dust motes carry branding messages, and middle-management zombies have overrun a corporate training satellite. In the spirit of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, The Sheriff of Yrnameer is sci-fi comedy at its best—mordant, raucously funny, and a thrilling must-listen.

The Unincorporated Man
By Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin; Read by Todd McLaren
19 CDs – Approx. 24.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: May 2009
ISBN: 9781400111725
The Unincorporated Man is a provocative social/political/economic novel that takes place in the future, after civilization has fallen into complete economic collapse. This reborn civilization is one in which every individual is incorporated at birth and spends many years trying to attain control over his or her own life by getting a majority of his or her own shares. Life extension has made life very long indeed. Now the incredible has happened: a billionaire businessman from our time, frozen in secret in the early twenty-first century, is discovered and resurrected, given health and a vigorous younger body. Justin Cord is the only unincorporated man in the world, a true stranger in this strange land. Justin survived because he is tough and smart. He cannot accept only part ownership of himself, even if that places him in conflict with a civilization that extends outside the solar system to the Oort Cloud. People will be arguing about this novel and this world for decades.

Which of the other SFF titles from 2009 (and forthcoming in 2010) from Tantor are of interest to you folks? Click HERE to check out the list. Then post your list below.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Winterfair Gifts by Lois McMaster Bujold

SFFaudio Review

Winterfair Gifts
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
2 CDs – 2.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433250170
Themes: / Science Fiction / Romance / Genetic Engineering / Crime /

This Hugo-nominated novella adds a delightful extra chapter to Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, describing the wedding of Miles and Ekaterin and events leading up to it. In the festive season of Winterfair on the planet Barrayar, Lord Miles Vorkosigan is making elaborate preparations for his wedding. The long-awaited event stirs up romance and intrigue among his eccentric family and friends, particularly for bioengineered space mercenary Sergeant Taura and shy, diffident Armsman Roic. But Miles also has an enemy who is plotting to turn the romantic ceremony into a festival of death.

I generally like most of the things I read. This is probably because I pick what I’m going to read fairly carefully. It’s rare when I sit down with an a book and it isn’t something I’ve already read something about. One of the things that tends to keep me away from a book is an excessive length. I find far too much of today’s fiction overly wordy. I want the ideas in the book, the experiences, I don’t need to see it hit a certain pagecount. The style of the moment is to go long. Often this leads to entirely pointless writing within a story. It’s like I’m Paul Newman in Fat Man And Little Boy. My mantra is: “Just give it to me.” Give me the story – don’t flower it up or string it out. Just give me the bloody story!

Lois McMaster Bujold doesn’t bloat out her stories. This audiobook, a novella, is a good example of that economy. Sure it’s part of a series, but it can and does stand alone. The story is slowly paced, but not slow to read. Readers, like me, who haven’t been oh-so-carefully following the Miles Vorkosigan adventures can still follow the story of any particular novel (or novella) and enjoy it for what it is – a good read. Those who have been following along carefully, and who pick up on some of the timeline and character clues, will probably get an extra bit of enjoyment out of it.

Bujold is one of the few female SF authors I have no problem reading. This is despite her coming at SF from what I see as a very female point of view. Emotion, humor and romance are key for Bujold. Character, something I usually don’t care that much about, is also one of Bujold’s major strengths. In this novella, we get two minor Vorkosigan players meeting and working together for the first time. Its mostly a character piece – with the mechanics of the crime and the science fictional elements taking a serious back seat to a budding romance. It’s the same sort of work/romance thing you get in Bones and Moonlighting. Nobody enjoys those stories for the groundbreaking writing. Now that may sound like I’m damning Winterfair Gifts with faint praise. I’m really not. Winterfair Gifts is fun, skillful storytelling set in an SF universe. This is a gentle romance with a bittersweet twist. A romance story dudes can enjoy. Bujold is a fine writer and Winterfair Gifts is a damn fine audiobook. Consider this fresh series as an alternative to the increasingly devalued Dune series.

Sergeant Taura and Armsman Roic, two trusted members of the extended Vorkosigan security services (and everyone else in this book) are voiced by veteran narrator Grover Gardner. Gardner is one of the old school narrators who long time audiobook fans just love to listen to. His voice is rather odd, almost sounding artificial – but not at all in a bad way. Audiofile Magazine has a quote describing his voice as “sandpaper and velvet” – which really doesn’t tell you much – unless you’ve heard his voice. He’s a skilled narrator and is well chosen for the Vorkosigan saga.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Space Prison by Tom Godwin

SFFaudio Online Audio

Space Prison (first published as: THE SURVIVORS) is a new audiobook of an old pulply paperback by Tom Godwin! Narrator extraordinaire Mark Douglas Nelson, has courteously posted it to LibriVox.org for the use by anyone for anything. Being that this is now a public domain audiobook you can do pretty much anything you can think of with it.

Me? Oh, I’m old fashioned. I’ll just be listening to it.

Here’s the teaser:

“One of the truly unusual novels of science-fiction—a vivid portrayal of the deadliest planet ever discovered!”

And here’s the Wikipedia description:

“The Survivors is a science fiction novel by author Tom Godwin. It was published in 1958 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies, of which 1,084 were never bound. The novel was published in paperback by Pyramid Books in 1960 under the title Space Prison. The novel is an expansion of Godwin’s story ‘Too Soon to Die‘ which first appeared in the magazine Venture.”

Space Prison
By Tom Godwin; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
12 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 21, 2009
AFTER TWO CENTURIES….The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly — the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy them. Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern Empire … with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs!

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3659

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Special thanks too AnnSterling and Laurie Anne Walden]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #045

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #045 – Jesse and Scott are joined by the ghost of Xmas future as they talk about audiobooks, video games, audio drama and lots more. Jesse even reveals an earth shattering bit of trivia about Vincent Price (you’ll never guess it) and what he thinks is clearly “the greatest joke ever.”

Talked about on today’s show:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Drood by Dan Simmons, The Terror, James Powell, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Black Whatever by James Powell, Richard Stark, NPR, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore (as done in the style of Earnest Hemingway), The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman |READ OUR REVIEW|, Joe Haldeman to be named a Grand Master of Science Fiction, The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins, iTunes U, The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein, Vincent Price, Paul K. Willis (Jesse’s uncle), Rumors And Boarders, Vancouver is the American Science Fiction TV mecca, Arctic exploration, the Northwest Passage, The Illustrated History Of British Columbia by Terry Reksten, Sir Francis Drake‘s secret mission, Queen Elizabeth I, Juan de Fuca, Captain James Cook, Captain George Vancouver, Patrick O’Brian meets Edgar Allan Poe and J.M.W. Turner, Simon Vance, recent arrivals, audio drama, The H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour Vol. 1, LovecraftRadio.com, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Dagon, Blackstone Audio, Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Reader’s Chair, Audible.com, Dean Koontz, Hideaway by Dean Koontz, our DEAN KOONTZ AUTHOR PAGE, Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz, Jay O. Sanders, The Day After Tomorrow, Rogue Berzerker by Fred Saberhagen, The Adventure Of The Metal Murderer, time travel, Sherlock Holmes, Wings Out Of Shadow, DH Audio, Manfred von Richthofen, Hermann Göring, Paul Michael Garcia, Berzerker Fury, Empire Of The East by Fred Saberhagen |READ OUR REVIEW|, Willie Wonka!, Penguin Audio, Fire by Kristin Cashore, Full Cast Audio, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Macmillan Audio, Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card, Shadow Complex, side-scrolling video games, Peter David, the attempt to boycott Orson Scott Card’s video games, casual gamers vs. hard core gamers, Fallout 3, Medal Of Honor, DRM, copyfight, They’re Made Of Meat by Terry Bisson (adapted by FredOSphere), Seeing Ear Theatre, J. Michael Straczynski’s City Of Dreams (available via ThePirateBay.org), Towing Jehovah by James Morrow, Luke Burrage‘s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast (reviewing Anathem by Neal Stephenson), William Dufris, Sci Fi Song’s The Ballad Of Wilson Cole, Mike Resnick’s Starship series, FREE Ringworld by Larry Niven, Grover Gardner IS Tom Parker, New Releases, Audible Frontiers, William Gibson, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Jonathan Davis, All Tomorrow’s Parties, The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word For World Is Forest, Book Of The Road, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag by Robert A. Heinlein , The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, David Weber‘s Honor Harrington series, The Plague Of The Dead by Z.A Recht, a zombie plague that makes people: calm, reasonable, rational and peaceful?, Macmillian Audio, A Deepness In the Sky by Vernor Vinge, the Blake’s 7 Audio Adventures series is now on Audible.com!, space opera, social Science Fiction, Robin Hood, Babylon 5, Brave New World, 1984, Memoirs From A Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem, Terry Gilliam, Twelve Monkeys, Philip K. Dick, Franz Kafka, Tantor Media, The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, deep exploration of ideas in fiction, Todd McLaren, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan |READ OUR REVIEW|, the Prometheus Award, libertarianism, Collapse by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs And Steel, Easter Island, Hawaii, Montana, Greenland, ecosystems, The Teaching Company, World War II: A Military and Social History by Thomas Childers, A Military History of WWII by Trevor Nevitt Dupuy Col. U.S. Army, Ret., Italian Frogmen in WWII, Benito Mussolini.

Vincent Price with Paul K. Willis on the set of The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein

Posted by Jesse Willis