Jules Verne – Page 10

PUBLIC DOMAIN AUDIOBOOK: The Master Of The World by Jules Verne (via LibriVox)

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mark F. Smith, the narrator behind The First Men in the Moon, Greylorn, Tarzan Of The Apes, The Mysterious Island, and plenty more public domain Science Fiction, has released another classic SF novel through LibriVox.org. Mark sez of his latest: “This book is a sequel to an earlier Verne novel, Robur the Conqueror, but enough detail is given to fully appreciate this story without having first read the other.”

The Master Of The World
By Jules Verne; Read by Mark F. Smith
18 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 2008
Chief Inspector Strock gets the tough cases. When a volcano suddenly appears to threaten mountain towns of North Carolina amid the non-volcanic Blue Ridge Mountains, Strock is posted to determine the danger. When an automobile race in Wisconsin is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a vehicle traveling at multiples of the top speed of the entrants, Strock is consulted. When an odd-shaped boat is sighted moving at impossible speeds off the New England coast, Stock and his boss begin to wonder if the incidents are related. And when Strock gets a hand-lettered note warning him to abandon his investigation, on pain of death, he is intrigued rather than deterred. Set in a period when gasoline engines were in their infancy and automobiles were rare, and when even Chief Inspectors had to engage a carriage and horses to move about, the appearance of a vehicle that can move at astounding speeds on land, on water – and as later revealed, underwater and through the air – marks a technological advance far beyond the reach of nations. It is technology invented by and for the sole benefit of a man who styles himself (with some justification) “The Master of the World.”

Subscribe to the complete podcast audiobook via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-master-of-the-world-by-jules-verne.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox short stories galore!

SFFaudio Online Audio

A “few” short hidden gems from Librivox.org. Among their short story collections, now up to number nineteen, are some very good short Fantasy, SF, and Horror stories. These stories run from two and a half minutes to nearly fifty two minutes long. All are good for a short listen between audiobooks.

Bread Overhead
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Cori Samuel
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 25th 2007
The Staff of Life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings — and mankind had to eat crow!

The Masque of the Red Death
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Juan Carlos Bagnell
1 |MP3| – 16 Minutes
Death comes to visit a prince who is trying to avoid a plague.
Themes: / Horror /

Dracula’s Guest
By Bram Stoker; Read by Dimitri Fotopoulos
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A prequel to Dracula.
Themes: / Horror /

Ligeia
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A haunting tale of lost love.
Themes: / Horror /

The Damned Thing
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Greg Elmensdorp
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
It shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward….
Themes: / Horror /

Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
By H. P. Lovecraft; Read by Smokestack Jones
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A tale of unusual genealogy.

The Cats of Ulthar
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Feline revenge.
Themes: / Horror / Cats /

Charon
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Steven Collins
1 |MP3| – 2 Minutes 30 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Fantasy /
The ferryman Charon’s last duty.

The Music of Erich Zann
1 |MP3| Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Smokestack Jones
A college student wonders about the strange music played by an old man.
Themes: / Horror / Music /

In the Year 2889
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
1 |MP3| – Approx 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Verne’s story about life in America a thousand years in the future.
Themes: / Science Fiction /

Crossroads of Destiny
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Trask
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Science Fiction /
Parallel universes and a television show.

The Gifts of Asti
By Andre Norton; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| Approx. 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Fantasy /
Varta, the last priestess of Asti, lives alone with Lur, a telepath of the lizardfolk, in Asti’s isolated mountain retreat. Decadent Memphir has long since drifted away from the austere paths of Asti, and now the barbarians of Klem are sacking the city, and the smoke of its burning drifts up to the temple.

The Street That Wasn’t There
By Clifford D. Simak and Carl Richard Jacobi; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Science Fiction /
Classic pulp action.
Read by Peter Yearsley

The Hoard of the Gibbelins
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Mark F. Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Themes: / Horror /
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man.

A World Is Born
By Leigh Brackett; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 52 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio’s men. Bolts of it fastened on gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell.
Themes: / Science Fiction /

Posted by Dave Tackett

LibriVox release of An antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne

OnlineAudio

A while back we brought you the story of LibriVox’s release of an audiobook version of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative Of Arthur Godron Pym. Now, we can tell you about the sequel, written decades later by another author. An antarctic Mystery (AKA An Antarctic Mystery or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields) is a newley released unabridged audiobook read by Esther (AKA Starlite).

Listening to just chapter one, you’ll notice straight away the mention of what sounds like a fictional place. Namely, the “Kerguelen Islands”, a place so remote, so alien, it was the 19th century equivalent of the moon. The Kerguelen archipelago exists, it and a few other remote sub-Antarctic islands fly under French flags and are mostly used as research stations today. But, Kerguelen has a fascinating history. During World War II, Christmas 1940 in fact, a Nazi Kriegsmarine ship, named “Atlantis” visited and there dug “the most southerly German soldier’s grave.” In the 1960s and 1970s Kerguelen was used as an experimental rocket base, sending French and American rockets into suborbital flight. All rumors of secret Chinese or Nazi military bases on Kerguelen are completely unsubstantiated.

Back to the audiobook…

An Antarctic Mystery
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 23rd 2007
“Edgar Allan Poe’s telling of Arthur Pym is shown to be true as events come together that bring out clues that help Captain Len Guy trace the fate of his brother’s ship the Jane; the very ship that Arthur Pym was on board at the time of his disappearance. Through the efforts of Mr. Joerling, the crew of the Halbrane is enticed to make the trip to Antarctica to search for any survivors of the Jane.”

You can download the MP3s individually, in one big zipped folder or get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/an-antarctic-mystery-or-the-sphinx-of-the-ice-fields.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox release of Jules Verne’s The Fur Country

SFFaudio Online Audio

More happy CANADA DAY releases! Completed a full month ahead of schedule, The Fur Country is a lenghty unabridged novel from LibriVox and public domain audiobook narrator extraordinaire Esther (AKA Starlite). Set at “Seventy Degrees North Latitude” in Canada’s far north, this is one of Jules Verne’s least known novels. The perfect choice for a July 1st release!

The Fur Country
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
47 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1st 2007
“In 1859, officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company are given the mission to found a fort at 70 degrees north of the polar circle. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are not where they are supposed to be.”

Get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-fur-country-by-jules-verne.xml

posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox goes to sea for Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Online Audio

Avast me hearties! LibriVox, that isle of audio sanity in an ocean of in, has been all at sea of late, but not in a bad way, not at all. The vast crew of LibriVox has been making sea Science Fiction stories – specifically with two speculative fiction classics from the 19th century. The completion of one of them was the subject of a March 25th commentary on the history of SF sea stories. That really warms my cockles, and may even warm yours. Have a listen to one or both of the titles listed below, I’m guessing they’ll shiver your timbers. And be sure to note the COOL NEW PODCAST FEED FEATURE found on completed LibriVox titles…

The Mysterious Island
By Jules Verne; Read by Mark F. Smith
Zipped MP3s or MP3 Podcast – Approx. 22 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 2007
A story of castaways, similar to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, this book details the escape from Civil War-era Richmond, Virginia, of five Northern men who dared to go aloft in a balloon in the midst of a hurricane. Deposited on a lonely island in the Pacific, they make do with Yankee ingenuity where Chance has left them nothing. Only later do they find they have a hidden benefactor: Captain Nemo, of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, who resides, alone, secretly on the island. In time, the tiny colony becomes so prosperous that it is able to rescue another castaway from an island a hundred miles away. But all their work will come to naught – their island’s volcano is about to awake!

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-mysterious-island-by-jules-verne.xml

The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by various authors
Zipped MP3s or MP3 Podcast – Approx. 6.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 2007
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe’s only complete novel, published in 1838. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called Grampus. Various adventures and mis-adventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny and cannibalism. The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify in later chapters, involving religious symbolism and the Hollow Earth.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym.xml

posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: The problem of Poe’s Pym

SFFaudio Commentary

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym was published in 1838. The unabridged audiobook is available commercially, but the LibriVox version has been stalled at 85% completion for too long. This multi-reader project has been in production for more than a year, and I’m eager to see it completed. I believe it is a crucial work of early Speculative Fiction. It was an influence on H. P. Lovecraft, and his At The Mountains Of Madness and even Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop’s 1977 Black As The Pit, From Pole to Pole is similarly descended from Pym.

The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym is crucial, not the least because I think a lot of us would like to hear some other related novels that were inspired to follow after it! For myself, one in particular stands out I’ve been hankering to hear is Jules Vernes’ The Sphinx Of The Ice Fields (AKA An Antarctic Mystery). This was Verne’s 1897 sequel to Poe’s Pym. I originally ran across this novel in relation to my fascination with sub-antarctic islands. One day, a few weeks back, I was doing my usual zoom and pan lunchtime tourism on Google Maps. That particular afternoon I spotted a cool little island called Île de la Possession (46°24′S 51°46′E), one of the extremely remote Îles Crozet,which is in a chain of tiny sub-antarctic islands owned by France. This one was particularly interesting looking as it was both volcanic and ice-free. There also happened to be a cool research station visible on the far East side of the island. In cross referencing the island with the images I was seeing on Google Maps I also spotted that they’d named its northern-most mountain “Monts Jules Verne!” It also has a rivers named “Moby Dick” and “Styx.” Now hearing all this you might think this is a real-life version of Vernes’ Mysterious Island, but in fact it has nothing to do with that novel’s made-up island, instead this very real island actually appears in Verne’s sequel to Pym, the novel The Sphinx Of The Ice Fields!

Îles Crozet

Now back to the business…. If you’re even half as excited about seeing the great lineage of Pym turned into audiobooks, please consider volunteering your voice to the project. There are only 4 chapters still unassigned and the majority of the other chapters are already completed.

One last thing, call it more inspiration: For an astoundingly-cool bibliography of Antarctic related fiction (from 1605 to the present day) have a look at Fauno Cordes’ “Tekeli-li” or Hollow Earth Lives: A Bibliography of Antarctic Fiction.

posted by Jesse Willis