Check out this freshly scanned batch of audiobooks from Blackstone Audio, Brilliance Audio, and Macmilian Audio. Personally I’m most excited about the two Dick titles (despite the terrible covers) and The Lost World in part because how great the cover is! I can highly recommend Immortality, Inc as we talked about it on SFFaudio Podcast #144 – sadly its boring cover belies the exiting contents and the terrific narration that lies beneath it.
MP3 – that’s pretty much the best kind of auidobook format. It’ll work on any device, is convertible to any other format, and is completely DRM free. Tantor Media has begun offering them!
There are now more than 1,000 downloadable titles available to choose from.
Use Code: bogo8
Code expires: October 30, 2011
And, here’s the November 2011 Tantor catalogue |PDF| which includes a biography of Nikola Tesla, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge (George Berkeley) and a new novel by Jack McDevitt!
WATCH OUT FOR THE FALSE ENDINGS (mostly attributable to Luke)
Talked about on today’s show:
Role playing game names, “Tom And His Friends” Dungeons And Dragons comedy (aka Farador), SFFaudio Challenge #2, Rebels Of The Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay, Mars, martian rebels, Podiobooks.com, Cossmass Productions, Mark Douglas Nelson, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, the least interesting vs. the least fitting, I’m Dreaming Of A Black Christmas by Lewis Black, Christmas = Fantasy?, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Suck It, Wonder Woman |READ OUR REVIEW|, Star Wars, what makes Star Wars Science Fiction is a sense-of-wonder?, Star Trek, METAtropolis: Cascadia, Star Trek The Next Generation narrators vs. Battlestar Galactica narrators, Wil Wheaton as a narrator, Dove Audio, Levar Burton as a narrator, liking Star Trek for all the wrong reasons, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, assimilation is a neat idea, “who the hell are the Borg?”, The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Unincorporated War, “is there true Science Fiction to be found in sequels?”, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Peter F. Hamilton’s The Void Trilogy, Blackout by Connie Willis, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis |READ OUR REVIEW|, Firewatch, dragging the story out, Whiteout by Connie Willis, World War II, Katherine Kellgren as a narrator, Jenny Sterlin as a narrator, Recorded Books, Brilliance Audio, Audible.com, Amazon.com, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, Deep Six by Jack McDevitt, introductions to audiobooks, the introduction as an apology for the book, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, H.G. Wells, The First Men In The Moon, Around The Moon, Jules Verne, continuing characters rather than continuing series, Sherlock Holmes, Khyber Pass vs. Reichenbach Falls, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley Of Fear, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series, does reading a series defeat the hope of being surprised? Priest Kings Of Gor by John Norman, A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin |READ OUR REVIEW|, fun vs. funny, crime and adventure vs. ideas, A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bill The Galactic Hero, Slippery Jim DiGriz, The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge, This Immortal by Roger Zelazny, The Speed Of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, Books On Tape, Grover Gardner, Gregg has a grumbly voice, The Space Dog Podcast, The Science Fiction Oral History Association, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Cordwainer Smith, Scott Westerfeld, Ben Bova, Luke’s next podcast project, NaNoWriMo, what podcast schedule should you have?, Robert Silverberg AUDIOBOOKS are coming from Wonder Audio, the old stuff vs. the new stuff, Jay Snyder as a narrator, a Science Fiction story that has little SF content, autism, Charly, Understand by Ted Chiang, Flowers For Algernon, interacting with the world, I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, psychopathy, an unreliable first person narrator, young Dexter, Asperger syndrome, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a detached (but reliable) narrator, the two audiobook versions of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, the Baroque Cycle, Anathem, John Allen Nelson as a narrator, Phat Fiction, The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, The Towers Of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, walking around central park as a retired person as my new career, who listens to audiobooks?, working the unworked niche, they really like Gregg’s voice!, no RSS-feed = soooo sad, Sam This Is You by Murray Leinster, Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett, The World That Couldn’t Be Clifford D. Simak, The Idiot by John Kendrick Bangs, The Hate Disease, Asteroid Of Fear, Industrial Revolution by Poul Anderson, A Horse’s Tale by Mark Twain, anthropomorphic fiction, A Dog’s Tale by Mark Twain, Gregg has bugles lying around, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Thought You Were Dead by Terry Griggs, Iambik Audio‘s upcoming Science Fiction audiobooks, LibriVox, working with small press publishers, Extract From Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven, Blackstone Audio, The Many Colored Land by Julian May, Bernadette Dunne as a narrator, time travel, The Pliocene Epoch, sequel and prequel fatigue, flooding the Mediterranean, Blake’s 7: Zen : Escape Veloctiy is a Science Fictiony audio drama series, Firesign Theatre? (he means Seeing Ear Theatre), The Moon Moth based on the story by Jack Vance, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, Mistborn, Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, Finch by Jeff Vandermere, Flood by Stephen Baxter, thematic exploration vs. bad writing, GoodReads.com, Eifelheim by Michael Flynn |READ OUR REVIEW|, Luke’s books should be audiobooks, The Fifth Annual SFFaudio Challenge, all the cool Science Fiction ideas in Luke’s books, Gregg Margarite is a secret author with a secret pseudonym, Eric Arthur Blair, the publishing industry headache is intolerable to many, good writers + savvy marketers = sales success?, Redbelt, David Mamet, drowning in an ocean full of crap, the Jesse Willis bump?, catering to the listeners (or readers) desires vs. publishers desires, Pogoplug, Out Of The Dark by David Weber, artificial robots vs. natural robots, What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, art and techne, does evolution have goals?, the Cool Tools blog, eyes vs. I, natural selection, zero-point energy, the Cat in Red Dwarf was pulled to the fish dispensing vending machine, if you won’t give me eyes at least give me bilateral symmetry, goals vs. patterns or positions, starfish vs. Inuit, technology is a function of evolution, Luke re-writes The War Of The Worlds in under 20 minutes, red weed and green mist, stomach-less martians, “the final final part” and the musical version, flipping over the narrative is fun, Ender’s Game vs. Ender’s Shadow, what do the martians have against doors?, keeping the martian cannon canon, The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo by Adam Roberts.
When John Joseph Adams announced that he’d be editing a new online science fiction magazine, I had high hopes. The magazine, he said, would focus on the kind of stories I like best: science fiction. A mix of originals and reprints, and some non-fiction too. Yeah, baby!
What I didn’t expect was that Lightspeed Magazine would also be a podcast. Twice a month, Lightspeed Magazine is going to publish audio stories. And these are high quality, folks – Stefan Rudnicki and his Skyboat Road crew are producing.
The first two stories of the first issue are online now. The first story, “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You In Reno” by Vylar Kaftan is provided on audio by Escape Pod (EP 243), with a great reading by Mur Lafferty. (I’m not sure if the connection with Escape Pod is a one-shot promotion thing, or if it will continue.) The story is an intriguing look at a relationship affected by relativistic space travel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The second, posted just yesterday, is a new story by Jack McDevitt: “The Cassandra Project”. Stefan Rudnicki narrates the audio version, and it’s fabulous. As the United States prepares for a return trip to the Moon, a photograph of a far-side crater comes to light, taken in 1968 by a Russian spacecraft, that shows a structure near the rim. Later photographs taken by American spacecraft show no such thing. McDevitt unravels the puzzle in satisfactory ooh-wow fashion.
Lightspeed Magazine is a “new online science fiction magazine published by the award-winning independent press Prime Books” – It’s first issue launches June 1, 2010.
Lightspeed is set to run a mix of straight up Science Fiction and science articles. But, most exciting of all, was this bit from the press release:
We are also pleased to announce a new member of the Lightspeed team: award-winning audiobook producer Stefan Rudnicki, who will be producing the Lightspeed Magazine story podcast.
Stefan Rudnicki is an independent director, producer, narrator, and publisher of audiobooks. He has received more than a dozen Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association, a Ray Bradbury Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a GRAMMY Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for The Children’s Shakespeare. Outside of the audiobook industry, he’s probably best known for the dozen books he’s written or edited, from actor’s resource anthologies to a best-selling adaptation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He is also president of Skyboat Road Company, Inc., the most respected independent audio production team on the West Coast.
Lightspeed will adapt two of its four stories each month to podcast format. Issue one’s podcasts are “The Cassandra Project” by Jack McDevitt and “Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn.
As a special feature of the debut issue, in conjunction with the popular podcasts Escape Pod and Hugo Award nominee Starship Sofa, Lightspeed will present two bonus podcasts: “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” by Vylar Kaftan will appear on Escape Pod on June 1 and “Cats in Victory” by David Barr Kirtley will appear on Starship Sofa on June 15.
Here is Lightspeed‘s complete posting schedule for the June 2010 issue:
June 1:
Fiction: “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” by Vylar Kaftan
Author Spotlight: Vylar Kaftan
Podcast: “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” by Vylar Kaftan (on Escape Pod)
Editorial by John Joseph Adams
June 3:
Nonfiction: “Is There Anybody Out There That Wants to Go Fast” by Mike Brotherton
June 8:
Fiction: “The Cassandra Project” by Jack McDevitt
Author Spotlight: Jack McDevitt
Podcast: “The Cassandra Project” by Jack McDevitt, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
June 10:
Nonfiction: “The High Untresspassed Sanctity of Space: Seven True Stories about Eugene Cernan” by Genevieve Valentine
June 15:
Fiction: “Cats in Victory” by David Barr Kirtley
Author Spotlight: David Barr Kirtley
Podcast: “Cats in Victory” by David Barr Kirtley (on Starship Sofa)
June 17:
Nonfiction: “Top Ten Reasons Why Uplifted Animals Don’t Make Good Pets” by Carol Pinchefsky
June 22:
Fiction: “Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn
Author Spotlight: Carrie Vaughn
Podcast: “Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
June 24:
Nonfiction: “Every Step We Take” by Amanda Rose Levy
The SFFaudio Podcast #047 – Jesse and Scott talk audiobooks, The Invention Of Lying (the perfect movie for audiobook fans), and hot blimp on zeppelin action.