Here is David Gill’s fascinating three part lecture on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as recorded at the 2010 Philip K. Dick Festival in Colorado.
I’m afraid there is no HuffDuffing these MP3 files, but they are downloadable.
And, as a bonus, here’s Erik Davis on “Dreaming, PKD, Lovecraft”
[via the Total Dick Head blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
I’m always on the lookout for new online audio, now I’ve got a cool new search engine that isn’t google based. Check it out. SkreemR.com brought up 51 working files on my very first search (I searched for “lovecraft”). Of those 51 MP3s, many were links to SFFaudio or LibriVox, but I found a couple of new ones too…
First up, an unusual H.P. Lovecraft tale. According to Wikipedia….
“This story is based upon a letter Lovecraft wrote to his friend Donald Wandrei, dated November 24, 1927. In places, the letter and published story are identical, word-for-word. This letter describes a dream that Lovecraft had.” Apparently, the story was completed for publication by [J. Chapman] Miske, who filled in the story surrounding the description of the dream.”
Have a listen, don’t mind the music…
The Thing In The Moonlight
By H.P. Lovecraft and J. Chapman Miske; Read by ????
1 |MP3| [UNABRIDGED?]
Next, a nice loud reading, but still with accompanying music.
Dagon
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Cuddlechunks?
1 |MP3| [UNABRIDGED?]
If anyone knows more about the creators of these MP3s please let me know.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Magic Street
By Orson Scott Card; read by Mirron E. Willis
11 CDs – 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0786178264
Themes: / Urban Fantasy / Fantasy / Shakespeare / A Midsummer Night’s Dream / Dreams /
Orson Scott Card’s Magic Street is an urban fantasy that links Shakespearean characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a middle-class black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Already not sounding like your cup of tea? Don’t scratch it off your list just yet. If Orson Scott Card wrote a book about a snail moving under a plant in a garden we would probably all marvel at the character development, be enraptured by the pacing of the story and how the plot develops and empathize with the moral dilemmas the snail must face! This excursion into urban fantasy, while not what we’re used to from Mr. Card, still gives us what we value in his writing.
Under inexplicable circumstances a boy named Mack Street is born into the world not yet alive and is immediately abandoned. Later found, he is raised by a couple of unlikely yet caring individuals. As he gets older Mack begins dreaming the deepest wishes of the people in his community. However, each time he experiences a “cold dream” the wishes invariably come true in a tragic way. Unable to understand the magic or speak to others about it, Mack keeps it a secret.
Then one day Mack discovers an entrance to fairyland. As he begins to interact with the magic of that world, his origin and purpose come into view. Mack and his community must act fast to guide events away from a tragic end.
The magic in the world is not explained until late in the story. The reader learns about it as Mack Street himself discovers the explanations. For me it was a bit taxing to go through so much of the story without being able to understand the meaning of the magical events, but the unfolding of the magic world is central to the story and, in a way, really facilitates identifying with the characters.
One of my favorite things about the book is the end. While the story intertwines itself with some of Shakespeare’s more light-hearted work, Magic Street is no comedy of errors. As the story reaches its climax it looks to be a tragedy of Shakespearean ilk. Disciples of the Bard can argue whether the ending is truly “Shakespearean” or not, but it concludes in a wonderfully complex way that leaves you feeling mournful of what was lost, but also that all is right and balanced.
It seems people either love or hate the story. Among the detractors are those disappointed to find the story departing from the genres they typically associate with Mr. Card. It certainly isn’t the fantasy of the Alvin Maker stories, but it isn’t trying to be. It’s an urban fantasy, and if you loathe urban fantasy you’ll dislike this book.
More critics, though, seem to focus on the racial issues. Mr. Card is not black and has written a story about black characters in a black community and does not shy away from discussing racial issues as he imagines them discussed among the characters. I don’t really know how to evaluate the validity of criticisms of how he approaches race, but I wonder what someone might think reading the same dialogue if they thought the author was black himself (I suspect they would be less critical). In any case the story is about people who are black and middle-class, and not about black, middle-class people. The characters are compelling because of what the reader shares with them as human beings, not because they are a case study of some part of Black America.
Mirron Willis was the reader for the story and did an excellent job. Among other projects he made a few appearances on ER as Detective Watkins, and on Star Trek: Voyager he appeared a couple of times as Rettik. Willis has won two Audiofile Earphone Awards and, coincidentally, he performs in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
The synopsis on the back of the disc case dramatically reveals that Mack pursues “a forbidden relationship”. I think there must be a list of pre-approved comments to put on CD cases to entice people to buy it. I’ll wager that, as we speak, said list is attached to a dart board in someone’s office with a small hole in the words “forbidden relationship”, because it didn’t come from the story.
Magic Street is another story from Orson Scott Card that has been beautifully translated into audiobook format that is well worth your time.
Posted by Mike
The Voice from the Edge: Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral
By Harlan Ellison; Read by Harlan Ellison
5 CDs – 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Fantastic Audio
Published: 2001
ISBN: 1574534157
Themes: / Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror / The Mob / Dreams /
Harlan Ellison will talk your ear off. After listening to the man perform 11 of his stories over the better part of five hours, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is not the type of guy that you’re going to be able to get away from easily; not once he’s started talking. But would you want to? Ellison is like the guy you sit down next in a bar only because it’s the only seat open, praying that he’ll leave you alone, but, sure enough, he turns to you and immediately begins to regale you with that “Car Talk” voice of his about his latest exploit. “Terminator? My idea. That sumbitch James Cameron tried to pass it off as his own, but I wasn’t having it.” Or, “I tell you I never met anybody more uptight than those guys over at Disney. I make one little joke… it was stupid, yeah, but just a joke! Of course nobody would really ever draw Tinkerbell doing that, but try telling those guys that you were only joking. Nope; there’s ol’ Harlan, out on his ass the same day he was hired.” Ellison seems to be one of those guys that are vastly entertaining to listen to, and to watch in action, but only as long as his perpetual low-level rage is never directed at you.
Which is what makes this collection perfect. You get to sit in your car, office, wherever, and hear Ellison tell you some of his best stories without ever worrying that you’re going to get more involved than you want to be. But, maybe you should be worried, just a little. While there are a few stories in this collection that are pretty light-hearted from beginning to end, most of them begin innocently enough, but then slowly become more and more disturbing until it’s almost impossible not to feel some sense of unease and trepidation, and then, when they end, almost palpable relief. “S.R.O.,” for example; what starts out as a cheery little tale of off-center entrepreneurship, read in Ellison’s best 1920’s gangster voice, begins to drift into a much more solemn treatment of beauty and the lengths to which people will go to experience it.
Then there are the stories which begin creepy and stay that way. “The Function of Dream Sleep” begins with the image a mouth opening in a man’s side, which is disturbing enough, but Ellison keeps on turning the “dread” knob up until even driving along an interstate in broad daylight seems somehow sinister and unreal. I’d be interested in reading these stories in text form to see how much of this sensation comes from the actual writing and how much comes from the sheer desperation Ellison puts into his performances. I wasn’t surprised to see that Ellison has a few acting credits to his name, (most awesomely, “man at orgy” in Godson); the range of character and emotion that are present in these readings rivals that of any “professional” reader. At times it’s apparent that Ellison’s familiarity with the stories allows him to enhance his performances by adding laughter, stutters, and other little bits of paralanguage that only he would be able to get away with. The postscript to “The Function of Dream Sleep,” in which Ellison explains some of the elements of his most autobiographical story, is also told in this extemporaneous manner. It’s like the old guy at the bar has finally started to wind down and is going casually toss off one last bit of terror that will keep you up for weeks before he empties his drink, slaps you too hard on the back, and starts shuffling for home.
The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 1: The Dunwich Horror and The Call Of Cthulhu
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Wayne June
3 CDs – Approx 3.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: 2005
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Gods / Evil / Mathematics / Dreams /
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
When Fantasy is inspired by science it can be especially powerful. H.P. Lovecraft built his mythos using the scientific concepts of his day. There could have been sensible talk of ‘other dimensions’ before the experiments surrounding the nature of light. And much of the alienness of his creations explicitly depend on such concepts in theoretical physics as non-euclidian geometry. With these concepts being in the air Lovecraft set out to plant a seed of churning fear with his fiction – turning the many unknowns science was uncovering into unspeakable horrors that lurk within the imagination. Combine this with Lovecraft’s dense and brooding prose and you’ve got something that no modern author could get away with. No modern author could, Lovecraft does. Audio Realms is starting to release the titles that make any classic fantasy fan salivate. Here in this terrific audiobook are two tales of horror that we declare to be SFFaudio Essential:
The Dunwich Horror is the tale of a backwater New England town with a devolving populace and one particularly strange family’s chronicle. It starts with two small things. The cataloguing of some mouldering old books and a disturbing birth of a new resident. These events are the begining of a new danger for the hamlet of Dunwich and possibly the Earth entire. What’s interesting here, as with so many early horror tales, is that Lovecraft creates evil not by revealing action directly but by atmosphere and appeal to our primitive revulsion reflex. Lovecraftian evil is not something created by moral degeneracy (though he does talk of that), but rather by sheer alieness, an atmosphere of ignorance and most of all a lurking dread.
I’m not sure it would make much sense to be an apologist for the Elder Gods who’d consume us without a thought – but what exactly makes them so evil? Since everyone who finds out has their sanity blasted we’re not likely to find out very soon.
The Call Of Cthulhu is a reconstructed tale. A nephew finds in the his recently deceased uncle’s study some strange documents. A young nephew discovers in his recently deceased uncle’s study some correspondences and notes, along with a mysterious and disturbing statue. It seems that several mysteriously similar cults worship of a being, who they call Cthulhu. A sea voyage eventually yielded a brush with an unearthly force. I won’t reveal any more of the plot, but I will say this, I think Philip K. Dick may have been inspired by this story for his novel Galactic Pot Healer. This creepy tale is perhaps the definitive Lovecraftian work. They even named a great role playing game after it. One suggestion, this one is pretty scary, you may want to wear brown pants while listening.
Narrator Wayne June’s voice will give you the absolute lurking creeps. His deep raspy voice is also used to good effect for all the narration, when he is infrequently called upon to do the voices of the damned he distinguishes between them well. This is the best Lovecraft adaptation to audio I’ve heard and more frightening than hell. For full effect a listener should turn down the lights, put on a good set of headphones, sit in a lonesome room with a view of the sea and pray that Lovecraft was just making all this stuff up.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Imagination X: The First Album
By Jeffrey Adams; Performed by a Full Cast
1 CD – 1 hour [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Bud C. Productions
Published: 2003
ISBN: 0974201200
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Ghosts / Artificial Intelligence / Dreams /
If you are a fan of Twilight Zone fiction, you are going to enjoy Imagination X. There are eight dramatized stories included in this 1-hour album, each performed by a full cast:
“The House in the Woods” – A woman is haunted by visions in her dreams of a house in the woods.
“Box Love” – A hilarious look at love between two artificially intelligent kitchen appliances.
“Up on the Rooftops” – Something’s moving up on the roof – is it Santa Claus?
“Background” – A researcher goes to a haunted house and tape records notes while he looks around. But the tapes contain more than his voice…
“Mandible Hill” – Do you know what the person sitting next to you is capable of?
“The Prisoner” – A tortured soul cries out his torment – or does he?
“Distance” – A space traveler deals with his computer which is also trying to deal with him.
Find this audio at Bud C. Productions – you’ll be glad you did. The website leaves quite a bit to be desired, but there is some interesting information there. If you click on an episode, you can find some of Jeffrey Adams’ notes on the production along with cast info. A piece of data I found interesting: The computer voice was played by the ‘Speakable Items’ function of my iMac computer, the existence of which was the inspiration for the episode, and, to some extent, for the entire series.
I enjoyed the time I spent with these stories, and am looking forward to more from Jeffrey Adams and crew.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson