fantasy – Page 50

BBCR4 + RA.cc: Bond’s World – a documentary about the world of James Bond

Aural Noir: Online Audio

First broadcast on BBC Radio more than 10 years ago I discovered this interesting documentary over on RadioArchive.cc, the terrific radio only torrent* site. Bond’s World compares the reality of the British SIS (secret intelligence service) with Fleming’s SIS, examines the peculiarities of Fleming’s writing and plots, as well as showcasing the varied impact of the globally popular Bond films.

Bond’s World
Presented by Jeremy Black
MP3 via Torrent – Approx. 28 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: January 1, 2001
Historian Jeremy Black, with the aid of KGB double agent Oleg Gordievski and writer of espionage stories Nigel West, investigates the remarkable survival of James Bond past the end of the Cold War era into which he was born. What has been his impact, what are his politics, and why is he still relevant today?

Contributors:
Jeremy Black (Historian)
Oleg Gordievski (KGB Agent)
Nigel West (Author)
Readings by Christian Rodska
Produced by Miles Ward

Posted by Jesse Willis

*If you’re still not familiar with torrent technology I recommend you download and install µTorrent, it’s quick and simple.

Hypnobobs: Naturally by Fredric Brown

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a cute little short story, with a sympathetic protagonist, by the master of the short short, Fredric Brown. Mr. Jim Moon, the proprietor and narrator of the Hypnobobs podcast, calls it a “A Micro Tale”, others may call it “Flash Fiction”. Indeed, its brief length and moral teaching probably makes it the perfect story to read before a college mid-term or final exam! But it also has the effect of explaining why any school for magic, like Hogwarts, could never possibly work.

Hypnobobs – Naturally
By Fredric Brown; Read by Jim Moon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Hypnobobs
Podcast: August 22, 2011
Henry Blodgett is a terrible math student and knows he’ll fail his upcoming geometry exam. But as a student of black magic he may have found a way out! First published in the September 1954 issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction.

Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Hypnobobs

Here is the accompanying art, by “Stone”, from the original publication:

Illustration by Stone of Naturally by Fredric Brown

And here’s the complete text if you’d like to read along:

Naturally by Fredric Brown

Henry Blodgett looked at his wrist watch and saw that it was two o’clock in the morning. In despair, he slammed shut the textbook he’d been studying and let his head sink onto his arms on the table in front of him. He knew he’d never pass that examination tomorrow; the more he studied geometry the less he understood it. Mathematics in general had always been difficult for him and now he was finding that geometry was impossible for him to learn.

And if he flunked it, he was through with college; he’d flunked three other courses in his first two years and another failure this year would, under college rules, cause automatic expulsion.

He wanted that college degree badly too, since it was indispensable for the career he’d chosen and worked toward. Only a miracle could save him now.

He sat up suddenly as an idea struck him. Why not try magic? The occult had always interested him. He had books on it and he’d often read the simple instructions on how to conjure up a demon and make it obey his will. Up to now, he’d always figured that it was a bit risky and so had never actually tried it. But this was an emergency and might be worth the slight risk. Only through black magic could he suddenly become an expert in a subject that had always been difficult for him.

From the shelf he quickly took out his best book on black magic, found the right page and refreshed his memory on the few simple things he had to do.

Enthusiastically, he cleared the floor by pushing the furniture against the walls. He drew the pentagram figure on the carpet with chalk and stepped inside it. He then said the incantations.

The demon was considerably more horrible than he had anticipated. But he mustered his courage and started to explain his dilemma. “I’ve always been poor at geometry,” he began . . .

“You’re telling me,” said the demon gleefully.

Smiling flames, it came for him across the chalk lines of the useless hexagram Henry had drawn by mistake instead of the protecting pentagram.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Gods Of The North by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

“Anybody ought to be willing to pay a dollar for the privilege of reading, for a whole year, the works of Lovecraft, Smith, and Derleth.”

-Robert E. Howard (from a letter to Fantasy Fan, December 1933)

“I am so happy that we were able to quickly clear up this misunderstanding. We have accepted Orion’s apology without reservation and I thank our lawyers, and Orion’s lawyers, on both sides of the Atlantic for helping us resolve our issues. Orion was a great licensee of ours for many years and we are delighted to have reached an agreement to renew and expand that relationship. We are already brainstorming the many new productive ways we can work together in the future. Those of us who work at Paradox have put a lot of work into protecting and developing our wide array of Robert E. Howard derived brands since we got into the Robert E. Howard business. The new Conan movie will wrap next month, the Age of Conan MMOG recently launched a big expansion, and we are well along in the development of a number of other feature films and licensed products which we will be announcing shortly. Orion is perfectly positioned as a leading science fiction/fiction publisher which can provide the wider audience we want to reach the real thing, REH’s original stories”

-Fredrik Malmberg, President and CEO of Paradox Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries (Conan Properties International) (from a 2010 press release)

Gods Of The North, first published in 1934, is still just one of two Conan stories available on LibriVox.org (the other being Red Nails). Gods Of The North is a 3,500 word vignette, it’s been republished under the titles The Frost Giant’s Daughter and The Frost King’s Daughter. The reason it survives, and is known today, has nothing to do with marketing campaigns, intellectual property protection or lawyers. It survives for one reason alone – it survives because of it’s fans. In fact, it survives despite it being originally written as a piece for sale. It was actually rejected by Weird Tales magazine editor Farnsworth Wright:

The Frost-Giant's Daughter Rejection Letter

Check it out… Gods Of The North was first published in a fan magazine (that had just sixty subscribers) – a fan magazine that counted both H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard among its feature (and letters column) contributors. Neither Lovecraft nor Howard wrote to, or for, THE FANTASY FAN because it was a profitable venture – they wrote to it, and for it, because they were themselves fans of fantasy and the stories and poems they were weaving. You may know the story. It’s a pretty famous one today, but it isn’t famous because it was a well marketed, properly licensed by the right’s holder, or branded. It is, instead, because it’s a good story that fans (another word for readers) appreciate.

Gods Of The North was nearly forgotten. It lay un-reprinted and virtually unknown for more than thirty years until it was re-discovered and reprinted in the December 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe. Here is the editorial introduction for that reprinting:

The publication of this strange story by Robert E. Howard, author of the Conan stories, so much a part of the Living Library of Fantasy, represents a departure for this magazine. Without abandoning our policy of bringing you, month after month, the best in NEW Science Fiction and Fantasy. We will, front time to time, publish material such as this, hitherto known to only a few students of the field! GODS OF THE NORTH was published in 1934, in Charles D. Hornig’s THE FANTASY FAN, which had a circulation of under a hundred! We thank Sam Moskowitz, Editor and SF historian, who showed us this story.

Here’s the |PDF|, it’s also available (with a slightly different text) at |WIKISOURCE|

Here’s my description of the plot:

A winter war in the mountains of Vanaheim, and a bit of gossamer, are all that stand between Conan of Cimmeria and the frosty beauty who spurns him.

And here’s the audiobook:

Gods of the North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21, 2008
She drew away from him, dwindling in the witch·fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child. First published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan.

Here’s the same reading, with additional commentary:

Podcastle #162 – Gods Of The North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Podcastle
Podcast: June 21, 2011

My copy of Conan’s Brethren (a Gollancz collection of Howard stories), edited by Stephen Jones, features this striking image by Les Edwards (aka Edward Miller):

The Frost King's Daughter - illustration by Les Edwards

Comics adaptations:

Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) – The first comics adaptation, adapted by Roy Thomas (writer) and Barry Windsor Smith (artist):

Savage Tales - The Frost Giant's Daughter

Conan the Barbarian #16 (July 1972) – a colorized version of the ST #1 adaptation, except with Comics Code Authority self-censorship and an additional splash page:

Conan The Barbarian - Night Of The Frost Giants

Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August 1974) – an uncoloured and uncensored (full nudity is back) version of the same adaptation from Conan The Barbarian #16 and Savage Tales #1, but featuring the added splash page (in black and white this time) from CTB #16:

The Savage Sword Of Conan - ADDED SPLASH (in black and white) - The Frost Giant's Daughter

Conan #2 (March 2004) adapted by Kurt Busiek (writer) and Cary Nord (artist) – cover art by Joseph Michael Linsner:

Dark Horse - Conan #2 - The Frost Giant's Daughter - COVER

Conan #2 - The Frost Giant's Daughter - INTERIOR

But the fan connection doesn’t end there. The artist most closely associated with the Marvel Comics run of Conan The Barbarian and Savage Sword Of Conan was John Buscema. But, he never illustrated an adaptation of Gods Of The North or The Frost Giant’s Daughter. And so it was up to fan artists, like the impressively talented Benito Gallego, to step in to imagine what a Buscema version of this fan favourite tale might look like. And he did it twice!

Benito Gellago's illustrations of The Frost Giant's Daughter

[Thanks to Robert E. Howard, Charles D. Horning, Sam Moskowitz, Hans Stefan Santesson, Rowdy Delaney, Gorgon776 and many other fans]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #122 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Beyond The Door by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #122 – a complete and unabridged reading of Beyond The Door by Philip K. Dick, followed by a discussion of it with Scott, Jesse, Tamahome and Gregg Margarite (who narrated the story).

Talked about on today’s show:
Beyond The Door is a story about a very angry bird, is it a puff-piece or a potboiler?, Rod Serling, Twilight Zone, “My name is Talky Tina and I’m going to kill you.”, Living Doll, Telly Savalas, Clown Without Pity (from Treehouse of Horror III), Night Gallery, Chucky, were clowns always scary?, automaton, fantasy, is it a haunted cuckoo clock?, what does that mean?, why is that in there?, who is Pete?, Pete has to be her dead brother, did Pete die in the same way?, the Black Forest, what’s wrong with this woman?, “it was written in the fifties!”, she’s happy and she’s sad, Umberto Eco and the role of the reader, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Eric S. Rabkin, Warehouse 13, is the first line a moral lesson (or merely a magazine call out)?, Project Gutenberg’s etext edition of Beyond The Door, Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, this story is not about a cuckoo clock, it’s about the cuckoo bird and the cuckoo egg, and the egg’s name is Pete, Perky Pat, Gregg has read Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis, James Joyce, what am I thinking?, what am I feeling?, “keep thinking about that”, “it’s wholesale baby”, this is sex, Bob is her lover (in the 1950s sense), anthropomorphizing cuckoo clock’s bird is not that uncommon, “you’ll love it Bobby”, this is a really strange clock, it would keep you up all night, the cuckoo clock fad (they were ubiquitous), “like a new member of the family”, what is the symbol of?, the cuckoo is a brood parasite, the characteristics of cuckoo eggs and chicks, “some important special accounts” sounds like a story, “how nice you look today”, “Mrs. Peters across the street you know…”, “oh oh oh”, Pete was only her half brother, “it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and you need 5,000 words by ten a.m.”, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Dick’s many marriages, Tessa Dick, structuralism vs. post structuralism, writer’s intent vs. the text standing alone, does the author’s intent matter?, a bastard child, “she’s seen this thing in action before”, the great depression -> WWII -> many impulsive marriages, Bob isn’t gay, “no guy is interested in buttons!”, “does he realize he is next in line?”, “monogamy is designed to makes sure the male gets a genetic heir”, the cuckoo is her champion, “I like a good deal”, “he’s rude, he doesn’t deserve to die”, there’s no magic, no science fiction, folklore, mythology, proto-story, Scott read Beyond The Door aloud to his daughter, James Thurber’s The Princess And The Tin Box, Anthony Boucher, three or four princes, reverse-dowry, “red charger” vs. plow horse, mica and hornblende, she’s not an idiot, anyone who thought she was going to…, this is an overturning of that, it’s a fractured fairy tale, a noir fairy tale, Frank R. Stockton, The Griffin and the Minor Canon, Snow White as a horror story, Rocky And Bullwinkle, June Foray, William Conrad, Jake And The Fatman, “finish before it burns”, the Marx Bros., the self-deprecating stuff we like today, Forever Peace, we got it sorted, anecdotal proof.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1) by Laurell K. Hamilton

SFFaudio Review

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1)
By Laurell K. Hamilton; Read by Kimberly Alexis
8 CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audiobooks
Published: August 2009
ISBN: 9780143144014
Themes: / Fantasy / Vampires / Zombies /

Published almost 10 years ago, Guilty Pleasures marked the debut of a writer who was destined to grow from cult favorite to a major best-selling author. Now, for long-time Anita Blake aficionados and new-found fans, Guilty Pleasures makes its debut in downloadable audio. Listeners will learn how Anita Blake started raising the dead – and killing the undead. And how she met Jean Claude, the master vampire destined to become not only her biggest nemesis but her greatest lover.

Guilty Pleasures was probably one of the original ‘urban fantasy’ books, along with the first Dresden Files book. But I found it to be well done. Anita Blake is kind of a strong female ‘Kolchack: The Night Stalker‘ with a gun, although she can raise the dead herself. It seemed a weird mix that she both raises the dead and kills vampires. This is the original novel in the series, way before she got the ardeur (or a strong sexual addiction) later in the series. The audio production is above average, and frequently provides incidental music when a scene gains tension (if that doesn’t bother you). Though I found the vampire Nikolaos to be childlike, she was also very intimidating, partly due to Kimberly Alexis’s acting. And I found the ending to be unusually strong. If you don’t like romance, don’t worry, you won’t find much of it here. But be warned that there are some grisly scenes. It bothered me a little that the narrator would do a fake ‘yell’, but at low volume. Maybe there’s some technical way to really yell at a microphone, but be able to keep it from clipping (limiter?)? How do they do it in the movies? This novel has also been adapted to comics. I hear the first four books in the series are pretty tight. I’ll go along with Felicia Day’s Goodreads ratings on this one, but I’ve only read the first book, and some of the comics. I’ve also been reading Narcissus in Chains, #10 in the series, for months and months, on and off. It has some very sexy scenes, but is pretty long and meandering. I think the author Laurell K. Hamilton once said in a podcast, that these days Americans think her writing is too sexy, and Europeans think it’s too violent. Maybe I should move to Europe.

Posted by Tamahome

Recent Arrivals: Brilliance Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Southern Gods
By John Hornor Jacobs; Read by Eric G. Dove
9 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2011

A MEMPHIS DJ HIRES RECENT WORLD WAR II VETERAN Bull Ingram to find Ramblin’ John Hastur, a mysterious bluesman whose dark, driving music — broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station — is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. A bootlegged snippet of Hastur’s strange, brooding tune fills Bull with an inexplicably murderous rage. Driven to find the song’s mysterious singer, Bull hears rumors that the bluesman sold his soul to the Devil. But as Bull follows Hastur’s trail into the eerie backwoods of Arkansas, he’ll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

The Omen Machine
By Terry Goodkind; Read by Sam Tsoutsouvas
15 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2011

Hannis Arc, working on the tapestry of lines linking constellations of elements that constituted the language of Creation recorded on the ancient Cerulean scroll spread out among the clutter on his desk, was not surprised to see the ethereal forms billow into the room like acrid smoke driven on a breath of bitter breeze. Like an otherworldly collection of spectral shapes seemingly carried on random eddies of air, they wandered in a loose clutch among the still and silent mounted bears and beasts rising up on their stands, the small forest of stone pedestals holding massive books of recorded prophecy, and the evenly spaced display cases of oddities, their glass reflecting the firelight from the massive hearth at the side of the room.

Since the seven rarely used doors, the shutters on the windows down on the ground level several stories below stood open in a fearless show of invitation. Though they frequently chose to use windows, they didn’t actually need the windows any more than they needed the doors. They could seep through any opening, any crack, like vapor rising in the early morning from stretches of stagnant water that lay in dark swaths through the pear barrens.

The open shutters were meant to be a declaration for all, including the seven, to see that Hannis Arc feared nothing.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson