Buffy Between The Lines is a podcast audio drama created by fans of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer television series. Actors, writers and editors from around the world are filling in the “summer” gaps left between the seasons. Check out their promo |MP3| and then subscribe to the podcast feed:
http://buffybetweenthelines.libsyn.com/rss
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Metamorphosis
By Franz Kafka; Read by Alex Wilson
3 Zipped MP3, OGG or AAC files – 2 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: The Spoken Alexandria Project
Published: 2006
Themes: / Fantasy / Surreal / 1910s / Insects /
At first read, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a bizarre, almost nonsensical story. Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant bug of some sort. No explanation is given for how or why this metamorphosis occurred. Gregor himself seems more concerned with being late to a work assignment than the circumstances of his change.
As the novella progresses, The Metamorphosis becomes more about the unspoken negotiations inside a family as in who does what chores, who makes money for others, and who just gets in the way. When Gregor can no longer provide for the family’s needs, Gregor’s father changes from an invalid to a dedicated worker. Along the way, Greta converts from a loving sister to a young woman looking for suitors. The bizarre transformation of Gregor is not the most important transformation in the family, as evidenced by the final lines.
Alex Wilson, the founder of Spoken Alexandria, provides a understated, but compelling reading. The sound quality is top-notch, even when listening over headphones. The tone of voice is like someone waked in the middle of dream, lending an appropriate otherworldliness to the story of alienation.
Posted by Listener of the Free Listens blog
Audio Gothic is one of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘s odder ventures. It was broadcast on RTÉ (Radio Ireland) in 2006. One part of Audio Gothic is entitled Marsyas: The Hippest Satyr. Here’s the complete work (in the form of successive YouTube videos) as staged at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 1999. Here’s the description:
A modern jazz retelling of the Greek myth of Marsyas, a humble satyr who comes under the spell of a cursed magical horn. Leading Irish guitarist Giordai Ua Laoghaire is the featured musician in this comic musical fable of pride and self-delusion.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
[via Audio Drama Talk forums]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Have a listen to this |MP3|. Normally I wouldn’t bother you with a mere excerpt from a new novel, but the premise of Will Lavender‘s Obedience does catch the ear and tease-out your attention. It is listed in the mystery/thriller section of most online bookstores but at least one site is classifying it as a Fantasy (though I suppose we’ll have to listen to the whole novel to know for sure). The unabridged audiobook is available from Books On Tape and Audible.com.
When the students in Winchester University’s Logic and Reasoning 204 course arrive for their first day of class, they are greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical missing girl named Polly. If, after being given a series of clues and details, the class has not found her before the end of the term (in six weeks), she will be murdered.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Seeker: Book One of the Noble Warriors
By William Nicholson; Read by Michael Page
9 CDs – 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423318354
Themes: / Fantasy / Epic Fantasy / Young Adult / Religion / Magic / Science /
“Three Very Different Heroes, Brought Together By A Shared Dream”
An elite band of fighter monks called the Nomana (AKA the “Noble Warriors”) guard a garden on the island of Anacrea within which dwells “the god who made all things.” Seeker (AKA “Seeker After Truth”) is an extremely intelligent boy of sixteen. He lives on the island, and wishes to follow his brother, the improbably named “Blaze Of Justice”, into the ranks of the Nomana. His father disapproves and he is forced to apply in secret. Morning Star, a girl of sixteen, can read a person’s aura to determine their character and emotions. She has the same goal, namely to become a Noble Warrior. With her father’s blessing and a hired guard, Morning Star sets out on a long journey to Anacrea. The two applicants are joined in the application line by a unschooled but charismatic seventeen year old brigand known only as “Wildman.” Wildman too is determined to become a “hoodie” (his word for the Nomana) after he found himself and his gang defeated by just two of the Noble Warriors. Far away in the imperial city of Radiance, a plot is hatching which will eventually involve all three youths.
When I first started listening to Seeker I couldn’t place just what kind of fantasy novel I’d taken on. It opens in a classroom, with a student named “Seeker After Truth” taking an important exam and deliberately writing down all the wrong answers. Intriguing, huh? Seeker wants to fail – that way, he hopes his father, who is also the class’ teacher, will free him of his planned destiny.
Author William Nicholson is unusually sparse with description. The setting is a school, but what are the desks made of? I don’t know. Do they have electric lighting? No data available. It takes a while for the listener to settle on what sort of technological capacity these people have and it takes even longer to understand what kind of tale this will be. Is this deliberate? After finishing the novel I’m still not sure. This is Nicholson’s second fantasy trilogy, and he’s crafted a recognizably fantasy epic in an unusual form. Is the lack of visual detail deliberate? It may be. Nicholson had a hand in writing plays and film scripts before finding further success with novels. He wrote the film scripts of First Knight (the Arthurian legend starring Richard Gere), Shadowlands (a biographical film about C.S. Lewis), the Ridley Scott-directed film Gladiator, and most recently Elizabeth: The Golden Age!
What I am sure about is this novel, the first of a trilogy, is about the nature of religious experience. Looking at Nicholson’s upbringing and his career, his writing is never far from either fantasy or religion. And perhaps most interestingly, when the novel first came out, he offered a “personal challenge to the reader” – if you could figure out what the nature of the Anacrean god was, before book two or three came out, he’d send you free copies of the books. He said the Anacrean god “is something you can’t possibly imagine.” Intriguing stuff.
The religions of Anacrea (an island fortress) and the city of Radiance, capital of a vast mainland empire, are both monotheistic. Anacrea’s mysterious god is called the “all and only.” It grants its monkish priests special powers which I can liken only to those of Star Wars‘s Jedi Knights. The Radiance god is the sun in their sky, and the citizens there have practiced ritual human sacrifice at twilight for centuries to keep the sun returning. But there are no magical powers for religious practitioners of Radiance. Instead, the upwardly mobile middle class of Radiance concerns itself with commerce or competes for prestige by buying human sacrificial offerings from slavers. And the Radiance elite, who employ something they call “scientists” are developing a weapon to rid themselves of the meddlesome monks on Anacrea.
The novel is good, but it doesn’t stand well enough on its own for an unreserved recommendation. One of the aspects I quite enjoyed was a kind of a con-game played on some willing believers about four-fifths of the way into the novel. The ending, which provides some resolution, wasn’t particularly surprising or revelatory. Nicholson is a successful playwright and an Oscar nominated screenwriter. It remains to be seen whether the mystery at the center of this trilogy will be as big a payoff as Nicholson is claiming – he calls the Noble Warriors trilogy the “most important thing I’ve ever done.” I’m intrigued enough to listen to the second book, entitled Jango (also available from Brilliance).
Reader Michael Page, a ten audiobook veteran for Brilliance Audio, is a British actor who narrates well. His males are distinguishable, his female voices are too, at typically a pitch lower. At one point though, when we meet a roadside oracle, in what proves to be a funny scene, Page presents a character with a Monty Python-style falsetto. His rendition of the “Wildman,” a major figure in the book, is always filled with a fun bluff gusto. The packaging itself features the handsome paperbook art. Each disc does too, and each opens and closes with a musical cue which is handy for people swapping discs. Each disc has 99 files, the idea being it makes for more accurate bookmarking. But if you’re planning on ripping a disc to put on your MP3 player be aware that not all programs make ripping a disc with this many files easy.
Lastly, a quibble. They’ve spelled “Noble” (of an exalted character) as “Nobel” (like the Swedish chemist). This was fixed for the sequel’s cover.
Posted by Jesse Willis
I live and breathe Science Fiction, but like many, I have some trouble defining what that term actually means. Sometimes I use Damon Knight’s definition for it… “Science Fiction is what I point to when I say it.” Sometimes I classify a story as a Fantasy even though it appears to be SF (think Star Wars), often this is because of its flagrant disregard for science. But Fantasy isn’t just the wastebasket under Science Fiction – far from it. I see Fantasy as a branch of SF (though I know other people see SF as a branch of Fantasy). If you visit the site often you also may notice I tend to capitalize the “S” and the “F” – it is even in our website logo – I insisted on that point. We had some debate, Scott and I, about whether the site should just be called SFaudio.com, I argued for the extra F, to represent Fantasy. Poor old Horror, always the ugly sister, was left out of the site name entirely. Sometimes therefore I use the “SF” abbreviation, the logic being, “SF,” other than it being shorter, can also stand for “Speculative Fiction” – which includes Horror (and Fantasy too).
Now, before you say, “Jesse, WTF are you capitalizing all these abstract nouns?” I’ll explain that too… I capitalize the Science Fiction the way many folks capitalize the “H” in “Him” when referring to God. And other than this one I don’t think you’ll find a single post in which I’ve personally abbreviated Science Fiction as “sci-fi.” On that issue, I’m with Harlan Ellison:
“…the hideous neologism ‘sci-fi’–which sounds like crickets fucking–is at the core of this seeming malaise. What is called ‘sci-fi’ is _not_, repeat NOT, science fiction. It is special effects movie/television produced by and for imbeciles. Giant lizards, moronic space battles with spaceships acting as if they were Spads and Fokkers dogfighting in atmosphere, recycled fairy tales, and illiterate appeals to paranoia. They bear as much relation to science fiction of quality (whether film or tv or books or magazines) as Dachau did to a health spa.”
Gotta love Harlan, he doesn’t mince words – he sautés them. But back to the matter at hand… the funny thing, despite my attempt at inclusivity I’ve got standards when it comes to what qualifies as what. SF is what I say it is, but I can’t just point to anything. So, for instance, we don’t talk about mainstream literature here. It isn’t that a lot of it isn’t good – as that’s also true about SF, Fantasy and Horror. The reason mainstream literature doesn’t get the mentioned here is that mostly, even when it is well written, a lot of it still really, really sucks. I mean that quite literally. It sucks. It sucks your time, it sucks your money and it doesn’t give you anything to show for it. Sure you’ve got a kind of satisfaction, some internal catharsis perhaps, but it doesn’t give you anything to challenge your beliefs. This month’s Oprah bestseller is little better than next month’s paperweight, except that a paperweight made of paper is already rather redundant. There’s a reason you’ll find some of these books in the supermarket check-out isle, it is because they are, like candy, something you pick up quite casually. And the fiction I read, and the fiction we tell you about, better not be that god-damned casual!
This all came to mind as I was listening to a non-SF podcast recently…
Philosophy Bites, is a podcast that interviews “top philosophers” in “bite-sized” segments. The hosts are: David Edmonds, a philosopher and writer whose day job is making radio documentaries for the BBC, and Nigel Warburton, another philosopher/writer who teaches and blogs about philosophy. They take their podcasts seriously. A recent guest, Alain de Botton, famous for his decidedly not SF, bestselling book The Consolations Of Philosophy brought up this very topic, turning the everyday experience (for our purposes, mainstream fiction) into matters of deep philosophy |MP3| subscribe to the podcast via this feed:
http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/rss
One alternative to mainstream literature about everyday experience is mainstream historical fiction. Sometimes I read or listen to a historical fiction novel (or should that be Historical Fiction) that I want to talk about on SFFaudio, but can’t because it doesn’t tie into SF, F or H. In cases of extreme delight though I can usually somehow stretch the boundaries of what I normally would consider proper SF to suit my purposes. A post about Crazy Dog Audio Theatre’s Infidel, which is based on true history, for instance, was saved by calling it Horror. The reasoning being that the Horror genre, includes the idea of “moral horror”, horror that comes not from fear for one’s bodily integrity, but fear for one’s beliefs, fear one’s values – the kind of fear you get when you watch true Film Noir, like Chinatown say.
I deem these kinds of tales eminently philosophical. Which ties back into Science Fiction, as SF is, when you get up close and personal to it quite actually Philosophical Fiction.
But then again, one really ought to just has to stick to one’s guns and exclude a lot of stuff too. Stuff like the Hardcore History podcast….
The Hardcore History podcast, produced by Dan Carlin and his increasingly unlikely parter “Ben,” performs auditory miracles of storytelling using absolutely no fiction, or science at all. This is a pure History fan-boy show. There is no reasonable way that a blog about Science Fiction and Fantasy audio can mention this stunningly wonderful bi-monthly (or so) podcast with a straight face. At least not if it wants to pretend to be strictly topical blog. Subscribe via this feed:
http://www.dancarlin.com/dchh.xml
The only way one could post about Hardcore History and even pretend, with any honesty preserved, to be on-topic would be to compare it to an even less related program…
Entitled Opinions (which has just started it’s much anticipated fourth season) is a podcast radio program hosted by Professor Robert Harrison. Harrison teaches in the department of French and Italian and likely has never even read a Science Fiction novel in his life. Therefore I won’t ever mention his podcast here, except for one thing, EQ is a literary talk show that I like. Harrison interviews guests about issues that range from literature and philosophy to politics and sports. I have a feeling that one day, given infinite time, he might talk about SF.
To cap it all off, one feels absolutely flummoxed about a short story like….
To Build A Fire
By Jack London; Read by Betsie Bush
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
A man and his husky, travel through the Klondike in seventy-five below zero weather (Fahrenheit).
This story came to mind after reading another website’s discussion of Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations. The two tales are, essentially, the same ruthless story. That is, in terms of both tales’ focused intent to push naturalism upon the reader’s mind. Except that The Cold Equations is, by every conceivable imagining of the definition, at the very center of Science Fiction. The story has spaceships, planetary colonization, ballistic physics and is set in the future! That surely makes it SF. To Build A Fire has none of these things. It is set in the late 19th century Klondike, is contemporary to when it was written, and it doesn’t have any of the usual SF elements (tech, time travel, etc.). Without any fantastic elements at all can it be SF? Not SF then? Jack London isn’t often considered an SF writer. But, on the other hand it is fiction about science, and the consequences it truly has upon us. Fiction about science? Put another way, that must be SF!
Now, Naturalism as a literary movement, was just developing during the late nineteenth century (when London was writing). Its roots go back to ideas of scientific determinism and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Naturalism contended that human beings are determined by their heredity and the laws of nature and are thus controlled by their environment and their physical makeup rather than by than by appeals to spirituality or even to the power of human reason.
“Natural philosophy,” that’s what science used to be called back before it was called science.
It is my contention then, that “Science Fiction,” and all its relatives, Horror, Fantasy and Noir, (H, F, N) are quite literally philosophical fiction in disguise.
Of course, now it being as the case that I’ve shown in the above good reason as to why SF, and its related capitalized consonants, are all tied into philosophy we ought to forgive a little meta-post like this one, now and again eh?
Posted by Jesse Willis
UPDATE: Hey! Check out this audio interview with Thomas Hibbs (author of a new paperbook about Film Noir entitled Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption). In the interview Hibbs ties Noir and Horror together quite nicely.
