LibriVox – Page 21

LibriVox: Naudsonce by H. Beam Piper

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s part of Phil Chenevert’s introduction to his latest LibriVox narration, a novelette by H.Beam Piper called Naudsonce:

The joint Space Navy-Colonial Office expedition was looking for new planets suitable for colonization; they had been out, now, for four years, which was close to maximum for an exploring expedition. They had entered eleven systems, and made landings on eight planets. Three had been reasonably close to Terra-type but were all disqualified by terrible animals or warlike inhabitants. Now, finally here was an ideal world; their last chance before returning in disgrace. Now the only thing was to get an agreement from the local king or whatever to the colonization. Easy, right? Well first, you’ve got to talk to them …… and there the trouble starts.

Naudsonce by H. Beam Piper - illustrated by Leo Morey

Naudsonce
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Phil Chenevert
5 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 56 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 18, 2012
|ETEXT|
First published in Analog, January 1962.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/7235

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Illustrations by Leo Morey:
Naudsonce by H. Beam Piper - illustrated by Leo Morey

[Thanks also to DaveC]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Heathen by Jack London

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a terrifically interesting story of romantic adventure, and love, between two very heterosexual men.

Did I mention they are heterosexual?

Well they are.

They have wives!

That’s all there is to it.

The Heathen interweaves Jack London’s racist ideas with his experiences as a sailor to make a truly he-manish tale of two macho sailors who form an unbreakable seventeen-year bond after being shipwrecked in the South Pacific. This is manly beefcake Jack London from 1910, working the blood and breed obsessed vein of fiction and friendship that Robert E. Howard did so masterfully in stories like Queen Of The Black Coast and Hills Of The Dead.

Unfortunately, the version that my good friend Gregg Margarite read for LibriVox, a couple years back, was abridged (or perhaps sanitized) – the PDF version below includes a couple of extra lines here, there, and at the end. Important lines. It also includes more swearing.

Damn those abridgers and sanitizers.

Gregg is dead.

I’m confident he’d have wanted to have read the unsanitized and unabridged original had it been available.

The Heathen by Jack London

The Heathen by Jack London - illustration by Anton Fischer

The Heathen
By Jack London; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 3, 2009
First published in Everybody’s Magazine, August 1910.

Here’s a beautiful |PDF| made from a scan of the magazine.

Here are the rest of the terrific illustrations by Anton Fischer:

The Heathen by Jack London - illustrated by Anton Fischer

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #186 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Lady, Or The Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #186 – An unabridged reading of The Lady, Or The Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton (17 minutes), read by David Federman – followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Tamahome, and Julie Hoverson (of 19 Nocturne Boulevard).

Talked about on today’s show:
Monty Hall, Let’s Make A Deal, a can of sardines, a donkey and a block of hay, the Dungeons & Dragons meaning of “Monty Hall”, use in schools, weighting the scales, what is the character of women?, equally loving and equally jealous, love vs. jealousy, how barbaric are women?, where are the female criminals, a fully barbaric king, trial by ordeal, a box with a viper, a box with a knife, the swift choice, a curious justice system, jaywalking into the people’s court, like father like daughter, women were so emotional, unmodernizable sexism, guilt, there are tigers behind both doors, The Price Is Right, imaginary morality in an imaginary land, fairness conflated with arbitrariness, “when he and himself agreed upon anything”, Julie’s problem with philosophy, game theory, a thought experiment, Ray Bradbury style stories convey Bradburian feelings vs. Rorschachian style stories which elicit only the reader’s feelings, The Discourager Of Hesitancy (a sequel to The Lady, Or The Tiger?), smile vs. frown, Batman, Two-Face’s decisions are not actually coin tosses, The Man in The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, I Ching, “the tiger does not eat the straw because the duck has flown away”, phone psychics should agree with their customers, “the cards are telling me…”, psychics as impartial observers, a Ponzi scheme, selection bias, is it a double bluff?, does the father know that the daughter knows?, what is the punishment for adultery?, obsolete pop-culture, zoot suit riots (not just a joke, seriously), “six of one, half a dozen of the other”, “as snug as a bug in a rug”, we have to invent rug technology, nitpicking, Bugs Bunny dialogue, Max Headroom (is still ahead of it’s time), “blipvert”, They Live, shantytowns in the Regan era, Shock Treatment, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

DC Comics - Unexpected, Issue 106, Page 11

The Lady Or The Tiger (variation for a story in Amazing) preliminary art by Ed Emshweiller

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Lady, Or The Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s the story for our SFFaudio Podcast readalong, a classic tale about a semi-barbaric king and his beautiful, but very jealous, daughter.

The Lady, Or The Tiger? is a story I had never heard of until this week – and yet as a phrase, as a trope, it is something I had been vaguely aware of.

The Lady, Or The Tiger? seems to be almost unknown in the current generation – but it is still relevany, and still worthy of reading and talking about.

After reading, or listening to it, on tell me which side do you come down on, was it the lady, or was it the tiger?

The Lady, Or The Tiger?
by Frank R. Stockton; Read by David Federman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 27, 2008
A man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king’s beloved daughter. Taken to the public arena, he is faced with two doors, behind one of which is a hungry tiger that will devour him. Behind the other is a beautiful lady-in-waiting, whom he will have to marry, if he finds her. While the crowd waits anxiously for his decision, he sees the princess among the spectators, who points him to the door on the right. The lover starts to open the door and … the story ends abruptly there. Did the princess save her love by pointing to the door leading to the lady-in-waiting, or did she prefer to see her lover die rather than see him marry someone else? First published in 1882.

And here’s a |PDF| version.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

SFFaudio Online Audio

If I had to name the one story that’s influenced my reading, and thinking, most in last couple of years I’d name The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. It possesses my mind like a dark and deep tunnel running through my imaginative landscape – if you haven’t heard it yet you should. Below you’ll find my preferred version, but there are more readings, and adaptations HERE – and we did a whole podcast about it, that’s HERE.

One new thing though is this |PDF| which I made from a scan of an issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries – it features the 1911 George Allan England translation.

The Horla
By Guy de Maupassant; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 11, 2009
First published in Gil Blas; Oct 26, 1886.

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany (aka The Highwaymen)

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany

Sometimes titled The Highwayman, sometimes The Highwaymen, Lord Dunsany’s elegant prose poem is an 1,800 word tale about a scabrous gang of bastard highwaymen. And it has something for almost everyone.

I think, despite the sacrilege and desecration in the story, that my Christian friends will like it – it’s got a lot of that redemption stuff they are big on.

I’m confident that fans of capital punishment will like it – because it certainly doesn’t repudiate legalized killing.

And my friend, Gregg Margarite, who didn’t believe in any of the underlying mythology, liked it enough to read it for LibriVox.

And me?

Yep, I like The Highwayman too.

I like the overarching premise, about friendship, I think it’s heartwarming.

Plus it’s got lot of ghoulish shit in it, and I like that stuff too.

Ronald Clyne illustration of The Highwayman (from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1944)

The Highwayman
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13, 2010
First published in 1908.

Here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December, 1944.

And here’s the Sidney H. Sime illustration from the original 1908 publication in The Sword Of Welleran and Other Stories:
The Highwayman - illustration by Sidney H. Sime (1908)

Posted by Jesse Willis