audiobook – Page 159

LibriVox’s Horror Story Collection 004

SFFaudio Online Audio

Just added to the ever expanding LibriVox catalogue…

Horror Story Collection 004
By Various; Read by various narrators
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 9th, 2008
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams.

The Dream
By Ivan Turgenev; Read by Pete Williams
1 |MP3| – Approx. 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Ghoul’s Accountant
By Stephen Crane; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf; Read by Lauren Herzog
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 1)
By Anonymous; Read by Bobby Marcelino
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 2)
By Anonymous; Read by Sy
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Napoleon And The Spectre
By Charlotte Bronte; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

One Summer Night
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Street
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Glen Hallstrom
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Test of Courage
By C.W. Leadbeater; Read by SWES
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Wedding Chest
By Vernon Lee; Read by Tysto
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/horror-story-collection-004.xml

My thoughts on this collection: Other than some bad pronunciations by narrator Pete Williams (who sounds a lot like Alex Wilson), Ivan Turgenev’s The Dream makes for a solid listen. It’s quite dreamlike and seems inspired by Turgenev’s own life. Beirce’s One Summer Night sounds like it would have been a great story if the setup narrator Paul Curran has had been tweaked a bit (there’s something wrong with the sound, it’s both too bassy and too whistly at the same time). Lovecraft’s The Street, narrated by Glenn Halstrom (AKA Smokestack Jones) is a good reading, but their still something wrong with his setup too (a persistent hiss). SWES’s narration of A Test Of Courage by C.W. Leadbeater, on the other hand is clear and completely noise free – but is way too fast! Tysto, who reads Vernon Lee’s A Wedding Chest, also has a good setup. His reading is a tad off. I’m not sure what the problem is, but the word that springs to mind is “cadence.”

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – More from Audio Realms

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Little Fuzzy
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Brian Holsopple
5 CDs – 5 hours, 53 minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304617
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it, and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people…

Shadow Kingdoms: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Brian Holsopple, Bob Souer, Bob Barnes, and Charles McKibben
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304129
The first volume of the Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting much of Howard’s work for the pulp magazine Weird Tales meticulously restored to its original magazine texts featuring stories with King Kull and Solomon Kane.

This volume contains:
“The Lost Race”, read by Charles McKibben
“The Dream Snake”, read by Bob Souer
“The Hyena”, read by Bob Souer
“Red Shadows”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Skulls in the Stars”, read by Brian Holsopple
“Rattle of Bones”, read by Bob Barnes
“The Shadow Kingdom”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, read by Brian Holsopple
“The Voice of El-Lil”, read by Bob Barnes

Voodoo Planet
By Andre Norton; Read by Chuck McKibben
3 CDs – 3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304372
The sequel to Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet finds the Solar Queen banned from trade and starting her supposed quiet two-year stint as an interstellar mail carrier. But instead her crew accepts a visit to the safari planet of Khatka, where they find themselves caught in a battle between the forces of reason and the powers of Khatka’s mind-controlling wizard.

The Land That Time Forgot
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Brian Holsopple
3 CDs – 3.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304334
Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known for his Tarzan and Mars series of books, also created the lost island of Caprona, where American Tyler Bowen is stranded in a lost world where prehistoric animals and people have flourished unchanged since the beginning of time.

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
By Michael Moorcock; Read by Jeffrey West
5 CDs – 5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304020

The Second Book in the Elric Saga
… and leaving his cousin Yrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek an unknown goal in the world of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were at best, disliked.

Hide and Seek
By Jack Ketchum; Read by Wayne June
5 CDs – 5.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
ISBN: 9781897304402
Hide and Seek is a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you’re with the right people. But shouldn’t. Not ever… 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. Dan’s a local and didn’t get a chance to go to college. There was never the money. He works in a lumberyard hauling two-by-fours and furring around all day with a forklift. He’s even more bored than he knows. When the college kids arrive, that changes.
The most daring of the three is a beautiful, troubled girl name Casey. She’s not opposed to stealing caviar or cars or running around naked in graveyards. For Casey the thrill’s the thing and the riskier the better. Dan falls for her, hard. And gradually becomes the fourth member of the group–the poor relation. But the games need escalation. It’s a need that finds them at last in an old abandoned house at night, a house reputed to be haunted, where phantom lights burn in broken windows. Where something lurks waiting in the dark…

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick

SFFaudio Review

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / War / Galactic Civilization / Space Opera / Aliens /

The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

There’s a light serialized feel to Starship: Mutiny, and I just don’t mean it’s the first in a series. There are distinct but successive adventures in this novel, rather than one over-arching plot. I like that a lot. I can’t say that Resnick’s broken any new ground, but what he does is bring an immediacy and intelligence to the Military SF sub-genre. Resnick is a master of dialogue and banter, his plots are fleshed out almost entirely by character interaction. Even scenes where Wilson Cole (the lead) is alone play out in an inner-dialogue. It makes for a quick compelling listen. The emotional roller coaster, so often present in Resnick short stories, is absent; but all the gravitas of his intellectual legacy informs the action. It’s as if SF’s own Tolstoy were writing Horatio Hornblower by way of The Odyssey.

Audible Frontiers, when possible, gets authors to introduce their work. Here it means we get insight into the motivation to write Starship: Mutiny from Mike Resnick himself. This is Resnick’s first Military SF book, and about that sub-genre he says: “I found a lot of it very same, filled with endless descriptions of military tactics and blood ‘n gut heroics. And that didn’t interest me at all. I’m much more interested in leadership than tactics. I’ve always prized intelligence more than physical force.” And that’s what is delivered. The narrator, Jonathan Davis, best known for his many Star Wars audibooks, is a familiar voice in this genre. Spaceship battles, alien accents and technojargon flow easily into the microphone. The whole novel took me less than 36 hours to consume, its highly addictive listening and I confess I was downloading the follow-up book before I’d even finished this one. For a novel so light in ideas, the heart of SF, it’s hard to call it “unmissable,” but on the other hand it masterfully achieves precisely what it intends to; it’s intelligent and entertaining Military SF – and that is still no small feat. Starship: Mutiny: Highly recommended!

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Planet Of The Damned by Harry Harrison

SFFaudio Online Audio

Planet of The Damned, a 1962 Science Fiction novel by Harry Harrison, was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine in the autumn of 1961 under the title A Sense Of Obligation. Here it is now, for the first time, as an unabridged, 100% FREE, and public domain audiobook. The only caveat is that this is a multi-voiced reading. Check it out, decide for yourself if this should have a single voiced reading too…

Planet Of The Damned
By Harry Harrison; Read by various
19 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 5th 2008
Once in a generation, a man is born with a heightened sense of empathy. Brion Brandd used this gift to win the Twenties, an annual physical and mental competition among the best and smartest people on Anvhar. But scarcely able to enjoy his victory, Brandd is swept off to the hellish planet Dis where he must use his heightened sense of empathy to help avert a global nuclear holocaust by negotiating with the blockading fleet, traversing the Disan underworld, and cracking the mystery of the savagely ruthless magter.

Subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/planet-of-the-damned-by-harry-harrison.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – Mike Resnick, Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently plopped into the SFFaudio Audible Account…

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours and 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

Starship: Pirate, Book 2
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. There, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules. But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole’s principles limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players: the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, the enigmatic alien fence David Copperfield, and the fearsome alien pirate known as the Hammerhead Shark.

Starship: Mercenary, Book 3
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Military discipline and honor have been a poor match for Capt. Wilson Cole’s life of pillaging and plundering. Seeking a better way of life, the Teddy R. has become a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it’s evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way, they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters. The life of a mercenary is not always predictable. Circumstance now pits Cole and the Teddy R. against the former Pirate Queen, Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

And received by mail from Audio Book Case…

Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre Volume II
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase
Published: June 2008
Includes four tales of the supernatural, shock and horror:
The Conqueror Worm, The Tell Tale Heart, The Imp Of The Perverse and Hop Frog

Posted by Jesse Willis

Cory Doctorow loves the Little Fuzzy audiobook

SFFaudio News

Cory Doctorow posted this to BoingBoing.net today:

I just finished listening to the Audio Realms audio edition of H Beam Piper’s classic science fiction novel Little Fuzzy and fell in love with the book all over again. Little Fuzzy was the first book I ever bought for myself: it was on my first trip to Bakka, the world’s oldest surviving science fiction bookstore, at the age of nine or ten. Tanya Huff — now a bestselling writer in her own right — was working that day and I asked her for some recommendations. She marched me back to the used section of the store and took down a copy of Little Fuzzy, promising that I’d love it.

I did.

Little Fuzzy is Piper’s masterpiece, a tight, neat science fiction story that epitomizes the golden age of sf. It concerns a prospector on a distant world who discovers a potentially sentient aboriginal race (the “Fuzzies), and his ensuing fight — fists, lawyers and even guns — to get them recognized as sentient beings. Along the way, Piper explores the nature of colonial economies, the deepest questions of consciousness and intelligence, paternalism and self-determination, and the nature of the rule of law. All in a package that a nine-year-old will find riveting and delightful.

The Audio Realms 5-CD unabridged recording just won Publishers Weekly’s annual Fantasy Audiobook of the Year award (why “fantasy” I’m not sure), and it’s easy to see why. Brian Holsopple’s reading brings the characters — warm, human, flawed and passionate — to life. The editing is not exactly perfect (there’s a couple of pickup lines that Holsopple recorded that are left in, which is a little distracting), but the story is every bit as wonderful as I remember it, and the reading is a great match.

Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so there’s both a free ebook and a free recording available of the text. And for the record, I got Tanya Huff’s job at Bakka when she retired to write full time.

[via BoingBoing.net]

Posted by Jesse Willis