H.G. Wells – Page 22

LibriVox – Ghost Story Collection Volume #006

SFFaudio Online Audio

This collection, number 6 in the LibriVox lineup of Ghost stories, has some non-ghostly tales; there are indeed some very ghostly things that happen in a lot of them but it isn’t a pure collection. I’d judge this as a very fair Fantasy collection made a shade horrific. It’s mostly ghostly. And, the inclusion of three Robert E. Howard yarns will likely make it one of the more popular of LibriVox’s many short story collections thus far released. Most narrators here have good recording conditions, some are raw amateurs, beginners in reading and recording, others are polished amateurs. Overall, very fun listening.

Here’s a bit from the forum the LibriVox thread that captures it all nicely:

“What is a ghost story? M.R. James listed a number of features of the ‘English’ ghost story: the pretence of truth; ‘a pleasing terror’; no gratuitous bloodshed or sex; no ‘explanation of the machinery’; with the setting being ‘those of the writer’s and reader’s own day’. Roughly speaking, this gives the taste of what we’re after, but the setting can be anywhere, of course. To me, the most effective stories have perhaps something of love in them, something of sadness, an other-worldliness, a touch of fear, a shiver of the hair on the back of your neck.”

Ghost Story Collection Volume #006
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
“A collection of ten pieces, read by various readers, about the unreal edges of this world in legend and story; tales of love, death and beyond. If just one story prickles the hair on the back of your neck, or prickles your eyelids with the touch of tears, we will have succeeded.”

Stories included:

Children Of The Moon
By Richard Middleton; Read by Virgil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
I liked the language in this one, and narrator Virgil seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

Ghosts That Have Haunted Me
By John Kendrick Bangs; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
“My scheme of living is based upon being true to myself. You may class me with Baron Munchausen if you choose; I shall not mind so long as I have the consolation of feeling, deep down in my heart, that I am a true realist, and diverge not from the paths of truth as truth manifests itself to me.”

Gods of the North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
A winter war in the mountains of Vanaheim and a bit of gossamer are all that stand between Conan of Cimmeria and a frosty beauty who spurns him. First published in Fantasy Fan, March 1934. Alternate titles include: The Frost Giant’s Daughter, The Frost King’s Daughter.

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf; Read by David Federman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
A quick stream of consciousness tale with an iconic title by an icon of literature.

The Man Who Was Not On The Passenger
By Robert Barr; Read by Anna Simon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
An unaccounted for passenger on a luxury liner is somehow tied into a stranger annual payment given to a widow. A well written, almost modernly styled tale. Anna Simon’s reading is Germanic accented, but not at all displeasing.

No Living Voice
By Thomas Street Millington; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
Written by an English clergyman. Set in Italy. A vacationer with an out-of-order visa discovers some mischief and strange sounds.

The Old Nurse’s Story
By Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell; Read by Jane Greensmith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in 1852, this is an early Victorian ghost story, a novella by the biographer and popularizer of Charlotte Brontë. This is a dramatic tale full of manor intrigue, mysterious rooms and more mysterious screaming. All that and plenty of descriptions of character complexions .

Rattle Of Bones
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in the June 1929 issue of Weird Tales magazine. Solomon Kane, stops at a grim inn of the Black Forest. To survive the night he’ll need fight demonry and witchcraft, and bandits all.

The Red Room
By H.G. Wells; Read by Virgil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
From the 19th comes one of the most copied stories of the modern 20th and 21st centuries. The Red Room illustrates the internal human conflict between rationality and the irrational fear of the unknown. The protagonist spends the night in a haunted room in isolated castle in an effort to debunk the legends surrounding it. The most recent example is the Stephen King’s story “1408” from the audio collection Blood and Smoke.

The Skull In The Stars
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales magazine. The protagonist, Solomon Kane, is a Puritan who must go against his own moral code to defeat a creature of darkness.

Podcast feed:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/ghost-story-collection-volume-006.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Sound Affects to air: “a good horrible story” next Sunday

SFFaudio Online Audio

Jerry Stearns, host of Sound Affects: A Radio Playground, will be airing F. Paul Wilson’s “The Slasher” (which we told you about not so long ago) next Sunday evening at 9:30 on KFAI. Sez Jerry: “It’s not very SF a story, but it is a good horrible story.” Also on offer is a time travel story from the Atlanta Radio Theater Company.

In fact, the next few months on Sound Affects will be quite interesting as it’ll look something like this:

September – Crazy Dog’s “The Last Harbinger” (begins Aug. 31)

October – A War of the Worlds Month (with excerpts from many versions and ending with the 50th Anniversary Production complete)

November – ZBS’s “Dinotopia”

December – ZBS’s “The World Beneath” (the sequel to Dinotopia)

Sound Affects airs on KFAI, 90.3 FM and 106.7 FM, in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
between 9:30 and 10:30 PM on Sundays (Central Time).

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

From the latest LibriVox short story collection (Short Story Collection. Vol 033) comes…

The Man Who Could Work Miracles
By H.G. Wells; Read by Peter-David Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2008
An English skeptic of miracles of the Humean school, suddenly discovers that he can perform them!

Another FREE version of this same story is also available, HERE.

And, be sure to check out our all new H.G. WELLS author page HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE LISTENS Review: War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Review

War of the Worlds
By H.G. Wells

Source:Librivox| Zipped MP3s
Length: 6 hr, 35 min, unabridged
Reader: Rebecca

The book: The basic plot of War of the Worlds was already familiar to me before I read it, though muddled by my hearing a rebroadcast of Orson Welles adaptation. In the book, a giant projectile from Mars lands in south England. Other projectiles follow the first, and soon, Martians in their tripod fighting machines are conquering the human populace. Wells thrusts the reader into the terror and confusion of war by narrating an eyewitness account of battles and the civilian panic. With the hindsight of history, we can recognize that Wells accurately predicted the horror of World War I gas attacks, the ruined landscape of the Blitz, and the dazed fear of 9/11.

The key to understanding War of the Worlds is not in Wells predicting the future, but in his description of his present. In 1898, the British Empire was at the height of its power, with colonies spanning the globe. The Victorians placed great hope in ideals like progress, science, and eugenics to make their lives better. Wells introduces into this world aliens who are more scientifically advanced and more highly evolved for using technology. He then flips the table on the complacent British by having these aliens conquer them, just as they had conquered others. I wonder: If Wells were alive today, what would he make his aliens look like and what would they do to our world?

Rating: 7 / 10

The reader: Although the name listed is Rebecca, the voice sounds rather masculine. Whatever the case may be, the refined English accent is well-suited to the character of the book’s narrator-protagonist. The other character’s voices are equally enjoyable, with my favorite being the artilleryman. The reader makes a few stumbles and there are some faint background sounds, but not anywhere near enough to interfere with this altogether wonderful reading.

Note: This book is still under copyright in the UK and EU, so the version offered here should not be downloaded by users in those countries.

Posted by Seth

CBC Radio One: Writers And Company – Sir Arthur C. Clarke

SFFaudio Online Audio

On March 31st CBC Radio One’s Writers And Company aired an interview, conducted in November 2000, with Arthur C. Clarke. I somehow missed this episode in the podcast feed (sorry folks). Unfortunately it is no longer in the podcast feed either. Fortunately it is still online. Have a listen |MP3|!

This may be the very best of the many Arthur C. Clarke interviews out there. Clarke talks his youth, Science Fiction, science, Astounding magazine, Meccano, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Eric Frank Russel, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and tons more. Kudos to the CBC and Eleanor Wachtel, as other people have noted, she’ truly is “the best arts interviewer in the business.”

Posted by Jesse Willis

L.A. Theatre Works podcast: The War Of The Worlds by the Star Trek alumni

SFFaudio Online Audio

L.A. Theatre Works podcast has just released a production of The War Of The Worlds with Leonard Nimoy. They received a $253,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The idea behind the grant is to “enhance people’s lives by providing a better understanding, through media and the arts, of the increasingly scientific and technological environment in which we live.”

“War of the Worlds” by Adapted by Howard Koch from the novel by H.G. Wells

Starring: Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Meagan Fay, Jerry Hardin, Dwight Schultz, Armin Shimerman, Tom Virtue, and John de Lancie. Includes an interview with Dr. David Stevenson, professor of Planetary Science at CalTech.

No direct MP3 links available (that’s a mistake LATW) but there are two podcast feeds for this show:

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510190

http://www.scpr.org/programs/latw/podcast.php

Or, if you have iTunes, you can get both individual episodes:

|PART 1|PART 2|

[Thanks Esther!]

Posted by Jesse Willis