BBC Audiobooks America has just brought in a bunch of previously U.K. only BBC audiobooks. For North American customers this means a big savings on that crazy overseas shipping price. Among the available titles is the first in the series of radio dramatizations of Lindsey Davis books (Shadows In Bronze)! This is the “FALCO” series that I’m always telling everyone to try. Here’s the big list:
Posted by Jesse Willis
James Dean Palmer’s blog is about Ginger (a programming language), TiVo surgery, funny comp-sci final exam answers, and anything else popping into JDP’s life (mostly babies). But in between all that he also finds time to talk about the stuff he’s listening to. That brings me to a nice mini-reviewlet of three BBC Radio 7 programs that have aired over the past year or so. Writes James:
“My favorite station is BBC Radio 7 whose charter is to be an outlet for the BBC’s vast archives of audio content but they also serve a fair bit of original content as well.
One bit of original work, The Scarifyers, is particularly entertaining. Imagine The X-Files set in the 30s in the heart of London and Sculley and Mulder are replaced with an eccentric English professor and a past-his-prime police officer. Maybe it’s more Ghostbusters than X-Files. Regardless, it’s witty writing with clever acting.
I started listening to one drama on 7 called ‘Hordes of the Things‘ and have to admit I didn’t get too far before I got bored of it. It’s from many of the same people that brought Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTG) to life and there was much hope it would be the next HHGTG. That it is not but let me be bold and say that a new drama on 7 called ‘Undone‘ might just be. There’s very little similarity between Undone and Douglas Adams’ HHGTG but for some reason Undone just reminds me of the fun and imagination of HHGTG.”
All three of these shows are available over on RadioArchive.cc. The Scarifyers is also available on CD |HERE|. Hordes Of The Things is due for release on CD by BBC Audiobooks on October 8, 2009 (ISBN 9781408426234).
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams; Read by Stephen Fry
6 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 9780739322208
Themes: / Science Fiction / Comedy / Planetary Destruction / Depressed Robots / Books /
Humor is arguably the most difficult genre of writing to pull off. Hampered by the limitations of the print medium, humor writers must ply their craft without the benefit of a number of tools commonly used in live comedy and in film—visual gags, voice inflections, and so on. This inherent difficultly is why good comedy writers like Dave Barry are a scarce commodity, and worth reading when you can find them.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of those rare examples of written comedy that actually works. When I last read this book back in middle school (it seemed like every dorky, D&D and Atari-playing kid like me was toting it around at the time), I enjoyed it very much. But I was in for an even more pleasant surprise when I recently returned to this book via the audio format. This was actually the first comedy I’ve listened to on CD, and I now believe that this genre might benefit the most from audio treatment. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a first-rate example of what a talented narrator/actor can do with funny, well-written material. English actor/comedian Stephen Fry takes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to new comedic heights, and on a few occasions I found myself laughing out loud during my commute to work. Fry literally turns the text into a running Monty Python skit.
The plot of the book is as follows: Arthur Dent, a nondescript Englishman, is about to lose his house to a construction crew in the name of progress (an overpass is scheduled to run through Dent’s property). Simultaneously, an alien race called the Vogons has scheduled the vaporization of earth to clear the way for a hyperspatial express route. Dent is saved from destruction at the last second by his friend Ford Prefect, a roving alien researcher on the earth to complete an entry for a galactic encyclopedia called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Prefect and Dent later hook up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, Galactic President and rogue ship-thief, and his two crewmates (an annoying robot stricken with depression and ennui named Marvin, and Trillian, a female and earth’s only other survivor). Beeblebrox has stolen a cutting-edge spaceship called the Heart of Gold and is on a mission to find the lost planet of Magrathea, rumored to hold riches beyond imagining, as well as the answers to the mystery of life, the universe, and everything.
To appreciate The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you must like Monty Python (author Douglas Adams has writing credits in an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and appeared in two others, and his British comedy influences are plain). Here’s an example of the type of humor you’ll find:
Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.
Although The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is ostensibly mere over-the-top comedy, part of the reason (I believe) for its enduring appeal are its pithy insights about the nature of humanity and the universe and mankind’s raison d’etre. Overall it’s well worth reading and/or listening to.
Posted by Brian Murphy
Barely Literate is a new podcast book club discussing novels and books in and outside of the SFF genre. So far it seems like a cross between the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast and The Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas podcast.
Already discussed are:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman |MP3|
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams |MP3|
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson |MP3|
Here’s the podcast feed:
http://barelyliterare.libsyn.com/rss
Posted by Jesse Willis
Our agent in London has the pulse of what’s going to air on BBC Radio 4 over the month of December 2008. Sez Roy:
“I’ve completed a quick scan of what’s on offer from BBC Radio over the coming festive season. Looks far from a vintage season, but I’ve spotted a few genre items…
Saturday 13th Dec R4 14:30-16:00 Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward
Monday 15th Dec R4 22:45-23:00 Book At Bedtime A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; read by David Jason. This 10 part reading continues each weekday night until Boxing Day (Dec. 26th).
Tuesday 16th Dec R4 11:30-12:00 I Was Douglas Adams’s Flatmate. Ok, not drama, but the personal recollections of someone who shared an flat with the creator of so much humorous SF might be interesting.
Sunday 21st Dec R2 00:00-00:18 The Devil’s Christmas read by Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) reads four ‘dark tales for Christmas‘. Continues nightly to Christmas Eve. Claims to be a repeat, but I don’t know when original transmission was.Monday 22nd Dec R4 14:15-15:00 The Borrowers part 1 by Mary Norton
Well I think this can be considered ‘Fantasy’ and I for one will be listening. Part 2 is at the same time next day (Tuesday 23rd).Wednesday 31st Dec R4 14:15-15:00 Mr. Luby’s Fear Of Heaven by John Mortimer
Frankly I’m not sure quite how genre relevant this will be. It was originally aired as a joint NPR/BBC production under the ‘Earplay’ banner, but I believe this is a new production.”
Thanks Roy, there are a few in there I’ll be coveting for a special spot under my digital Xmas tree!
Posted by Jesse Willis
As many of you may know we like our audiobooks UNABRIDGED and read by professionals. Which is why I think you’ll be pleased to hear there is a new UNABRIDGED audiobook version of Douglas Adam’s incomparable The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy available for your listening pleasure. Even better, it’s one hundred percent free!
And… just by giving out your bank account details and password there’s even the prospect of earning FIFTEEN Million US Dollars!!!
Seriously!
No, SERIOUSLY!*
“My apologies. I made an honest mistake. My glasses are not working well today (I forgot to change the batteries) and I was reading the number incorrectly”
Well, that’s almost the story – the nearly unbelievable story of the latest UNABRIDGED production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy documented on 419Eater.com.
419Eater.com is a website that turns those pesky Spanish Prisoner (AKA Nigerian Prince) scams on their heads – reverse-grifting the criminals. The website chronicles various “baits,” with e-mail exchanges, MP3s of recorded phone calls, photos and more between the baiters and the scammers. The scam that attracted me was one in which a non-existent audiobook company gets a scammer to read and record the entire The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The entire reverse-scam is documented HERE. And here is the fruit of that bizarre labour….
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
By Douglas Adams; Read by Chinweoke Trevor Nwauzor
36 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: 419Eater.com
Published: July 2007
When contractors arrive at Earthling Arthur Dent’s house in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. Arthur’s friend Ford Prefect arrives as Arthur is attempting to talk the demolition crew into leaving his house standing, and talks Arthur into coming to a local pub with him, at which point Ford explains that he (Ford) is actually from a planet somewhere near Betelgeuse and that they have to get off the planet before it’s demolished. An alien race of bureaucrats called Vogons intend to destroy Earth to make way for a “hyperspace bypass.”
So ya, this is a pretty awful reading, perhaps the worst reading of an audiobook ever. Amazing that it was achieved, but it is not really listenable. The only part of it I thought that works is when we hear the Vogon poetry (Chapter 7). It’s really, really, really bad.
And for you paperbook aficionado’s there’s a handwritten version of J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book available over on 419Eater.com, all 249 pages of it.
Posted by Jesse Willis
*not seriously
