audiobook – Page 68

Voices In The Dark: The Empire Of The Ants by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

Empire Of The Ants by H.G. Wells

Editorial introduction to The Empire Of The Ants by H.G. Wells - from Amazing Stories, August 1926

Empire Of The Ants by H.G. Wells - illustration from Amazing Stories, August 1926 (unsigned)

The Empire Of The Ants
By H.G. Wells; Read by Sean Puckett
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Voices In The Dark
Published: 2005
A Brazilian navy gunboat, sent up the Amazon river to investigate reports of problems inland, discovers that large ants have begun taking over parts of the jungle. Showing signs of intelligence, the insects prove extremely hard to deal with. First published in the Strand Magazine, December 1905.

And here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Amazing Stories, August 1926.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox In my reading about The Frozen Pirate, back in 2010, I discovered that Edgar Allan Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar was possibly the first account of suspended animation.

I normally mention The Case Of M. Valdemar as part of a set lecture I give, explaining to my students why root words are important. I start by asking them if they’ve read any Harry Potter. They usually have, and that’s when I point out that they know, just from the sound of his name, that Voledemort is a bad guy. I point out that J.K. Rowling chose this name carefully, even pointing out that “Voldemort is pronounced with a silent ‘t’ at the end, as is common in French.” I point out that Draco Malfoy’s name too, is just as connotatively powerful. Then I point out that J.K. Rowling didn’t invent these names in a vacuum. I point to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar.

Hypnosis itself is a somewhat mysterious psychological phenomenon. It arose from the proto-psychological work of the 18th century physician Franz Mesmer. For those in the know “mesmerism” and “animal magnetism” had, by the time of Poe, lost most of their occult mystique. But for the general public, even today, there is a left-over supernatural feel – to the phenomenon – owing in part to the the strangeness of the phenomenon itself, and in part to Poe’s stories about it.

Etymologically the word itself, “hypnosis”, takes its name from Greek – “Hypnos” meaning “sleep” and the suffix “-osis” meaning “disorder” or “abnormal state”.

The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 12, 2009
In an attempt to halt rumors surrounding a widely publicized incident, the author gives the facts about a grisly experiment in mesmerism that he recently conducted. First published in the December 20, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal.

Here’s a |PDF| version of the story as taken from the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories (the very first issue).

The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar - illustration by Irv Docktor

The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar - illustrated by Harry Clarke

Posted by Jesse Willis

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Online Audio

Philip K. Dick’s novelette, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, is a tale full of false memories, soulful wishes, and the planet Mars – all classic Dick themes. It’s hero, Douglas Quail, is a man who longs to visit Mars yet is shrewish wife denies him even the day-dream. But when he discovers that he’s actually already been there, as an agent for a sinister government agency, things start getting a bit confused. Is he really a deep cover Black-Ops assassin with suppressed memories and a false identity? Or is he just a sad shmendrik with delusions of grandeur?

World's Best Science Fiction 1967 - We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - illustration by Jack Gaughan

Here’s the editorial introduction, from the publication in Fantasy & Science Fiction, for We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. The article mentioned as being on “page 62” is by Theodore L. Thomas, a noted SF writer and prolific columnist for F&SF in the 1960s. Thoma’s article is based on another entitled “THE FOOD THEY NE’ER HAD EAT” which is available as a |PDF|.

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Editorial introduction from F & SF

One audiobook version was recorded for BBC Radio 7, now called BBC Radio 4 Extra, and broadcast back in 2003. It’s available via torrent at RadioArchive.cc.

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
By Philip K. Dick; Read by William Hootkins
2 MP3s via TORRENT – Approx. 64 Minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 (now called BBC Radio 4 Extra)
Broadcast: September 2003
Doug Quail lives in a future world of memory implants and false vacations. Doug wants to visit the planet Mars but after a mishap at a virtual travel agency, he discovers that he’s already been there. First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1966.

And, here’s the trailer for the remake of the movie of the story that Philip K. Dick wrote:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson

SFFaudio Online Audio

If you want some idea as to what William Hope Hodgson’s short story, The Voice In The Night, is about first think of Samuel Taylor Cooleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

Then imagine it told at night.

Now collapse that imagined story down to a simple love story.

Let it shiver, pulse, and flow.

Add in a white mist, legions of creeping sporelings, and now imagine all that as if it was written by H.P. Lovecraft.

Now you have an idea.

SF historian Sam Moskowitz, in his introduction to it in Science Fiction By Gaslight, had some high praise for William Hope Hodgson and The Voice In The Night.

“Of the dozens of authors who wrote science fiction by gaslight, Hodgson is one of the very few a portion of whose work will endure … Within the limited range of mounting and sustaining a peak of unrequited horror, [he] achieved heights of genius.”

I’m not sure that this horror tale is going to make you think it’s SF. That’s not what I thought of when I heard it. But Moskowitz is right.

It also, I think, ably demonstrates that horror need not involve a hint violence. That said, The Voice In The Night does have violation in the form of the bloodless monster of the natural world. Others have called it a “minor classic” and I agree, it goes into the sublimely creepy depths of horror.

“Mr. Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality. Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal” – H.P. Lovecraft – from Supernatural Horror In Literature

The Voice In The Night
By William Hope Hodgson; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 11, 2009
A fisherman aboard a ship caught in the doldrums of the North Pacific, on night watch in a fog-bank, hears a voice call out from the sea. The voice asks for food, but it insists it can come no closer, that it fears the light, and that God is merciful. In payment for the food it tells a tale more frightening than any I’ve ever heard around a campfire. First published in the November 1907 issue of Blue Book Magazine.

Pseudopod 250: The Voice In The Night
By William Hope Hodgson; Read by Wilson Fowlie
1 |MP3| – Approx. 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Pseudopod
Podcast: October 7, 2011
A fisherman aboard a ship caught in the doldrums of the North Pacific, on night watch in a fog-bank, hears a voice call out from the sea. The voice asks for food, but it insists it can come no closer, that it fears the light, and that God is merciful. In payment for the food it tells a tale more frightening than any I’ve ever heard around a campfire. First published in the November 1907 issue of Blue Book Magazine.

Tales To Terrify No. 29: The Voice In The Night
By William Hope Hodgson; Read by Lawrence Santoro
1 |MP3| – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Tales To Terrify
Podcast: July 26, 2012
A fisherman aboard a ship caught in the doldrums of the North Pacific, on night watch in a fog-bank, hears a voice call out from the sea. The voice asks for food, but it insists it can come no closer, that it fears the light, and that God is merciful. In payment for the food it tells a tale more frightening than any I’ve ever heard around a campfire. First published in the November 1907 issue of Blue Book Magazine.

Wikisource |ETEXT|
|PDF|

Illustration by Franz Altschuler for it’s appearance in Playboy, July 1954:
The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson - Illustrated by Franz Altschuler in Playboy, July 1954

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Review

Counter-Clock World
By Philip K. Dick, Read by Patrick Lawlor
8 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: June 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4558-1430-5
Themes: / Time travel / Science Fiction / Reanimation

Publisher summary:

In Counter-Clock World, time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with “goodbye,” blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first — but their motives are not exactly benevolent, because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.

What would you do if your long-dead relatives started coming back? Who would take care of them? And what if they preferred being dead? In Counter-Clock World, one of Dick’s most theological and philosophical novels, these troubling questions are addressed; though, as always, you may have to figure out the answers yourself.

Counter-Clock World is an expansion of Philip K. Dick’s short story Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday. The ideas are interesting enough to flesh out into a longer story, but that also allows the cracks to show.

In this world, because of something called the Hobart Effect, time has begun moving backward. People get younger, rise from the dead, food is disgorged, and knowledge is destroyed. Because of that, libraries hold all the power. Even the police are terrified of the librarians. The bits with the terrifying librarians were particularly funny, and this reader may have laughed hysterically in her car.

Time moves backwards… but not exactly. While everyone has to unsmoke their cigarettes and disgorge their food, there are still events going on that didn’t happen before. And when a human has unaged enough that they have to go back into the womb, any old womb will do. Some of those inconsistencies make the world not as plausible as it should have been in order to focus on the story.

The world building is more successful than the characters, which are terribly flat and uninteresting. Lotta, the wife of Sebastian Hermes, the owner of the Hermes Vitarium, is particularly vapid. Of course, she’s getting younger and dumber all the time, so maybe that is to be expected. The female characters are all conniving or sniveling, and the male characters are heroic but stupid. It got old. The main plot point is about a prophet coming back to life, but that kind of gets lost in the laser battles in the library.

Patrick Lawlor is a great reader with excellent enunciation. By listening to it, I realized how often Philip K. Dick uses alliteration and adverbs, she says knowingly.

Posted by Jenny Colvin

Review of The Magician King by Lev Grossman

SFFaudio Review

The Magician King
By Lev Grossman; Read by Mark Bramhall
13 CDs – Approx. 16 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2011
ISBN: 1611760259
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Wizard School / Alternate Worlds / Gods /

What does it mean to be the Hero on a Quest? What does it cost? Perhaps this is something you might want to find out before you go looking everywhere for one.

It is two years since the final scene in The Magicians (Read the Review). Quentin Coldwater is now one of the Kings of Fillory, that Narnia-esque fantasy land from the series of books he read as a child. Fellow King and Queens are fellow Brakebills Academy graduates Elliot, the self-obsessed fop, and Janet with whom Quentin had a very brief dalliance, with tragic consequences. There are to be two Kings and two Queens of Fillory with Quentin’s pre-Brakebills friend Julia taking the fourth crown.

Quentin is still emotionally scarred from the tragedies of the first book and is struggling to find a reason in his life. Again this leads him towards a search for a Quest. Despite being a King in a magical realm where you would have to go far out of your way to prevent the land from producing a bountiful harvest. It still isn’t enough, Quentin feels the need to be doing something important. One thing the Fillory was good for in the books about it that he read while growing up, was that the Chatwin children always had a quest to complete when they visited.

After a false start on a quest involving a madly thrashing over-sized clock-tree, Quentin embarks on a trip to the most remote island of the realm of Fillory. To collect on unpaid taxes. He was getting desperate to find his quest and this come up at the wrong time. Never mind that the cost of outfitting the ship and getting there would out strip the value of the unpaid taxed several times over.

Accompanying Quentin on his fools quest is Queen Julia. In The Magicians Julia was the school friend that also sat the Brakebills entrance exam, but didn’t make the cut. Half of The Magician King is told from Julia’s perspective, as we follow what brought her from failing that exam to where we found her floating in the air beside Elliot and Janet at the end of The Magicians. This half of the book is the more compelling of the two as we learn about the world of Magic that isn’t controlled by the establishment as exemplified by the Brakebills Academy.

The main quest that Quentin and Julia follow, The Search for the Seven Golden Keys of Fillory, inadvertantly takes them out beyond the furthest isle of Fillory and lands them in the one place neither of them ever wanted to be. Back home of Earth. Although Earth isn’t as magical as Fillory, there are still wonders here to be found, such as Dragons.

Julia is the real treasure in this novel. A minor character in the first book, she rivals and surpasses Quentin for the position of protaginist. Although half the book is written from Quentin’s perspective, you should pay close attention to Julia. The two halfs tell of the terrible path that this poor tortured woman drove herself along after glimpsing the secret world of Brakebills. She is a broken and empty shell as Queen Julia, slowly finding parts of herself as she and Quentin struggle to find the Keys that will prevent Magic from dissappearing from all of the different realities. Especially important to Fillory as it can’t even exist without Magic. For the Old Gods have returned. No, not Cthulu. The Gods who created the Neitherlands, and accidentily left open the loophole that allows humans to do magic at all. Something got there attention and now they know that there is a loophole, and they are working to close it.

Quentin and Julia are both compelling characters. Quentin is still a bit of the Emo kid he was in the first book and his desire to be the Hero teaches him the cost real Heros must be prepared to pay. Julia through the two storylines has a woderful depth to her. She isn’t necessarily likeable, she is even more obsessive then Quentin in the flashback story. An obsession that costs her dearly.

Grossman’s world of Magic, although having some of the trappings of a Narial-like fairytale, it has much more in common with the original dark fairytales before they were sweetened for Victorian children. Magic is powerfull and the consequences, when they come, are swift, severe and utterly pittyless. We do get to see the awesome potential of the Magic that Quentin wields as he finds in himself the real Magician King. What he and his friends had been doing before was just playing with kid-gloves.

Mark Branhall again narrates, bringing out each character well and maintains consistent voices for characters from The Magicians.

This is a more developed narrative than the first book, which stood well on it’s own and didn’t leave you feeling there was a need for a sequel. The Magician King‘s story is also self-contained, but you should have read book one to appreciate it properly.

Posted by Paul [W] Campbell