Blackstone Audio – Page 26

New Ben Bova from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Previously available only in abridged format (but read by Harlan Ellison!), both of these new recordings are unabridged and read by Stefan Rudnicki. That’s two in the plus column if you’re counting…

Mars
By Ben Bova; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
15 CDs – 19 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433263705

This grand epic adventure from six-time Hugo Award–winning author Ben Bova tells the irresistible story of man’s first mission to that great unconquered frontier, Mars. Technically plausible and compellingly human, Bova’s story explores the political, scientific, and social repercussions of our greatest quest yet: the search for evidence of life beyond Earth’s boundaries.

Half-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman has been selected for the ground team of the first manned expedition to our mysterious neighbor planet. Joining an international team of astronauts and scientists, he endures the rigors of training, the dangers of traveling an incredible distance in space, the challenges of an alien landscape, and the personal and political conflicts that arise when the team must face the most shocking discovery of all.

Return to Mars
By Ben Bova; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
13 CDs – 16 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433263798

Six years after the first manned Martian expedition, a second has been announced, one motivated purely by its profit potential. Jamie Waterman, half-Navajo, half-Anglo geologist, is commander of the new exploratory team and thus must contend with a bitter rivalry, a disturbing new emotional attraction, and deadly “accidents” that appear to be sabotage, all of which could doom the mission to failure. But there is more at stake than these concerns for there are still great secrets to be uncovered on this cruel and enigmatic world, not the least being something he glimpsed in the far distance during his first Martian excursion: an improbable structure perched high in the planet’s carmine cliffs, a dwelling that only an intelligent being could have built.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

New Alex Bledsoe from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Alex Bledsoe is a new author for me – but both of these books look interesting. Here’s a trailer for the print version of The Sword-Edged Blonde:

The Sword-Edged Blonde
By Alex Bledsoe; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
7 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433232220

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he’d left behind.

Blood Groove
By Alex Bledsoe; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
7 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433243880

When centuries-old vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski was staked in Wales in 1915, the last thing he expected was to reawaken in Memphis, Tennessee, sixty years later. Reborn into a new world of simmering racial tensions, he must adapt quickly if he is to survive.

Hoping to learn how his kind copes with this bizarre new era, Zginski tracks down a nest of teenage vampires, who have little knowledge of their true nature, having learned most of what they know from movies like Blacula. Forming an uneasy alliance with the young vampires, Zginski begins to teach them the truth about their powers. They must learn quickly for there’s a new drug on the street created to specifically target and destroy vampires. As Zginski and his allies track the drug to its source, they may unwittingly be stepping into a trap that can destroy them all.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

New Orson Scott Card from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

If you are an Orson Scott Card fan, then you’ve got to be enthused by the amount of audio out there. Nearly everything he’s written has an unabridged audio version, and Blackstone Audio has published a whole bunch of them. Here are two more:

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
By Orson Scott Card; Read by a Full Cast
12 CDs – 13.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433217180

In a not-too-distant future that is not quite ours, there has been a major scientific breakthrough, a way to open windows into the past, permitting historical researchers to view but not participate in the events of the past.

In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.

Earthborn (Homecoming, Volume 5)
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
12 CDs – 14 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433217180

High above Earth orbits the starship Basilica. On board the huge vessel is a sleeping woman. Of those who made the journey, Shedemai alone has survived the hundreds of years since the Children of Wetchik returned to Earth.

She now wears the Cloak of the Starmaster, and the Oversoul wakes her sometimes to watch over her descendants on the planet below. The population has grown rapidly—there are cities and nations now, whole peoples descended from those who followed Nafai or Elemak.

But in all the long years of watching and searching, the Oversoul has not found the thing it sought. It has not found the Keeper of the Earth, the central intelligence that also can repair the Oversoul’s damaged programming.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

A Stir of Echoes
By Richard Matheson; Read by Scott Brick
6 CDs – 6.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433267451

Blackstone Audio is building a very nice collection of Richard Matheson’s fiction. Jesse recently reviewed I Am Legend and Other Stories, and forthcoming is another collection: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson. Can’t wait!

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now, he’s hearing the private thoughts of the people around him—and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom’s existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store, as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave!

This eerie ghost story inspired the acclaimed 1999 film starring Kevin Bacon.

Slaughterhouse Five
By Kurt Vonnegut; Read by Ethan Hawke
5 CDs – 6 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433269691

In this powerful contemporary classic, Kurt Vonnegut exposes the insanity and inhumanity of war through the lens of absurdism. Billy Pilgrim, a traumatized American POW who survived the Dresden bombing during World War II, becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens. Under their watchful gaze, he must relive his life over and over again, coming at last to some understanding of the human comedy.

Both deeply funny and deadly serious, Slaughterhouse-Five became perhaps the signature antiwar novel of the 1960s, a cry of protest against brutality in the service of authority. Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Escape From Hell
By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; Read by Tom Weiner
8 CDs – 9.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433258961

A sequel to Inferno, also by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It’s also available on audio from Blackstone, and we have a review |HERE|.

Allan Carpentier escaped from hell once but remained haunted by what he saw and endured. He has now returned, on a mission to liberate those souls unfairly tortured and confined.

Partnering with the legendary poet and suicide, Sylvia Plath, Carpentier is a modern-day Christ who intends to harrow hell and free the damned. But now that he’s returned to this Dantesque inferno, can he ever again leave?

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #029

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #029 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Julie D. of the Forgotten Classic podcast. Listen in as Julie gushes over the new audiobook of Ken Scholes’ novel Lamentation! We also talk Space Opera, libraries, and how to read a paperbook: “Breaking the spine of a book is like breaking the spine of the family dog.” Ya, it’s a Buck Roger-ish show.

Talked about on today’s show:
Hyperion by Dan Simmons, David Weber, “The Honor Harrington” series, On Basilisk Station, military SF, Audible Frontiers, John Ringo, March Upcountry, Off Armageddon Reef, Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human, Venus Plus X, To Marry Medusa, Nancy Kress, Beggars In Spain, Infinivox, Blackstone Audio, Beggars And Choosers, Beggars Ride, Children Of Men by P.D. James |READ OUR REVIEW|, BBC Audiobooks America, Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer, Doctor Who, Audible’s new format 4, radio drama, audio drama, 2000X: Tales of the Next Millennia |READ OUR REVIEW|, Spoken Books Publishing, Dr. Wasserman’s Time Chamber: Preventing Armageddon by Lee Geiger, Lamentation by Ken Scholes, Fantasy, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, George R.R. Martin, Dune by Frank Herbert, Macmillan Audio, Simon Vance, The Prestige by Christopher Priest, The January Dancer, SciPodBooks, LibriVox, The Green Odyssey, Space Vulture, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Grim Space by Ann Aguirre, the “Gap” series by Stephen R. Donaldson, ScottBrickPresents.com, The Phoenix Legacy, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Tony Smith, StarShipSofa, Trophy Wives, Twitter, Neil Gaiman, OTRcat.com, Worldcat.org, the Amber series by Roger Zelazny, Maria Lectrix, giving up blogs for lent.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals from Blackstone Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

The Green Hills of Earth
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Tom Weiner
6 CDs – 6.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9780786167838

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

The Green Hills of Earth is a collection of short stories from one of the masters of science fiction who has held readers spellbound for over thirty years. This collection includes “Delilah and the Space-Rigger,” “Space-Jockey,” “The Long Watch,” “Gentlemen Be Seated,” “The Black Pits of Luna,” “It’s Great to Be Back,” “‘—We Also Walk Dogs,’” “Ordeal in Space,” “The Green Hills of Earth,” and “Logic of Empire.”

Brotherhood of the Wolf
By David Farland; Read by Ray Porter
18 CDs – 22.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433227028

Book Two in the Runelords Series

David Farland delivers the second in his high fantasy Runelords series, featuring a complex system of magic and a wondrous, expertly realized world. Raj Ahten, ruler of Indhopal, has used enough forcibles to transform himself into the ultimate warrior: The Sum of All Men. Ahten seeks to bring all of humanity under his rule, destroying anyone in his path. But young Prince Gaborn has fulfilled a two-thousand-year-old prophecy and become the Earth King, a mythic figure who can unleash the forces of the Earth itself. He has managed to drive off Raj Ahten, but Ahten is far from defeated. Striking at far-flung cities and fortresses, Ahten seeks to draw out the Earth King from his seat of power and to crush him. But as they weaken each other’s forces in battle, the armies of an ancient and implacable inhuman enemy issue forth from the very bowels of the Earth.

Bellwether
By Connie Willis; Read by Kate Reading
5 CDs – 6.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 978143324624

Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Doomsday Book.

Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O’Reilly works with monkey-group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions—with the unintended help of the errant, forgetful, and careless office assistant Flip.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson