Wow! This is the first original to YouTube audiobook I’ve ever heard that I’ve actually really liked! Talkers, by David Longhorn, is a very high quality short story, apparently inspired by In The Abyss by H.G. Wells and “many stories about the Deep Ones” by H.P. Lovecraft.
First published in the journal of A Ghostly Company.
It’s only got 7 views. We must fix that.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #192 – Jesse, Jenny, and Professor Eric S. Rabkin discuss the Tantor Media audiobook of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Talked about on today’s show:
written in 1921, is it a ‘Russian’ novel?, H.G. Wells, Synchronicity and Arthur Koestler, Industrialism, the struggle to be a good citizen, the Guardians and Plato’s Republic, the numbers in character names (ah hah!), lips and poet Pushkin, don’t eat the prolefeed, sexual hour, review of We by George Orwell, character development, the Integral ship name, more on numbers in names, biblical references?, why it pays to have Eric, THX 1138 (trailer), Zilboorg vs Ginsburg translation, mathematics, Randall and Brown translations, imaginary numbers, the green wall and glass, Logan’s Run and the outside, the number ’40’, Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, is the novel hopeful at the end?, lying, Caesar and hair, The Space Merchants, how science fiction and We get respect, ranking We among dystopian fiction, Jenny is Ms. Dystopia, eutopias and outopias and autopias, Childhood’s End, this podcast is perfect, Scriabin piano music is passionate, ayre (music)
Posted by Tamahome
The SFFaudio Podcast #189 – Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, and Tim Prasil talk about the six episode anthology series Marvellous Boxes, recorded and podcast by Decoder Ring Theatre. But first we play an episode, Facing Cydonia.
Talked about on today’s show:
The Magic Of The Movies, The Crasher, horror, stage play (post Meridian Radio Players), Thinking In Trinary, Decoder Ring Theatre, Gregg Taylor, the Cobol Club, OTR, radio commercials, flash fiction, CBC, The Age Of Persuasion, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”, Plotting For Perfection (the short story), stage play, the Vera Van Slyke stories, occult detectives, Fitz-James O’Brien, audio dramatizations of the Vera Van Slyke stories, Black Jack Justice, The Red Panda Adventures, why be locked into the 1/2 hour audio drama format?, A Demon Once Removed, a one set one act play, Nicole (the peripheral character with a personality), Chekhov’s Gun, an alternate history, “Gregg Taylor need not be played by Gregg Taylor”, Orson Welles, history, Frozen Words Thawed, Remembering The Martians, an all black cast of MacBeth, The War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells, The Tempest (as an alien contact story), William Shakespeare, a controversy over the character names in Facing Cydonia, Jenny will sing us a song, the boxes, “are there more boxes in you?”, ghosts, the button, the wax cylinder recorder, the Piltdown Man hoax, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an authentic hoax, Conan Doyle is the most gullible, the Cottingley Fairies, FairyTale: A True Story, Harry Houdini, Terry Jones, Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, the EULA on wax cylinders, Thomas Edison, the most science-fictiony story, Plotting For Perfection, a femme fatale story without the femme fatale, “talk about your retro-causality”, “a box with a hole in it”, Andrea Lyons?, Scene Of The Crime, Remembering The Martians, racism, difference, tolerance, Doctor Who – The Power Of Three, fish people, are the Martians really dead?, binary fission, fruitful names, Jacob, Jason, Easter eggs, Finbar, The Silver Tongued Devil, The Sonic Society, Roger Gregg, it’s a pseudo-documentary, a joke/haiku, “conclusions should be drawn with a pencil not a pen”, Aliens Are Like Mirages, “it’s an indictment I’m just not sure what it’s an indictment of”, “if we had this power would we use it?”, the curiousness of the chaplaincy, prequels are for readers not writers, the miracle, the yup, human history in a nutshell, To Serve Man, narrative structure, why is X-Minus One a good name?, Marvellous Boxes as a name doesn’t have a super-punch, steampunky, “steamy contraptions”, Murdoch Mysteries (CBC TV), “a little less steam and a little more electricity”, Netflix in Canada sucks, Weeds, Walk Off The Earth.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #185 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Christine A. Miller (of Escape-Suspense.com) talk about the two CBS radio drama anthology series, Escape and Suspense. But first we play two shows: From the series Escape – Treasure, Inc., and from Suspense – Always Room At The Top.
Talked about on today’s show:
Escape-Suspense.com, adapted scripts vs. original scripts, Escape vs. Suspense, John and Gwen Bagney, layer upon layer of double-cross, the hopeless ending, what is Clive’s motivation?, a femme fatale, exotic locales, these shows still work 50+ years on, Christine is an episode historian (not a radio historian), Pursuit, Romance, are you looking for Three Skeleton Key?, the use of radio drama in middle schools, The Most Dangerous Game, Archive.org, Edgar Allan Poe, The Hitchhiker, Lucille Fletcher, the Mercury Theatre, Sorry, Wrong Number, running out of shows, San Francisco, the Field Trip app, a lonely workplace is great for radio drama, “don’t think about it at all, just do it”, bad episodes, the movie star connection, Vincent Price, Lux Radio Theater, anthology series, an anthology mystery vs. Law & Order, the format, killing characters, ripped from the headlines, Earth Abides (was done as a two part adaptation), George R. Stewart, The Scarlet Plague, Jack London, San Fransisco as a setting, Man Alive, the Ferry Building, is Always Room At The Top set in New York?, La Mirada, “it could only happen in the world of Suspense?”, Jack Webb, Wally Maher, Anne Baxter, pacing like The Front Page, “business workplace episodes”, mistreated employee episodes, reaching for the 47%, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce), remakes remakes remakes, appointment radio, The Country Of The Blind (H.G. Wells), Favorite Story, Plunder Of The Sun (David F. Dodge), Hard Case Crime, Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Rim Of Terror, The Killer Mine (Hammond Innes), “Nancy Drew with adults”, those impossible to get books, The Quick And The Dead by Vincent Starrett (Arkham House), Cornell Woolrich.
Posted by Jesse Willis
I made this desktop wallpaper for my new computer’s desktop – that’s what I did yesterday instead of actually unpacking and setting up the computer itself. Click through to get the full size version. The images were drawn by Neil Austin for issues of Famous Fantastic Mysteries from 1947 to 1950.
Pictured are H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Robert W. Chambers, Sydney Fowler Wright, Algernon Blackwood, H.G. Wells, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Machen, M.P. Shiel, John Taine, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Olaf Stapledon, and M.R. James.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Everett F. Bleiler, in Science Fiction, The Early Years, described The Diamond Maker as a tale of “science fiction by implication” – but there’s another way of looking at it too. You could argue that it’s just the story of an unsuccessful heel grifter, with a tall tale and a gaffed prop, who puts on the Send.
I like it either way.
The Diamond Maker
By H.G. Wells; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 25, 2008
First published in the Pall Mall Budget, August 16, 1894.
The Diamond Maker
By H.G. Wells; Read by Sean Puckett
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Voices In The Dark
Published: 2004/2005
After a long day’s work, our narrator meets a beggar while contemplating the peacefulness of the river embankment. First published in the Pall Mall Budget, August 16, 1894.
Here’s a |PDF| made from the story’s appearance in Science Wonder Stories, June 1929.
And here’s a short film noir style adaptation:
The Diamond Maker from Sean Phillips on Vimeo.
Posted by Jesse Willis