audiobook – Page 91

Recent Arrivals: Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

In the press release for Hellhole it says: Kevin J. Anderson “set the Guinness certified world record for the largest single-author book signing.”

I’m thinking this is one of those quantity over quality cases.

And yet, Kevin J. Anderson has written good stories, I liked his Rough Draft as well as Paradox & Greenblatt, Attorneys at Law stories.

This new series doesn’t appeal to me.

Who among you has read it?

Who among you has liked it?

And most importantly who among you has read it and liked it and why?

Hellhole
By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson; Read by Scott Brick
15 CDs – Approx. 19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 97814272114221
The human interstellar government, the Constellation, consists of 20 allied “old guard” worlds, centered on the lush capital planet of Sonjeera. The society is wealthy with a feuding, decadent upper class, ruled by the dowager Diadem Michella Duchenet—a tyrant with a sweet face, charming public disposition, and a shriveled, blackened heart—who has been on the throne for decades. But as the population of the core worlds has grown and noble families divided their profitable holdings into smaller and smaller pieces, pressures increase for change, for new territory. After the failure of a devastating revolution, the Diadem Michella realizes she must open the wild frontier of unexplored planets.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: The Stainless Steel Rat audiobooks

SFFaudio Commentary

BRILLIANCE AUDIO - The Stainless Steel Rat SERIES

I’m not a fan of series, normally, but I’m utterly enthralled by this one. More than fifty years in the writing The Stainless Steel Rat series is completely available, for the first time, as series of audiobooks from Brilliance Audio.

James Bolivar diGriz (aka Slippery Jim diGriz) is the protagonist of the series and the titular Stainless Steel Rat of the title. He’s an anti-hero you’ll be wholly in favour of. He’s slick and quick and fast with a quip as he tells his own tale, in first person (past tense), like an adventurer out of some long forgotten future age.

As the first novel, The Stainless Steel Rat |READ OUR REVIEW|, begins diGriz is a low down and completely immaculate criminal, an uncatchable super-thief and con-man who has earned his name for never being caught. But before too long he’s soon baited, corralled, and ensnared by an insidious interstellar agency that’s been tracking the resourceful rodent and means to draft him!

By the end of the first story-arc the reluctant recruit has settled down (and married) the psychopathic arch-criminal that he’d been chasing after. Then, moonlighting on his extended honeymoon (the next couple books), he proceeds to traipse across both time and space as an interstellar (and inter-epoch) troubleshooter.

You’d think it’d be hard for diGriz to play good guy, but this galahad in grey steel still has his fun. In fact, he funds all of his galactic gallivanting by good old fashioned bank robbery! And when not actually in the act of larceny he never fails to luxuriate in the finest of hotels (or the finest cave of his own construction). Soon he’s snuffing out a intragalactic coup-d’etat, getting grief from his honey and back to stealing all of his boss’s finest cigars right before existence ends. Then it is all: ‘Quick give me a copy of your mind, and yours too, and all those weapons there and this equipment there! I’ve got to travel back in time to a planet called “Dirt” to prevent all this nothing from happening.’

Amazingly, the stories just work. The universe which Harry Harrison has created is one in which anything that can be imagined exists. There’s mind wiping, personality reconstruction, sleep gas grenades, mind and memory transfer, immortality, gravity belts, atomic compressor tools, faster than light travel and robots robots robots everywhere! Harrision invents the tech for the Rat to play with but never fully describes it. And so it never seems old-fashioned, becomes all the more plausible and you can just go with the action. The characters are fresh and perky with personality. The plots, which are grandiose but never very central to the immediate action, serve to provide scene after scene of hilarious problem and ingenious solution for the wily Stainless Steel rodent to navigate. The novels aren’t long, and make for great fun between heavier books by the likes of H.G. Wells and Joe Haldeman.

To me, narrator Phil Gigante has become Slippery Jim diGriz. He’s playful, full of accents for all the colourful characters and he pitches every scene just how it should be – fun, funny and fast.

If you’re looking for a series that won’t let you down, you’ve got to try this one. I’m absolutely loving it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Macbeth by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson

New Releases

Macbeth: A Novel
By A.J. Hartley and David Hewson (adapted from the play by William Shakespeare); Read by Alan Cumming
Audible Download – Approx. 9 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com
Published: June 2011
Writing directly for audio, co-authors David Hewson and Andrew Hartley have taken Shakespeare’s Macbeth and fleshed it out into a full-blown work of historical fiction. It’s an original, gritty take on one of literature’s greatest stories. The authors add inventive details and key scenes that for centuries have played out offstage, delivering new insights into the motivations and actions of almost every character. Emmy Award nominee, Audie Award winner, and experienced Shakespeare performer Alan Cumming (TV’s The Good Wife) plays it all to the hilt, complete with engrossing (and authentic) Scottish accent. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never heard it. Includes a introduction by David Hewson and an afterword by A.J. Hartley.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox Here’s a vintage 1954 Murray Leinster novel that’ll make for some perfect summer listening (sorry folks on the bottom hemisphere of Earth, you’ll have to wait). Now if that’s not enough you may be interested to know that Operation: Outer Space is actually the third public domain Murray Leinster novel narrated by Mark Douglas Nelson! Check out our extensive AUTHOR PAGE for MURRAY LEINSTER to get the other two novels – and there’s lots more Leinster listening there too.

Operation: Outer Space
By Murray Leinster; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 25, 2011
|ETEXT|
Jed Cochrane is about to take off on man’s first interstellar voyage. His mission: Make sure it’s good television!

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/5252

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Here’s the cover of the 1957 Signet paperback edition:

SIGNET - Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster

And here’s the UK hardcover edition, by Grayson & Grayson, also published in 1957:

Grayson & Grayson - Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster

Here’s Groff Conklin’s review of Operation: Outer Space from Galaxy Magazine’s March 1955 issue:

Groff Conklin's review of Operation: Outer Space from Galaxy Magazine's March 1955 issue

[Thanks also to Betty M. and Barry Eads ]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: Where are all the Ted Chiang audiobooks?

SFFaudio Commentary

Ted Chiang (portrait by Arturo Villarrubia)

Ted Chiang, perhaps the greatest living Science Fiction writer, has very little of his excellent fiction (a dozen stories, novellettes and novellas) available in the audio format. That is a bitter, bitter shame. It is my hope this post will help change that.

Lamentably, no Ted Chiang audiobooks have ever been commercially released. There are, however, several podcast sources for readings and the BBC commissioned an unabridged recording of Understand (which has been occasionally rebroadcast).

Below is a chart detailing all of Ted Chiang’s published fiction.

Audio (YES/NO): – Title: – Original Publication: – MP3: – Audio Publisher: – Notes:

– Tower Of Babylon – Omni, November 1990 – novelette
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– Division By Zero – Full Spectrum 3 (1991) – short story

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– Understand – Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1991 – BBC Radio 7 – occasionally rebroadcast on BBCR7, read by Rashan Stone, novelette

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– Story Of Your Life – Starlight 2, (1998) – novella

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– The Evolution Of Human Science (aka Catching Crumbs From The Table) – Nature, June 1, 2000 – short story

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– Seventy-Two Letters – Vanishing Acts (2000) – novella

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– Hell Is The Absence Of God – Starlight 3 (2001) – |MP3| – Podcastle – read by James Trimarco, bad sound quality, novelette

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– Liking What You See: A Documentary – Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) – novelette

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– What’s Expected Of Us – Nature, July 5, 2005 – |MP3| – StarShip Sofa – read by Julie Davis, short story

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– The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate – Subterranean Press (2007) – StarShip Sofa – |MP3| – read by J.J. Campanella, novelette

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– Exhalation – Eclipse 2, 2008 – |MP3| or |MP3| – StarShip Sofa / Escape Pod – read by Ray Sizemore, short story

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– The Lifecycle of Software Objects – Subterranean Press (2010) – novella

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Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown by Paul Malmont

New Releases

Coming soon…

The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown
By Paul Malmont; Read by Christopher Lane
14 CDs – Approx. 16 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 9781455825356
Sample |MP3|
In 1943, when the United States learns that Germany is on the verge of a deadly innovation that could tip the balance of the war, the government turns to an unlikely source for help: the nation’s top science fiction writers. Installed at a covert military lab within the Philadelphia Naval Yard are the most brilliant of these young visionaries. The unruly band is led by Robert Heinlein, the dashing and complicated master of the genre. His “Kamikaze Group,” which includes the ambitious genius Isaac Asimov, is tasked with transforming the wonders of science fiction into science fact and unlocking the secrets to invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control, and other astounding phenomena — and finding it harder than they ever imagined. When a German spy washes ashore near the abandoned Long Island ruins of a mysterious energy facility, the military begins to fear that the Nazis are a step ahead of Heinlein’s group. Now the oddball team, joined by old friends from the Pulp Era including L. Ron Hubbard (court-martialed for attacking Mexico), must race to catch up. The answers they seek may be locked in the legendary War of Currents, which was fought decades earlier between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. As the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion of America grows more and more possible, events are set in motion that just may revolutionize the future — or destroy it — while forcing the writers to challenge the limits of talent, imagination, love, destiny, and even reality itself. Blazing at breathtaking speed from forgotten tunnels deep beneath Manhattan to top-secret battles in the North Pacific, and careening from truth to pulp and back again, The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown is a sweeping, romantic epic — a page-turning rocket ship ride through the history of the future.

Posted by Jesse Willis