Tag: humor

LibriVox: No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber

SFFaudio Online Audio

No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber

It took me two attempts to get into this Fritz Leiber audiobook. Part of the issue was that the first person protagonist is female and the audiobook’s narrator is male. Phil Chenevert, the narrator, is a talented voice actor but he still sounded male. This bothered me all the way up to chapter four when I had my growning indignity balloon deflated by this choice paragraph:

I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, “Come to my woman’s breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.” Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a little more often, and girls play boys too.

Despite my loss of that criticism, I am still not fully satisfied with the story. Like The Big Time |READ OUR REVIEW| before it, No Great Magic is well written fluff – with not even the shape of a plot beginning until the very end.

It may just be that No Great Magic, and perhaps a good deal of other time travel related SF, are of a kind of “cozy” Science Fiction story that I just don’t fully embrace.

Still, the first person narration by the amnesiac heroine and Chenevert’s narrative skill make No Great Magic worth checking out – and perhaps your tastes and my tastes will differ.

Chenevert, incidentally, put it this way in a LibriVox forum post:

“I hope you have been involved in the theater somewhere in your past or present because this story smells heavily of greasepaint.”

LibriVoxNo Great Magic
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Phil Chenevert
8 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 27, 2012
|ETEXT|
They were a traveling group of Shakespearean players; perfectly harmless, right? wrong. For one thing, why did they have spacemen costumes in their wardrobes,right next to caveman ones? Why was the girl in charge of backstage suffering from amnesia and agoraphobia? No Great Magic is needed to perform the plays they put on, but sometimes great science. No matter where, or when. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1963.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/6656

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Here’s a |PDF| with the original illustrations from Galaxy.

Illustrations by Nodel:

No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel
No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel
No Great Magic - illustrated by Nodel

[Thanks also to DaveC]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Elvenquest AUDIO DRAMA

SFFaudio Review

Elvenquest featuring Stephen Mangan with Darren Boyd, Sophie Winkleman, Alistair McGowan, and Kevin EldonElvenquest
Written by: Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto
Cast: Stephen Mangan, Alistair McGowan, Sophie Winkleman, Darren Boyd, Kevin Eldon, Dave Lamb. Also featuring Chris Pavlo, Carrie Quinlan, Lizzy Watts, and Clare Willie.
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Released: 3 August 2009
Publisher: AudioGO

Synopsis: Sam is a fantasy novelist who is whisked off to a Tolkien-style parallel universe by a noble elf, a sexy warrior princess, and a feisty dwarf called Dean. Why? Because Sam’s dog is the Chosen One who is destined to save “Lower Earth” from the evil Lord Darkness.

Three words: Fun. Fun. Fun.

A smartly written script and a great cast make for a wonderfully hilarious send-up of the fantasy quest story and of fantasy novels in general.

Writers Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto hit all the right notes: the Chosen One, a prophecy, elves, dwarves, warrior maidens, demons, goblins, trolls, unicorns, deadly traps and puzzles, and colonic irrigations, to name a few. Imagine Lord of the Rings as written by Douglas Adams, Mel Brooks, and the Monty Python troupe and you get the picture.

Most importantly–the cast. The cast, I think, really nails the script with excellent performances and crackerjack comic timing.

Stephen Mangan as Sam Porter seems to be, at times, channeling Simon Jones as Arthur Dent and it works. Sam, like Arthur, is out of his depth in Lower Earth and is simply trying to fit in.

Alistair McGowan plays Lord Darkness like a mixture of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves and Rowan Atkinson’s Edmund Blackadder. He’s even got a Blackadder-like delivery and intonation.

Vidar the Elf Lord isn’t the brightest crayon in the box but makes up for it by being gung-ho and bombastic and Darren Boyd captures that beautifully. He sounds like he’s having too much fun declaiming and waxing rhapsodic.

Dave Lamb, as Amis the Dog/the Chosen One, is canine exuberance personified. Sophie Winkleman is superb as Penthiselea the Warrior Princess, lending the right touch of kick-ass chick with a sword, as well as being the voice of grounded reason for the others and, in many cases, the straight man–er, woman.

As Dean the Dwarf and Kreech the evil sidekick, Kevin Eldon manages to portray seemingly polar opposite characters who happen to share a “love” for violence. Dean wants to dash into battle at every opportunity while Kreech wants to unleash the goblin hordes on the questers.

The one thing that irked me while listening was the laugh track. I didn’t think it needed to be there and, at first, was distracting. But I got used to it enough that it “faded” into the background.

According to this site, the show was recorded in front of a live audience. Explains the track.

But I still think it’s unnecessary.

Other than that, this is a top-of-the-line production and I highly recommend it. Especially if you love comedy and fantasy. And comedic fantasy.

Posted by Abner Senires

The Dog And The Horse by Voltaire

Aural Noir: Online Audio

One of the earliest detectives in history, or at least the history of literature, is Zadig. Zadig is the main character of Voltaire’s philosophical novel Zadig; Or The Book Of Fate – An Oriental History. I stumbled across it’s existence while reading an old issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in which one chapter was featured under the title The Dog And The Horse. The brief editorial introduction, and some further researches on my own, assert that Zadig in this chapter may have been the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s C. August Dupin!

I can sort of see it too, for The Dog And The Horse shows a kind of giant first step in an evolutionary process of the detective – seeing his marriage turn sour Zadig turns to the study of nature for his joy. A kind of passionate interest in the world is necessary for both the scientific detective and the more Sherlockian sort of detective.

The story is damn funny too.

LibriVoxThe Dog And The Horse
By Voltaire; Read by Lucy Burgoyne
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 31, 2008
First published in 1747.

|ETEXT|
|PDF|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Blackstone Audio: Romance by Chuck Palahniuk FREE AUDIOBOOK DOWNLOAD

SFFaudio Online Audio

Blackstone AudiobooksAvailable either as and MP3 or M4B download, Blackstone Audio is offering a FREE download of Romance by Chuck Palahniuk. Sez the Blackstone Blog:

We’ve teamed up with New York Times-bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk to offer a free audio download of his short story “Romance,” read by Chuck himself and available in audio exclusively from Blackstone. Originally published in Playboy magazine, “Romance” is a twisted love story like only Chuck could tell.

You’ll need to give your name and your email address to get a link to the 22 minute short story.

I just listened to it. Its pretty funny, really sad, and horrifically frightening!

Blackstone Audio - Romance by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Online Audio

I posted last about Philip K. Dick’s shortest short story back in 2010. I’m reposting it because I’ve made a three page |PDF| to go with it (made from it’s first publication, Science Fiction Stories).

The Eyes Have It, is just a simple story about a literal man and the ridiculous alien invasion he imagines. It’s a silly little piece of fluff. A mere lighthearted thought experiment. Just a fun little story of no real account or import. In fact it’s barely …. wait one second … could it … ? …. what if … ? … HEY! That’s that just what they want you to think!!!

LIBRIVOX - The Eyes Have It by Philip K. DickThe Eyes Have It
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 20, 2010
|ETEXT|
A little whimsy, now and then, makes for good balance. Theoretically, you could find this type of humor anywhere. But only a topflight science-fictionist, we thought, could have written this story, in just this way…. First published in 1953 in Science Fiction Stories #1.

Posted by Jesse Willis