LibriVox – Page 34

Tantor Media: FREE AUDIOBOOK: The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Tantor Media is releasing another new limited time FREE MP3 audiobook download. Despite what it looks like on the cover (apparently Sherlock Holmes had a Macbook Air) The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes is an all original, un-remixed, collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, first collected in 1894.

You will need to have an account with Tantor Media, and to login to it. Start by clicking HERE. Accounts are free and do not require a credit card. The free audiobook should be available through the end of June 2011. I know some folks have had difficulty figuring out how to either “log in” or “create an account.” You must have an account and be logged in to get to the download. It is a two step process as illustrated below.

Step 1: Create An Account And Log In

First Create An Account Or Log In

Step 2: After Signing In, You Get Your Download Link

After Signing In Get Your Download Link

As usual there was a bit of trouble the first couple of times I downloaded the zipped file, but it now works and downloads. You will, of course, also need to unzip the MP3s once the download completes.

The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Read by Simon Prebble
11 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: March 2010
Sample: |MP3|
|ETEXT|
The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close—the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When The Final Problem was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself—on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house—as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother Mycroft.

Stories included: Silver Blaze, The Yellow Face, The Stock-Broker’s Clerk, The ‘Gloria Scott’, The Musgrave Ritual, The Reigate Puzzle, The Crooked Man, The Resident Patient, The Greek Interpreter, The Naval Treaty, and The Final Problem.

I should also point out that like most publications of this collection in the USA, over that last 117 years, this collection omits The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box for what Wikipedia indicates are reasons of morality.

If you’re not quite so squeamish The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box is available through LibriVox as two MP3 Files (Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|). |ETEXT|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: King Of The Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox King Of The Khyber Rifles is an war and espionage novel by one of Robert E. Howard’s favourite writers. Described as “fantastic” (in the literary sense), perhaps because of the inclusion of a fair amount of Theosophy amongst all it’s action and intrigue.

I kind of like Brett W. Downey’s narration too. His rendering of the text sounds very 1920s to me and his voice seems designed to say stuff like: “the kid’s got a lot of moxie I tell you.”

The King Of The Khyber Rifles
By Talbot Mundy; Read by Brett W. Downey
18 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 9 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 12, 2010
Athelstan King is a British Secret Agent stationed in India at the beginning of WWI. He is attached to the Khyber Rifles regiment as a cover, but his real job is to prevent a holy war. “To stop a holy war single-handed would be rather like stopping the wind–possibly easy enough, if one knew the way.” King is ordered to work with a mysterious and powerful Eastern woman, Yasmini. Can King afford to trust her? Can he afford not to? First published in Everybody’s Magazine May 1916 to January 1917.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4127

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Here’s the Talbot Mundy biography from the Classics Illustrated edition of King Of The Khyber Rifles:

Classics Illustrated's Talbot Mundy biography

[via TriciaG and Annise]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Black Star by Johnston McCulley

Aural Noir: Online Audio

LibriVox Today Johnston McCulley is probably best known as the creator of Zorro. But in his own day McCulley had several success in pulp fiction. The Black Star was among his first repeating characters – the titular character being a masked burglar with a massive ego and a five pointed signautre.

Proof listener “Betty M.” says that the titular Black Star reminds her of “the Scarlet Pimpernel, only the Black Star is a scoundrel” – after listening to the first chapter he sounds like a demented supervillain to me – he breaks-in to private residences and pastes black stars all over people’s headboards and dressing tables!!?!?!

The Wikipedia entry on Black Star describes him thusly:

Black Star was what was once termed a “gentleman criminal”, in that he does not commit murder, nor does he permit any of his gang to kill anyone, not even the police or his arch enemy Roger Verbeck. He does not threaten women, always keeps his word, and is invariably courteous, nor does he deal with narcotics in any of his stories. He is always seen in a black cloak and a black hood on which is embossed a jet black star. The Black Star and his gang used “vapor bombs” and “vapor guns” which rendered their victims instantly unconscious, a technique which pre-dated the Green Hornet’s gas gun by several decades.

That still sounds a lot more Lex Luthor, than Raffles, to me.

The Black Star
By Johnston McCulley; Read by Roger Melin
36 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8 Hours 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 17, 2011
The Black Star was a master criminal who took great care to never be identifiable, always wore a mask so nobody knew what he looked like, rarely spoke to keep his voice from being recognized, and the only mark left at the scenes of the crimes which he and his gang committed were small black stars which were tacked as a sign of their presence, and an occasional sarcastic note to signify his presence and responsibility. Even those who worked for him knew nothing of him, all of which were making his crimes virtually unsolvable. The police were at a complete loss as to his identity and at a method of stopping his criminal activities. He seemed to have the perfect strategic setup and all advantages were in his favor. He even somehow knew where the wealthy kept their jewels and money, and knew when they would remove valuable items from their safes and deposit boxes. Thus Roger Verbeck decided to take on the case of the Black Star using his own methodology. The Black Star will keep you guessing from beginning to end, just as he kept the police and Verbeck guessing.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/5440

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and David Lawrence]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #106

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #106 – Jesse and Tamahome talk about audiobooks, books, comic books, movies and technology.

Talked about on today’s show:
Scott is away, Warrior Race by Robert Sheckley, the guilt tactic, Robert Sheckley’s The Victim From Space, M. Night Shamylan, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the limits of sympathy and empathy, Lethal Weapon, civil disobedience, Ghandi, Ahisma, Gregg Margarite, Lauren Bacall, the future of self-published ebooks and curation, SFsignal’s anthology reviews, novels vs short stories, LibriVox, rating systems, Gil T. Wilson, SFSite, Avatar, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman’s narration, William Gibson, Where is the Neuromancer audiobook?, The Matrix, What is noir in film or books?, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Memento, a podcast about noir films (Noircast.net), Limitless aka (The Dark Fields) movie vs book, director Neil Berger, The Illusionist, The Prestige, Christopher Priest, Existenz, WWW: Wake, WWW: Wonder, Robert J. Sawyer, many spoilers in this podcast, Sawyer’s next novel is Triggers, research then write, the Webmind, Jesse doesn’t like series (usually), the ‘talking Dinosaur’ series (the Quintaglio Ascension series), is the WWW series YA?, Cory Doctorow, characters, Golden Fleece is a murder mystery in space, more dino, would anyone make the dinosaur series into a 3D animated film?, Robert J. Sawyer’s Rollback was on CBC Radio One’s Between The Covers podcast, Galileo’s Dream, Red Mars, Michio Kaku, futurism, climate change, Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson, can a domestic story be thrilling?, Austin Powers, “one million dollars!”, the trap of inflating the stakes, Tim Pratt on Dragon Page podcast (7½ minutes in), the ‘speech thriller’, what’s in the suitcase?, Kiss Me Deadly, “make each sentence do two things”, Midnight Riot (aka Rivers Of London), British lingo, “snog”, series and trends at bookstores, Peter Watts‘s openness, Flashforward TV show, The Gong Show, bring back the hook, Crysis 2: Legion the novel and the game, the economics of hard covers vs ebooks, Kindle openness, the VLC app was removed from the iTunes App store, the Android OS, Embedded, ROM person, the Comics Code Authority repealed!, Mark Millar, Nemesis, The Ultimates, Ex Machina, Chronicles Of Wormwood, Garth Ennis, Howard The Duck, death of superheroes, Superman left America (Action Comics #900), “truth, justice, and the American way”, Superman: Red Son, Battlefields, The Boys, The Punisher with the guy from Hung (Thomas Jane), Warren Ellis wrote a novel (Crooked Little Vein), can we make Peter Watts audiobooks?, synthesized voices on archive.org, Linux for all e-readers, Philip K. Dick, The Electric Ant comic, Tom Merritt, Sword and Laser, TWIT, Munchcast.

far seer

Archie Comics with and without the Comics Code Authority

Posted by Tamahome

LibriVox: Warrior Race by Robert Sheckley

SFFaudio Online Audio

Robert Sheckley’s Warrior Race was briefly mentioned on last week’s SFFaudio Podcast (#104). It’s available in audiobook form as on part of LibriVox’s Short Science Fiction Collection Volume 41. As is usual with so many of the Sheckley tales recorded for LibriVox it’s read by Gregg Margarite. YAY! And since we all seem to be in a pretty good Sheckley groove right now I thought I’d follow through with a pretty |PDF| edition of the story – it was constructed from a scan of the original Galaxy publication pages. This should be a fun read and listen!

LIBRIVOX - Warrior Race by Robert Sheckley Warrior Race
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 26, 2010
|ETEXT|
Destroying the spirit of the enemy is the goal of war and the aliens had the best way! First published in the November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

Posted by Jesse Willis

RECEIVED: DMCA Copyright Infringement Notification – “Adjustment Team” by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio News

Though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law, and hasn’t been adopted by Canada, I suspect that’s not the point of the following email.

DMCA Notice

The post that Kristina Moore refers to is HERE. It has comments on it that clarify why one of the links is now dead.

But that’s not the end of the story, lets go back a bit and consider why I was contacted at all. Let’s take it as a hypothetical given that, as Kristina Moore’s email is claiming, Adjustment Team is copyrighted.

I don’t believe that to be the case, not from what I read about it being a case of copyfraud. But even so, lets assume Moore’s claim to be true. What then does that have to do with my post? I did not post the story. I linked to it. And from my reading of Chilling Effects FAQ page on linking (and deep linking), that is not a copyright violation under the DMCA. And, even if it were the DMCA is United States law, not a Canadian one.

Now I will admit I did put up, and host, two pictures from the original publication in Orbit Science Fiction’s Sept-Oct. 1954 issue – but that surely can’t be what The Wylie Agency was upset about. The Philip K. Dick estate certainly does not hold the rights to the images. And, yes, though I did link to an audiobook version of Adjustment Team, that file was removed from LibriVox because of a similar DMCA notification to LibriVox.

In case you would like to do your own research on the matter, I point you to the Wikimedia Commons source for Adjustment Team. Where the story is still available HERE. That’s where I got the pictures.

I will leave up my original post until I get a reasonable explanation for why I shouldn’t. In hopes of getting one I have replied to Moore’s email with an invitation to appear as a guest The SFFaudio Podcast.

Posted by Jesse Willis