audiobook – Page 153

New Releases – Lovecraft, Pohl, Williamson, del Rey, Smith

New Releases

[editor’s note-A slew of releases from my audiobook company, Wonder Audio. A nice range of titles that I’m proud to present. Vintage Stories+Classic Authors+Great Narrators=Massive Goodness :) ]

Preferred Risk
By Frederik Pohl & Lester del Rey; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
7 hrs. – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Availiable at Audible and iTunes

The Company was a powerful, efficient, and monstrous insurance organization that controlled the entire world, scientifically regulating everything in life: war, epidemics, one-a-day food pills and test-tube sex…all through the use of its patented, terrifying human deep-freeze vault.

Claims Adjuster Wills, a great believer in the Company, begins to have second thoughts when he meets beautiful and sorrowful Rena, whose radical father lies in a frozen subterranean vault.

Scanner Live in Vain
By Cordwainer Smith; Read by Jeremiah Costello
1.5 hrs. – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Availiable at Audible and iTunes

Man has conquered space, but not without costs. To maintain the space lanes, Scanners have to undergo an operation in which their brain is severed from their sensory inputs to block the Pain of Space. Martel has made this sacrifice. He must monitor his vital functions via implanted dials and instruments in his chest. His only respite from this isolated existence is his ability to occasionally “cranch” and return to some sort of normalcy with his wife, Luci. But now a man named Adam Stone has claimed that he has a found a way to travel in the deep of space without the use of the Scanners. Through the twisted logic of the community of Scanners, it is decided that Adam Stone must die. Martel, while cranched, realizes the madness of that solution and that all Scanners live in vain!

Wolves of Darkness
By Jack Williamson; Read by William Coon
3 hrs. – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Availiable at Audible and iTunes

When Clovis McLaurin receives an urgent letter from his father, Dr. Ford McLaurin, he rushes in the dead of winter to his father’s ranch. Clovis arrives to find the local townspeople being attacked and killed by a pack of wolves. As he journeys to the ranch of his father, a scientist who has been doing revolutionary experiments, he is also attacked.

But wolves are not the only thing running with the pack. Stella Jetton, the daughter of his father’s assistant, is running with the wolves, dressed in only a silk slip in the bitter cold. Clovis recognizes the blood-stained face of the girl he loves, but not her eyes. How could his father’s experiment have untapped the unimaginable horror that Clovis is about to confront?

The Colour Out of Space
by H.P. Lovecraft; read by Mark Douglas Nelson
1.5 hrs- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Availiable at Audible and iTunes

As a man surveys the countryside for the construction of a reservoir, he comes across a stretch of barren farmland leeched of life. An aged survivor of the town tells him the tale of a rural farmer’s family and their path to madness and unspeakable horror.

Lovecraft considered “The Colour Out of Space” to be the best of all his stories. Originally appearing in the September 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, it is one of his most frequently anthologized tales.

Posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Review of Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Review

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
7 CD – 8.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433245503
Themes: / Science Fiction / Telepathy / Post Apocalypse / Nuclear War / Satellites / Psychokinesis / California /

Philip Dick’s post-nuclear-holocaust masterpiece presents a mesmerizing vision of a world transformed, where technology has reverted back to the nineteenth century, animals have developed speech and language, and humans must deal with both physical mutations and the psychological repercussions of the disaster they have caused. The book is filled with a host of Dick’s most memorable characters: Hoppy Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers; Walt Dangerfield, a selfless disc jockey stranded in a satellite circling the globe; Dr. Bluthgeld, the megalomaniac physicist largely responsible for the decimated state of the world; and Stuart McConchie and Bonnie Keller, two unremarkable people bent the survival of goodness in a world devastated by evil. Epic and alluring, Dr. Bloodmoney brilliantly depicts Dick’s undying hope in humanity.

The subtitle, of Dr. Bloodmoney is or How We Got Along After the Bomb, the idea for it came from the original publisher (ACE Books) who wanted to capitalize on the subtitle of the movie Dr. Strangelove. I can almost see it too. For me, this wasn’t Philip K. dick’s best novel. But, if you liked his best novel, you’ll like this one. I did. The thing is, no matter which one of Dick’s novels is your favourite, Doctor Bloodmoney will remind you of it – if only for the author’s voice. Dick, more than with any other emotion, writes with sympathy. You feel for his characters, their petty goals, their yearnings, their little prejudices. The plot on this one is almost unimportant, it’s also hard to sum up in a sentence, but I’ll try: A radio repairman with no limbs (due to phocomelia) has superpowers, which he uses to predict/cause WWIII, then becomes ultra-powerful as a big fish in a small pond.

The rule about writing what you know is more difficult in Science Fiction. Nobody’s been to Mars yet. Nobody has met an alien. But you can clearly see what Dick knows showing up on the pages of his SF novels. When he wrote Dr. Bloodmoney he was really into Jungian and Freudian analysis, he was reading Of Human Bondage and was probably an avid mushroom picker. The plot doesn’t really matter as this is a situation with a set of Dickian characters. What stands out, what will remain in my memory are the scenes, characters interacting with each other and themselves. Thinking their thoughts, acting their acts. When we meet the title character, Bruno Bluthgeld, for the second time later in the book, (he’s not the star), he’s showing off his talking sheep dog to a little girl. She asks to hear the dog speak. It does, and the tears came to my eyes. When Stuart McConchie goes into San Fransisco he parks his horse only to come back and find it eaten by the city’s underclass. It really is all there: The salesmen, the repairmen, the cheating wives, the murderous children and the sympathetic animals. Everything we expect from a Dick tale.

Blackstone Audio narrator Tom Weiner is fast becoming a new favourite. His natural timbre is basso but he can do a lot with it. Performance is the key, everybody gets a voice of their own. In this novel that’s especially necessary as there are more than a dozen characters sharing the plot and dialogue. Blackstone has more Dick headed to audiobook too. The Man In The High Castle has already been released. Ubik is winging it’s way to us right now and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, Valis, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch should be released over the next few months. We are living in very Dickian times my friends.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum

SFFaudio Review

Hide and Seek
By Jack Ketchum; Read by Wayne June
5 CDs – 5.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304402
Themes: / Horror /

Dead River’s a sleepy little town on the coast of Maine without much going for it. The Great Depression hit hard and never let go. Even now, sixty-odd years later, there’s not much to do, not much going on. So that when a trio of friends, rich college kids, arrive there on a forced march with their parents for summer vacation they have to make their own amusements. And they do, in spades.

So what scares horror writers? I imagine something like this: They draw back the curtain to provide the audience with a full look at their half-hidden ghosts, only to find that their readers react with indifference instead of terror at the final reveal.

This scenario has happened to me more than a few times during my reading experience, which is why I think that the old saw that horror writers “choose” not to write about vampires and zombies and ghouls because they’re “overused” and “cliche” is so much bullshit. Horror writers avoid these elements not because it’s hard to write about them, but because it’s hard to write about them believeably.

Jack Ketchum’s 1984 novel Hide and Seek unfortunately suffers a bit from this malady. Although its monsters are not truly supernatural, Ketchum’s novel contains a beast that really isn’t very scary, and its appearance towards the end of the book is a bit of a letdown–at least from my point of view.

Of course, it’s only a letdown because the buildup to that point is so damned compelling.

Hide and Seek is set in Dead River, a sleepy, depressed tourist town on the coast of Maine, and follows the story of a 20-year-old townie, Dan Thomas. Dan is living a life of inertia (“A tired life breeds tired decisions,” Ketchum writes), but the arrival of Casey, Kim, and Steve, three rich teenagers vacationing with their parents for the summer, shakes up his routine. Although he’s from a very different background, Dan is drawn to Casey, a beautiful but cynical and wild girl with a volatile, dangerous streak in her. She returns his affections and Dan becomes an accepted part of the group.
The teens like to get their kicks by breaking the rules–skinny dipping and petty thievery, mostly. So when Dan tells them about the old Crouch residence–an abandoned coastal house with a grim past that includes rumors of a cannibalistic couple and a pack of wild dogs–the lure is too much to resist. Casey suggests a game of grown up hide and seek without flashlights at night in the house, and the fun (and horror) ensues.

I’ll try not to spoil anything, but suffice to say that Hide and Seek has much more going on under the surface than a teenage slasher or haunted house movie. Hide and Seek is about the darkness we have inside of us. In a play on the title, Casey has her own dark secret that she keeps buried and hidden. Seeking it out at its dark core proves very dangerous, indeed.

The old Crouch house contains a tunnel of horrors in its dusty basement. Read as a symbol, the journey into this dark and rotten place is a voyage inside Casey’s bleeding psyche. A horrible, vile truth lurks in this void, but it must be faced and stamped out if she is to become whole.

Hide and Seek begins with a brief meditation on how fate and chance are unpredictable, and how even a single, awful event can twist and ruin someone for the rest of their life. For Casey, a moment of unforgiveable weakness by her father in her 13th year causes her to develop a wild, nihilistic streak that threatens to consume her. Only when she finally faces her fear–the beast in the cave–does Casey grow up:

In the midst of all the terror, we were happy. The caves had shown us the worst the world could do to you. And for just a moment, something of the best.

But Ketchum is not a typical writer and happy outcomes are not guaranteed. His horrors–and those endured by Casey–are mean and nasty, and can kill.

In summary, if viewed in a purely psychological sense, Hide and Seek works and its implications are frightening. But with a literal reading in the cold light of day, the things in the Crouch house aren’t really so frightening, after all.

Hide and Seek is read by Wayne June, and although I’ve said it before I’ll say it again: The guy has a voice made for horror. He’s not only dark and creepy sounding, but he imbues the text with passion. June is quickly becoming the “George Guidall” of horror.

Note: Hide and Seek is Ketchum’s second novel and, although I still recommend it as a cracking good read, his later stuff (The Lost, The Girl Next Door) gets better.

Posted by Brian Murphy

Review of Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury

SFFaudio Review

Now and Forever
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Paul Hecht
4 CDs – 4.75 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781428198258
Themes: / Fantasy / Collection / Novella / Small town / Nostalgia / Starship / Aliens / Telepathy /

In some ways the most interesting part of the two novellas that make up this book are Ray Bradbury’s introductions. He explains that both “Somewhere the Band is Playing” and “Leviathan ‘99” have their origins in his long ago days as a Hollywood screenwriter. These explanations hang on in the listener’s mind and provide insights and color for the stories that follow.

“Somewhere the Band is Playing” evokes the memories of the idyllic towns that Bradbury loves to write about, a la “Mars is Heaven” in The Martian Chronicles. One wonders if this bucolic turn-of-the-20th-century setting has its roots in his own youth in Waukegan, Illinois. The story is told by James Cardiff, a reporter who awakens one morning mysteriously drawn to Summerton, Arizona, which does not appear on the map although the train stops there. As he explores the town he finds it is full of mysteries that seemingly defy explanation such as adult inhabitants, but no children; a graveyard, but no dates of death on the tombstones. This story gently invites the listener to consider questions of immortality, paradise, and the consequences of our choices.

Moby Dick was the inspiration for “Leviathan ‘99”. In Bradbury’s tale, the white whale has become a huge comet, Ishmael is a young astronaut, Queequeg is a mind-reading alien, and Captain Ahab a nameless starship captain who is madly pursuing his nemesis after their original encounter left him blind. Ray Bradbury is known for his love of words which comes through strongly in in the Shakespearean-like soliloquies through which The Captain shows his descent into madness. I especially liked the use of Quell the mind-reader to show us The Captain’s true frame of mind when he was elsewhere. Even the reader who has barely a speaking acquaintance with Moby Dick will appreciate the parallels that Bradbury employs and thrill to the question of how he will choose to end the story.

Neither of these stories has the depth of Ray Bradbury’s great works such as Something Evil This Way Comes or Fahrenheit 451. However, they are novellas and perhaps it may be better to compare them to his short stories. On a first listening, they left me rather flat, wondering, “Is that all there is?” However, further contemplation made it obvious that there is a common theme of man’s blindness, the wonders that are just within reach, and the consequences of our choices. I would not recommend these as a first outing for someone who hasn’t read Bradbury before but to the reader who already appreciates this author, they have much to recommend them.

Paul Hecht’s narration is perfect and his ability to voice characters is exceptional. It is a mystery to me how such a deep voice can portray a woman so well without using falsetto or sounding ridiculous but Hecht does it with little effort. His characters spring to life within the listener’s mind and add depth to the story.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy Ray Bradbury’s writing.

Posted by Julie D.

ed. – This is our first review of an audiobook from the new Sci-Fi imprint from Recorded Books. Click here for a look of what’s coming up from this imprint, which is shaping up to be a fine selection from the literary end of science fiction and fantasy.

LibriVox: Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Quasar Dragon blogmeister Wolfkahn is excited about the newest SF novel to be catalgoued at LibriVox:

“Yes!!! LibriVox has just finished a free audiobook version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adventure masterpiece Pellucidar, the first sequel to At the Earth’s Core.”

Meanwhile, that preceding novel in the series (At The Earth’s Core) is still listed as“in progress” and is set to be a multi-voiced production as opposed to this single narratored one. Check it out…

Pellucidar
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Ralph Snelson
16 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2008
Pellucidar is a fictional “Hollow Earth” milieu invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an “iron mole” to burrow 500 miles into the earth’s crust. This is the second book in the series.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/pellucidar-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

[via Quasar Dragon]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of Grifter’s Game by Lawrence Block

Aural Noir: Review

Grifter’s Game is book number 001 in the Hard Case Crime library.

SFFaudio Essential Hard Case Crime Grifter’s Game
By Lawrence Block; Read by Alan Sklar
5 CDs – 5 Hours 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9781602834538
Themes: / Crime / Noir / Femme Fatale / Drugs / Murder / Atlantic City /

Con man Joe Marlin was used to scoring easy cash off of gullible women. But that was before he met Mona Brassard — and found himself holding a stolen stash of raw heroin. Now that Joe has fallen hard for Mona, he’s got to pull off the most dangerous con of his career: one that will leave him either a killer — or a corpse.

Before he settled into the comfortable (and profitable) serial novels, starring the characters you love to love, Lawrence Block was writing crime novels. With every turn of the page, you could almost hear the peeling the wallpaper off of even the swankiest of hotel room walls. These are the gritty, acidic, abrasive early novels of Lawrence Block. The characters in these fifty-thousand worders were hardened criminals. Unrepentant, unlovable, more disposable, but ultimately just as magnetic as those who would come later. Block’s first novel (under his own name) featured just one such criminal. Joe Marlin is smooth and hungry. He’s no ageless, cuddly Bernie Rhodenbarr, solving murders between burglaries. He can’t relate the moral greyness that comes from too many years as a cop, like Matt Scudder. And he doesn’t contemplate the American lifestyle whilst planning murder for hire, like Keller. He’s just one low-down and dirty sonofabitch, telling as compelling a crime tale as you’ll ever likely to hear. Marlin’s story was first published by Gold Medal in 1961 under the title Mona. In 1986, it was released as Sweet Slow Death. And most recently it was republished with a third title: Grifter’s Game, this time by Hard Case Crime. Block himself fancied The Girl on the Beach, as the novel’s title. But no matter what name the novel goes by, it’s a fast and dirty, and shoots a strong enough curve to throw even the most hardened of modern readers off their game. At 47 years old it’s still one of Block’s strongest novels.

Reader Alan Sklar grows into the voice of the narrator as Marlin’s plans turn darker. We like his Joe Marlin, he’s clever and slick, he lingers on the details and teases us. The only thing is that Sklar sees it all coming – he knows, he tells us he knows, but doesn’t telegraph, and so, when the killing blow ultimately comes, it doesn’t hit us until we’re too close, until we can really feel it, until we own it. Until we live it.

Posted by Jesse Willis