horror – Page 64

Review of At the Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Review

Dark Adventure Radio Theater: At the Mountains of Madness
Adapted by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman from H.P. Lovecraft’s original novel
1 CD – 75 minutes
Publisher: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
Published: 2006
Themes: / Science Fiction / Horror / Elder Things / Antarctica / Cthulhu Mythos /

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society brought us a film last time, the 47 minute long The Call of Cthulhu. That film gained acclaim for adapting a renowned H.P. Lovecraft story into a silent-film, black and white style that was the type of films that Lovecraft watched in the 1920s. This time they have given us another classic in the form of a radio broadcast of At the Mountains of Madness in the style of the 1930s. This is brilliant work and every Lovecraft fan should buy the CD and enjoy it.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is one of the premiere horror writers of the Twentieth Century. His dense prose, written in a style a century out of date, told stories of cosmic horror in which people often lost their sanity. At the Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft’s longest work, just topping 40,000 words, which makes it a novel, just barely. It is his favorite of mine because of the sense of wonder it evokes. Written in 1931, his normal publisher, Weird Tales, rejected it, and five years passed before Astounding Stories published the novel. The tale describes an expedition from Miskatonic University to the Antarctica which finds the ruins of an ancient civilization and flees awful horrors that should remain undisturbed.

This radio adaptation is eerily true to the original, even though the story had to be truncated to fit the radio form. The main plot points are all included, the flavor of Lovecraft’s writing is included with direct quotes from the original, and the overall effect of reading the original is maintained. They even used the word “cyclopean” twice, always my favorite Lovecraft adjective, along with “singular.” The faux radio broadcast is authentic in even including advertisements by the sponsor, a cigarette manufacturer, Fleurs-de-Lys. Three extra items are included with the CD: a newspaper clipping about the expedition, two reproductions of photographs taken by the expedition, and a reproduction from an expedition sketchbook.

Rumors from Hollywood whisper that Guillermo del Toro (director of Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the upcoming The Hobbit) is also making a movie of our story. Sean Branney and Andrew Leman have set the standard, albeit in a different medium, that del Toro must live up to.

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has also just released another radio drama, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Dunwich Horror.

Posted by Eric Swedin

Wormwood Season 2 – Crossroads

SFFaudio Online Audio

Wormwood Season 2 is active and well underway!!!

So what’s Wormwood? And why are you so excited about it?

Well, Wormwood is one of the coolest audio dramas I’ve ever heard. It features a large cast of characters who reside in a small town called “Wormwood” – this is the kind of place H.P. Lovecraft would have lived in if he’d moved to California. Last season, the mysterious Xander Crowe, who sports a mysteriously withered hand, arrived in town chasing after a vision he had of a drowned woman. He closed in on the mystery near the season finale, but that only brought many new questions – all scary.

Some quick advice before listening:

1. Be sure to put on your brown trousers.
2. Listen only during daylight hours.
3. Don’t listen alone!

The new season is subtitled “Crossroads,” here’s the teaser |MP3| and here are the first 6 episodes:

Season 2 Episode 1 |MP3| One Month Later
Season 2 Episode 2 |MP3| The Rescue
Season 2 Episode 3 |MP3| The Missing Month (part 1)
Season 2 Episode 4 |MP3| Thinning (part 1)
Season 2 Episode 5 |MP3| A Sentimental Nature
Season 2 Episode 6 |MP3| Ghosthunters Of Wormwood

Click HERE to subscribe via iTunes, or plop this feed into any podcatcher:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/WormwoodMystery

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Fangland by John Marks

SFFaudio Review

Fangland
By John Marks; Read by Ellen Archer and others
10 CDs – Approx. 12.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 1400103592
Themes: / Horror / Fantasy / Vampires / Romania / New York / Television /

In the annals of business trips gone horribly wrong, Evangeline Harker’s journey to Romania on behalf of her employer, the popular television newsmagazine The Hour, deserves pride of place. Sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu, she has found the true nature of Torgu’s activities to be far more monstrous than anything her young journalist’s mind could have imagined. The fact that her employer clearly won’t get the segment it was hoping for is soon the very least of her concerns.

Authors are supposed to write what they know. If John Marks is writing what he knows there’s one hell of a story that 60 Minutes never aired. As a former producer for that show Marks brings what feels like a pure authenticity to all the scenes revolving around the New York office politics and what it takes to make a show like 60 Minutes. Those office characters really do feel like those craggy faced reporters we’ve seen on 60 Minutes all these decades. And if for nothing nothing else, this makes Fangland a unique experience.

The plot should be very familiar to most, it’s a fairly faithful retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Differences being that Fangland is set in the modern day, a post-9/11 New York and a post-Soviet Romania. Like the original novel Fangland is told in epistolary form. That is, its chapters are entire emails, letters or notes, written by witnesses recalling recent events. But, at the novels culmination Marks breaks out of letter writing. The transition isn’t too jarring. Making the Jonathan Harker character female adds a new flavor to the flow. I can’t say as how the paperbook was received, but with this audio version, we get four terrific readers. This is a well selected cast of familiar Tantor voices. Ellen Archer predominates, as she voices Evangeline. She’s sympathetic, a little naive, but a confident modern woman confronted by a terror from Transylvania’s ancient past. Todd McLaren, Michael Prichard, and Simon Vance then take turns playing her ~~60 Minutes~~ The Hour producers, other on-air reporters, a concerned father, the fiance and more. The novel runs a little too long, mostly in the middle. In terms of pay-offs though, the only thing this novel didn’t deliver on was an Andy Rooney (or equivilent) column at the end. I kept expecting Andy to show up and start telling us what bugs him about ‘being undead’ or some such.

This is not a classic, but if you dig vampires, Stoker’s Dracula, or Horror fiction that doesn’t come out of a modern horror tradition, you’ll quite dig Fangland. I’d stake my reputation in it.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre Vol. 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Review

Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre – Vol. 1 SFFaudio Essential
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase.com
Published: March 2008
ISBN: 0977845303
Themes: / Horror / Revenge / Cats / Noir / Wine /

Three tales from the original master of horror fiction, Edgar Allan Poe! Included in this collection are “The Raven”, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask Of Amontillado.”

Three classic tales. These stories are so familiar as to be almost genetic. They are the foundation for whole modern genres. Noir, Crime and Horror fiction were sired by Poe. Hear three of his finest in this, their finest form.

“The Raven” follows the curious events in one evening of unnamed brooding narrator. Whilst reading a tome of “forgotten lore” he hears a knocking on his door. What follows is a rhymed narrative rumination on the portentous meaning of the feathered visitor’s single utterance. Nevermore will you need to wait for another version. This one’s definitive.

“The Black Cat” is a first person account of the alcoholic events leading an animal lover to the depths of depravity and beyond into horror. This tale seems to encapsulate the entire fevered imaginings of the American temperance movement. Its supernatural elements are minor compared to its un-romantic view of an unrestricted humanity stripped of the superego. In other words, it’s a killer story.

“The Cask Of Amontillado” is a strong tale of cold, cavernous revenge served with a very dry sherry, one brick at a time. This is one of Poe’s most enigmatic works. What precisely the revenge is for, or if there indeed was any real vengence required (despite the narrator’s claim) has haunted scholars. However you interpret it, it does push all the “great horror story” buttons in you.

Narrator Wayne June assures us that he’s done his research on this new series of definitive Edgar Allan Poe readings, and in listening you’ll absolutely have to agree. Place names and pronunciations are perfect – accents and action are exact. You can often tell when a narrator is bluffing it, surfing through the sentences blindly. That absolutely doesn’t happen here. In Poe’s most famous narrative poem The Raven, for instance, there’s nary a line that doesn’t contain an archaic word that’d flummox. June never falters. He’s got them all sussed. The Black Cat too, has never sounded better. June captures the sympathetic first person narrative and then drives home the barbarity flawlessly. Light accents make “The Cask Of Amontillado”, the most difficult of the three tales here, flow like an old vintage newly discovered. There are already many versions of these three classics available on audio, but I’d venture not a single one could come even close to match any of these three. Wayne June’s voice is perfectly matched to the melancholic material. As was the case with his superlative Lovecraft recordings, nobody else’s voice is more more morbidly macabre than is Wayne June’s. This is essential listening.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox’s Horror Story Collection 004

SFFaudio Online Audio

Just added to the ever expanding LibriVox catalogue…

Horror Story Collection 004
By Various; Read by various narrators
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 9th, 2008
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams.

The Dream
By Ivan Turgenev; Read by Pete Williams
1 |MP3| – Approx. 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Ghoul’s Accountant
By Stephen Crane; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf; Read by Lauren Herzog
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 1)
By Anonymous; Read by Bobby Marcelino
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Man-Tiger (version 2)
By Anonymous; Read by Sy
1 |MP3| – Approx. 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Napoleon And The Spectre
By Charlotte Bronte; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

One Summer Night
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Paul Curran
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Street
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Glen Hallstrom
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Test of Courage
By C.W. Leadbeater; Read by SWES
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A Wedding Chest
By Vernon Lee; Read by Tysto
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/horror-story-collection-004.xml

My thoughts on this collection: Other than some bad pronunciations by narrator Pete Williams (who sounds a lot like Alex Wilson), Ivan Turgenev’s The Dream makes for a solid listen. It’s quite dreamlike and seems inspired by Turgenev’s own life. Beirce’s One Summer Night sounds like it would have been a great story if the setup narrator Paul Curran has had been tweaked a bit (there’s something wrong with the sound, it’s both too bassy and too whistly at the same time). Lovecraft’s The Street, narrated by Glenn Halstrom (AKA Smokestack Jones) is a good reading, but their still something wrong with his setup too (a persistent hiss). SWES’s narration of A Test Of Courage by C.W. Leadbeater, on the other hand is clear and completely noise free – but is way too fast! Tysto, who reads Vernon Lee’s A Wedding Chest, also has a good setup. His reading is a tad off. I’m not sure what the problem is, but the word that springs to mind is “cadence.”

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – Mike Resnick, Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently plopped into the SFFaudio Audible Account…

Starship: Mutiny, Book 1
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 7 Hours and 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
The date is 1966 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race – but not yet dominated by it – finds itself in an all-out war. They stand against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man’s growing military and economic power. The main battles are taking place in the Spiral Arm and toward the Core. But far out on the Rim, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of three ships charged with protecting the Phoenix Cluster – a group of 73 inhabited worlds. Old, battered, some of its weapon systems outmoded, the Teddy R. is a ship that would have been decommissioned years ago if weren’t for the war. Its crew is composed of retreads, discipline cases, and a few raw recruits. But a new officer has been transferred to the Teddy R. His name is Wilson Cole, and he comes with a reputation for heroics and disobedience. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

Starship: Pirate, Book 2
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. There, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules. But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole’s principles limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players: the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, the enigmatic alien fence David Copperfield, and the fearsome alien pirate known as the Hammerhead Shark.

Starship: Mercenary, Book 3
By Mike Resnick; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 8 hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: April 2008
Military discipline and honor have been a poor match for Capt. Wilson Cole’s life of pillaging and plundering. Seeking a better way of life, the Teddy R. has become a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it’s evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way, they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters. The life of a mercenary is not always predictable. Circumstance now pits Cole and the Teddy R. against the former Pirate Queen, Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

And received by mail from Audio Book Case…

Into That Darkness Peering: Nightmarish Tales Of The Macabre Volume II
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Wayne June
1 CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioBookCase
Published: June 2008
Includes four tales of the supernatural, shock and horror:
The Conqueror Worm, The Tell Tale Heart, The Imp Of The Perverse and Hop Frog

Posted by Jesse Willis