fantasy – Page 60

Final Rune: The Troll Of Stony Brook AUDIO DRAMA

SFFaudio Online Audio

Fred Greenhalgh, audio dramatist and host of Radio Drama Revival sez:

Finalrune’s new show! I’ll be releasing it as a free podcast in 5-7 min installments, with a paid download of $2.99 available which includes all episodes as a director’s cut and 2 bonus music tracks.

Fred will be posting a new episodes on Fridays throughout July. But if you’re into it, consider downloading the paid version |HERE|.

The program is genuinely funny, featuring a Philip J. Fry-like goober who hits a troll while driving home from a party he was found too uncool for. The troll, by the way, is more of the “grind your bones to make my bread”-type, rather than the cutesy, pink-haired desktop variety.

Later episodes straddle the line between humor and horror. Audiobook narrator William Dufris, playing the troll, is nearly unrecognizable. It sounds as if he’s been gargling battery acid! And the sound, as with all of the field recorded Final Rune shows, is absolutely wonderful.

The first free episode is available now, check it out…

The Troll Of Stony Brook
By Frederick Greenhalgh; Performed by a full cast
Podcast or MP3 Download – Approx. 36 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Final Rune Productions
Podcast: July 2010
An awkward teenager, Jamie, is driving home one night from a party when he hits something – something big. His pushy co-worker, Rick, talks him into going back to the scene of the accident… and what they find will change them both forever.

Standalone Episode 1 |MP3|

As Part of Radio Drama Revival Episode #180 |MP3|

Podcast feed:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/FinalRune

Here’s the promotional video too:

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: At The Back Of The North Wind by George MacDonald

SFFaudio Online Audio

It’s kind of a shame that this LibriVox edition of At The Back Of The North Wind is not wholly narrated by Meredith Hughes. She only reads the first three chapters. They are wonderfully narrated.

I happened across this audiobook whilst researching a stack of old hardcovers that I inherited from my grandmother. I must have read it at some point as the story is entirely familiar. But now, looking at it with adult eyes, the ideological argument it makes seems more quaint than persuasive. See, At The Back Of The North Wind is a theodicean Fantasy. It uses the personification of the “North Wind” to explain why evil exists in the world. As such it belongs on the bookshelf between two of C.S. Lewis’ books, The Problem Of Pain and The Lion,The Witch And The Wardrobe.

If you’re looking to get into some late 19th allegorical Fantasy, you probably couldn’t do much better than this wholesome story of what is essentially a gray witch and the good little boy she takes on a series of adventures.

Here’s the color plate from my paperbook edition (it depicts the Diamond, the little boy protagonist, and the North Wind (in the guise of a little girl):

From the 1956 Junior Deluxe Editions - At The Back Of The North Wind by George MacDonald - Illustrated by Colleen Browning

At The Back Of The North Wind
By George MacDonald; Read by various
38 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 24, 2007
Diamond the little boy sleeps in the hayloft above the stall of Diamond the horse. The loft is snug but drafty, and after plugging a hole in the wall one night, Diamond is scolded by the beautiful Lady North Wind for closing her “window” into his room. Thus begins their friendship. Spirited away by the North Wind, Diamond embarks on a series of adventures both near to and far from his home. His pure heart and his simple, loving spirit guide him as he journeys to the back of the North Wind and home again. Originally serialized in 1868, beginning with the first issue of “Good Words For The Young” magazine.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-by-george-macdonald.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Red Panda Adventures – Season 5

SFFaudio Review

The Red Panda Adventures – Season 5
By Gregg Taylor; Performed by a full cast
12 MP3 Files via podcast – Approx. 6 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Decoder Ring Theatre
Podcast: 2009 – 2010
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Mystery / Crime / Nazis / Adventure / Toronto / Magic / Dinosaurs / Telepathy / Amnesia / Airships / Time Travel / Caribbean / New York / Los Angeles / Espionage /

Of the many terrific episodes in this season’s dozen, I think Just Like Clockwork is my overall favourite. It’s an exemplary episode and it’s probably as close as Gregg Taylor will come to adapting a Philip K. Dick story. Events in any given Red Panda show can stand completely alone, but they’ll still often add to a developing story. Like in all the previous seasons villains rise, and fall, rise and then fall again. But sometimes the villains aren’t really villains, and sometimes the heroes are more frightening than we’d like them to be. By the final episode of Season 5 we know were heading towards some serious World War II stories. Here’s my description of each episode:

Episode 1 – “Nightshade” |MP3|
The newly married super-couple, August Fenwick (aka The Red Panda) and Kit Baxter Fenwick (aka The Flying Squirrel), are returning from their honeymoon in Europe. It was a working holiday, but they’re looking forward to a relaxing flight home aboard a Zeppelin. But there is a mysterious passenger aboard, and she has other plans.

Episode 2 – “Flight Of The Bumblebee” |MP3|
Doctor Darius, an earnest rooming-house tenant with a “felonious past,” is having trouble paying his rent. If he can only perfect his “royal jelly” formula … well, let’s just say that not all super-villains, it seems, are motivated by megalomania.

Episode 3 – “The Puzzle Master” |MP3|
A fiendish deathtrap, in the form of a labyrinth, faces any victim of The Puzzle Master. Can RP and FS, with the help of “Doc Rocket”, navigate the maze?

Episode 4 – “Just Like Clockwork” |MP3|
An amnesiac awakes in a dark alley. He meets a young woman, she wants to help, and he’s definitely in need of it. Meanwhile, the Red Panda is hunting for someone or something that poses a threat to someone or something somewhere in Toronto. It’s a mystery! It’s a love story! And it has all got to end either with a bang, a twist, or in tears!

Episode 5 – “Murder Wears A Mask” |MP3|
An old debt must be repaid with a trip to New York City. But unlike in Toronto, NYC has licensed superheroes, the mayor has given them badges and charged them with tracking down one of their own. But two crusaders from the Great White North don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Episode 6 – “Terror Walks The Night” |MP3|
A cold spell, and a series of suicides isn’t likely to be a dastardly plot. Not during the 1930s depression. But when those suicides coincide with a series of disappearances then a certain something must be up. Right? Add in a snake cult and this looks like a job for a certain married couple, in thermal tights!

Episode 7 – “The Secret City” |MP3|
A dozen unsolved “society” kidnappings are followed up by an “impossible” $80,000 jewel robbery – the police are baffled but Red Panda (and wife) are on the case. Perhaps one jocular simian and his Oliver Twist-like crew are responsible?

Episode 8 – “A Dish Best Served Cold” |MP3|
A stakeout, some “ritualistic nonsense” and a gravelly voiced villain leading a covert cabal of criminal creeps may spell the extermination of both Panda and Squirrel. Can anyone stop The Red Panda Revenge Squad?

Episode 9 – “Song Of The Siren” |MP3|
A Caribbean vacation for Mr. and Mrs. August Fenwick is cut short when a Havana based pleasure boat, reported in distress and then missing, proves irresistible to this power couple. Could a mysterious high pitched cry, and an inconspicuous island deep in the epicenter be signs of a secret testing base? But testing for what? And for whom?

Episode 10 – “Eyes Of The Idol” |MP3|
Late one night in Los Angeles two security guards pass the time by talking. One has a strange tale to tell. It seems there was once an uninhabited island off the coast of India. On that island was an ancient ruined city. In that city was a certain eldritch idol. And that idol had two jewels for eyes, now called the “Eyes of Doom.” Now one of the guards has one. Two means doom.

Episode 11 – “Sins Of The Father” |MP3|
Is it only coincidence when Fenwick Industries is plagued by accidents? After all, accidents happen. But sometimes accidents aren’t actually accidents at all! And a sniper assassin is no kind of accident. Its all very hush hush, but what exactly does the suspicious Colonel Fitzroy know about it?

Episode 12 – “The Great Fall” |MP3|
Set in late August 1939, with a recently signed non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. One hero, and her husband, will fight one final holding action in a losing war, the Occult War. Their opponent is Professor Friedrich Von Schlitz and a division of SS scum.

Happy Canada Day everybody, go celebrate with some RED PANDA!

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://decoderring.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox This may be the best treat in the month of June! Check out this wonderful reading of the original 1936 CONAN novella, Red Nails, by my friend Gregg Margarite! Read what Robert E. Howard wrote about it, as he was writing it:

“‘You see, girl [Howard was writing to Novalyne Price], when a civilization begins to decay and die, the only thing men or women think about is the gratification of their body’s desires. They become preoccupied with sex. It colors their laws, their religion — every aspect of their lives.[…]’Girl, I’m working on a yarn like that now –a Conan yarn. Listen to me. When you have a dying civilization, the normal, accepted life style ain’t strong enough to satisfy the damned insatiable appetites of the courtesans and, finally, of all the people. They turn to Lesbianism and things like that to satisfy their desires…I am going to call it The Red Flame of Passion.'”

We call it Red Nails!

I broke out my copies of Savage Tales #2 and Conan Saga #9 in order to illustrate some of the terrific art that Robert E. Howard’s last Conan story has generated. Here are some of additional materials from the original publication too. First up, it’s desribed as:”One of the strangest stories ever written—the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned”Then the editorial staff of Weird Tales had this to say:

“Nearly four years ago, WEIRD TALES published a story called The Phoenix On The Sword, built around a barbarian adventurer named Conan, who had become king of a country by sheer force of valor and brute strength. The author of that story was Robert E. Howard, who was already a favorite with the readers of this magazine for his stories of Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and redresser of wrongs. The stories about Conan were speedily acclaimed by our readers, and the barbarian’s weird adventures became immensely popular. The story presented herewith is one of the most powerful and eery weird tales yet written about Conan. We commend this story to you, for we know you will enjoy it through and through.”

And, after you begin listening, be sure to compare the three scenes from the story I’ve matched up.

Red Nails
By Robert E.Howard; Read by Gregg Margarite
5 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 19, 2010
Text Source: Gutenberg.org |HTML|
Conan the Cimmerian pursues the beautiful and deadly pirate Valeria after she kills a Stygian only to find himself cornered by a dragon. Apparently this dragon doesn’t know who he’s messing with. The pair then encounters the city of Xuchotl with its warring factions and ancient secrets. Swordplay and sorcery ensue. – Red Nails is Howard’s final Conan story. First published in the July, August, September and October 1936 issues of Weird Tales magazine.

Chapter 1 |MP3| Chapter 2 |MP3| Chapters 3 & 4 |MP3| Chapters 5 & 6 |MP3| Chapter 7 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4404

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Art from the original 1936 Weird Tales publication:

Weird Tales July, August-September and October 1936 issues

WEIRD TALES - Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

Art from the Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith comics adaptation from 1973 & 1974 :

Roy Thomas And Barry Windsor Smith adapt Red Nails

Thomas/Smith - Red Nails Dragon Scene
Thomas/Smith - Red Nails Throne Room Scene
Thomas/Smith - Red Nails - Tolkemec Laser and Knife Scene

[Thanks also to Betty M. and David Lawrence]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Magicians by Lev Grossman

SFFaudio Review

The Magicians
By Lev Grossman; Read by Mark Bramhall
17 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2009
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Wizard School / Meta Fiction / Alternate Worlds / Fictional fictional characters /

It would be too easy to simply compare this book to the Harry Potter series. There are obvious elements that are present in both, specifically the magic school. But Lev tells a story that only uses that as a means to bring the characters together and move onto the main story, which really kicks off once they graduate.

The main character, Quentin Coldwater, is a very bright high school kid who is busy applying to Universities. Despite his academic excellence, Quentin struggles to connect with the real world. He has a fascination with a series of fantasy books about a land called Fillory. In those books he can see a purpose to existence that he can’t find in his own life.

One university, Brakebills Academy, takes an interest in him and gives him an exam. It is during this exam that Quentin discovers that he is one of those few who have a talent for magic. He is enrolled in the school and goes from the smartest kid in his school to about average in his year. He pushes himself to excel and eventually finds that he is being skipped ahead a year. He makes friends and finds love. But his time there is not without upset. Eventually he and his friends graduate and we are not even half-way through the book.

Struggling to decide what to do with their lives, Quentin and his college friends drift through life for a short time. The world of the wizards isn’t challenging to them. This secret culture looks after their own, keeping a low profile and pretty much doing whatever interests them. Lacking direction and guidance Quentin and his friends have too much money and no responsibilities. They party. Drink, drugs and sex. But then they discover something that even their tutors didn’t know about. Fillory, the land from Quentin’s books, is real and they have a way to get there. They gear up and mount a small expedition to find adventure and fill the hole in their lives. They go into this with a tactics and planning of a group of fantasy role-players. They see everything in terms of the stories of Fillory. They expect quests will turn up to tell them what they need to do, and indeed one does.

The parallels between Fillory and Narnia are much stronger than those with the Harry Potter series, and pervades through much more of the novel. In the Fillory novels, a family of children, the Chatwins, from rural England in the early 1900’s keep finding secret paths into Fillory where they have adventures, defeat enemies to the land and return home as if no time has passed. While there isn’t a Lion god, there is Ember and Umber the twin Ram gods, who clean up any remaining mess and sends the Chatwin children back home. The events and characters in these books are real and have a serious impact on Quentin and his friends as they try to figure out what really happened in Fillory. There are hints and clues throughout that a second reading would put into a clearer context after knowing the ending.

The narrator, Mark Bramhall, gives an excellent performance, keeping most of the voices distinct.

Although this is described as a coming of age novel, I would hesitate to recommend it to younger teen readers. There are several strong uses of offensive language, all fitting with the characters and their situation. Definitely not aimed at the same primary market Harry Potter was.

Posted by Paul [W] Campbell

Librivox: Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 030

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m still got several of the new to LibriVox recordings in this collection to listen to. But I’ve made a few notes on a few of them:

The Beast Of Space by F.E. Hardart is a tale of a woman hating asteroid miner who finds himself on a rescue mission. The writing is fairly clunky, but the ideas aren’t too bad.

Lester del Rey’s Dead Ringer is about an alien invasion by things that look like, but aren’t, human. The hero of the story, Dane Phillips, began gathering the evidence after a grenade tore the throat out of one of his buddies on Guadalcanal. This tale, as read by Gregg Margarite, is well worth a listen! In fact it’s a first rate short story, quite evocative, kind of The Twilight Zone-esque and would make an excellent audio drama.

tabithat’s reading of Herbert D. Kastle’s The First One is also worth checking out. Set in 2020, it features an astronaut who has returned from long space voyage. It should be a time of celebration, he is the first one to return, but after the parade a troubling uncertainty grips his family members – does it have something to do with the long frightening scars all over the astronauts body? You bet it does!

Pushbutton War, by Joseph P. Martino (a retired USAF Colonel), is a story about an Apache astronaut who takes inspiration from his grandfather’s warrior code to count coup on a hydrogen bomb. It’s a kind of Strategic Defense Initiative story but it also makes a nice companion piece to one of the Malcolm Gladwell-style anecdotes about radar screen operators and their ability to discern, in the blink of an eye, between enemy missiles and friendly aircraft. And I like the idea of a Space Apache!

It took me a couple of attempts to get into The Skull by Philip K. Dick. But with PKD you have to keep trying, so I kept trying. Reading along with the text helped, and after about 150 words or so I could manage the story without the extra textual assistance. I guess this is one of those stories that doesnt translate to audio that well. That said, once I got into it it was worth it. The Skull is a time travel story that makes a nice companion piece to Michael Moorcock’s Behold The Man. It’s about a future criminal who goes on a mission to kill a religious revolutionary from the 1960s.

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 030
By Various; Read by various
15 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – 6 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Science Fiction is speculative literature that generally explores the consequences of ideas which are roughly consistent with nature and scientific method, but are not facts of the author’s contemporary world. The stories often represent philosophical thought experiments presented in entertaining ways. Protagonists typically “think” rather than “shoot” their way out of problems, but the definition is flexible because there are no limits on an author’s imagination. The reader-selected stories presented here were written prior to 1962 and became US public domain texts when their copyrights expired.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-030.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

As Long As You Wish
By John O’Keefe; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If, somehow, you get trapped in a circular time system . . . how long is the circumference of an infinitely retraced circle? First published in Astounding Science Fiction, June, 1955.

The Beast Of Space
By F.E. Hardart; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A tale of the prospectors of the starways—of dangers— From Comet July 1941.

The Big Trip Up Yonder
By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If it was good enough for your grandfather, forget it … it is much too good for anyone else! From Galaxy Science Fiction January 1954.

Cost Of Living
By Robert Sheckley; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
If easy payment plans were to be really efficient, patrons’ lifetimes had to be extended! From Galaxy Science Fiction December 1952.

Dead Ringer
By Lester del Rey; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
There was nothing, especially on Earth, which could set him free—the truth least of all! From Galaxy Science Fiction November 1956.

The Doorway
By Evelyn E. Smith; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A discerning critic once pointed out that Edgar Allan Poe possessed not so much a distinctive style as a distinctive manner. So startlingly original was his approach to the dark castles and haunted woodlands of his own somber creation that he transcended the literary by the sheer magic of his prose. Something of that same magic gleams in the darkly-tapestried little fantasy presented here, beneath Evelyn Smith’s eerily enchanted wand. From Fantastic Universe September 1955.

The First One
By Herbert D. Kastle; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed … but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero…? From Analog July 1961.

Grove Of The Unborn
By Lyn Venable; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Glamorous Lyn Venable of Dallas, Texas, makes a first appearance in these pages (but by no means her first appearance in this field), with this sensitive story of a young man who needn’t have run. A contributor to William Nolan’s (Of Time And Texas, November, 1956, Fantastic Universe) famous Ray Bradbury Review, Miss Venable wants, very very much, to be a part, albeit small, of the comeback of science fiction that is seen today, as she wrote us recently. From Fantastic Universe January 1957.

The Hour Of Battle
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Megan Argo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
As one of the Guardian ships protecting Earth, the crew had a problem to solve. Just how do you protect a race from an enemy who can take over a man’s mind without seeming effort or warning? From Space Science Fiction September 1953.

The Man From Time
By Frank Belknap Long; Read by Norm
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
The method by which one man might be pinpointed in the vastness of all Eternity was the problem tackled by the versatile Frank Belknap Long in this story. And as all minds of great perceptiveness know, it would be a simple, human quality he’d find most effective even in solving Time-Space. From Fantastic Universe March 1954.

The Meteor Girl
By Jack Williamson; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Through the complicated space-time of the fourth dimension goes Charlie King in an attempt to rescue the Meteor Girl. From Astounding Stories, March 1931.

Pushbutton War
By Joseph Paul Martino; Read by FNH
1 |MP3| – Approx. 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
In one place, a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as Lief never dreamed of; from another, one of the descendants of the Caesars, and here an Apache rode a steed such as never roamed the plains. But they were warriors all. From Astounding Science Fiction August 1960.

Satellite System
By Horace Brown Fyfe; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Fyfe’s quite right … there’s nothing like a satellite system for a cold storage arrangement. Keeps things handy, but out of the way… From Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960.

The Skull
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen. But he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger’s skull under his arm. From If Worlds of Science Fiction September 1952.

Star Mother
By Robert F. Young; Read by TC Parmelee
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 01, 2009
A touching story of the most enduring love in all eternity. From Amazing Stories January 1959.

[Thanks also to Wendel Topper and Lucy Burgoyne]

Posted by Jesse Willis