LibriVox – Page 68

LibriVox: The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

From the latest LibriVox short story collection (Short Story Collection. Vol 033) comes…

The Man Who Could Work Miracles
By H.G. Wells; Read by Peter-David Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2008
An English skeptic of miracles of the Humean school, suddenly discovers that he can perform them!

Another FREE version of this same story is also available, HERE.

And, be sure to check out our all new H.G. WELLS author page HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Swoop! by P.G. Wodehouse

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox The Swoop!, or How Clarence Saved England is a short comic novel by P G Wodehouse, first published in the UK in 1909. Its subtitle is “A Tale of the Great Invasion.” This one may strain the sub-genre of alternate history to its breaking point, but I figure its probably worth it. As hero, Clarence Chugwater (all of 14 years old), assisted by a band of Boy Scouts must halt the invasion of England! This is one of the many “invasion” novels written from the late 1870s to WWI. H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds is one of these. Many others were written, most involving the invasion of England. This kind of book was even more popular, in its time, as all the vampire and zombie tales are today. Think of it as the disaster movie of its time with this one on the comic end.

The Swoop!
By P.G. Wodehouse; Read by Kristin Hughes
17 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2008
The Swoop! tells of the simultaneous invasion of England by several armies — “England was not merely beneath the heel of the invader. It was beneath the heels of nine invaders. There was barely standing-room.” (ch. 1) — and features references to many well-known figures of the day, among them the politician Herbert Gladstone, novelist Edgar Wallace, actor-managers Seymour Hicks and George Edwardes, and boxer Bob Fitzsimmons.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-swoop-by-p-g-wodehouse.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Exiles Club by Lord Dunsany

SFFaudio Online Audio

Quasar Dragon is pointing at LibriVox’s just catalogued Short Story Collection Vol. 32, in which you’ll find a classic Lord Dunsany “dark fantasy” called The Exiles Club.

Sez wolfkahn:

“This is a story of dark gods worthy of H.P. Lovecraft.”

Check it out for yourself…

The Exiles Club
By Lord Dunsany; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 29th 2008

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE LISTENS Review: King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

Review

King Solomon’s Mines
By H. Rider Haggard

Source: Librivox | Zipped MP3
Length: 9 hr, 52 min
Reader: John Nicholson

The book: Set in British colonial South Africa, King Solomon’s Mines tells of the extraordinary adventures of big game hunter Allan Quatermain. Sir Henry Curtis hires Quatermain as a guide for an expedition to find Curtis’s brother, who disappeared while searching for the biblical King Solomon’s fabled diamond mines. Joining them in the expedition are Curtis’s friend Captain Good and Umbopa, a porter with mysterious purposes.

The action is told in an unadorned style that, along with the descriptions of Africa and its inhabitants, makes this Lost Civilization fantasy seem real. A major part of this realism is the character of Quatermain, who narrates the adventure in the first person with a sense of dry humor and a matter-of-fact tone. Quatermain is not a hero in the traditional sense – he admits to being a coward. Instead of a hero, he is someone that the reader can positively identify with: fair, practical, smart, and opposed to injustice, racism and greed. This enlightened protagonist, the fresh writing style and exciting plot make King Solomon’s Mines a great read.

Rating: 9/10

The reader: Nicholson has a deep plain voice that is a perfect match for Allan Quatermain. The book is filled with difficult-to-pronounce names and words in Afrikaans and Zulu, but Nicholson says them with confidence. Whether or not he’s right, I have no idea. The pace is sometimes too slow for my taste, but he does vary both the pace and volume. The recording has some background whine and a hiss on the esses.

Posted by Seth

LibriVox Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #006

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here comes Volume #6 in the Short SF Stories Collection series – all public domain, all 100% FREE, from the folks at LibriVox…

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 006
By various; Read by various
Zipped MP3 Files, Podcast or individual MP3s – Approx. 4 Hours 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 25, 2008
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science and technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories, originally published between 1752 and 1962. Those published after 1922 entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-vol-006.xml

And here are the individual stories with my own notes on some…

Accidental Death
By Peter Baily; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the pages of Astounding Science Fiction magazine’s February 1959 issue. A tale about, aliens and space travel, told in a curious recorded epistolary form (and its set atop Mount Everest). Strange, but kind of familiar, worth listening to, but not likely to be at all memorable.

…After a Few Words…
By Randall Garrett; Read by Alex Becker
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in Analog magazine’s October 1962 issue – with the LibriVox team identifying the author, “Seaton McKettrig,” as actually Randall Garrett using one of his many pseudonyms. A few off-pronunciations aren’t enough to mar this solid reading. A historical tale – that really isn’t.

The Diamond Maker
By H.G. Wells; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A canvas sack full of several hundred pounds worth of diamonds, proffered on a London bridge for a paltry £100. It sounds like a con, at the very least a deal too good to be true. But the owner of the diamonds has a tale of woe to explain why he is selling them at such a cut-rate price. This one reminds me of Wells’ The Crystal Egg. Narrator, Jerome Lawsen, has a nice setup, the recording on this one is very clean.

Egocentric Orbit
By John Cory; Read by Perry Clayton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn’t the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn’t it? It may not take so long for a spaceman to learn … First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s May 1960 issue. This is the second version of this story to be recorded by LibriVox.

Flight From Tomorrow
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in the unwieldy titled “‘Future’ combined with ‘Science Fiction Stories’” magazine’s September/October 1950 issue. This one’s a novelette, an out-in-out time travel tale, that though a bit predictable, and certainly very period, has a certain vintage charm. Jerome Lawsen, reads it well.

In The Year 2889
By Jules Verne; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in 1889, and credited to Jules Verne, it was actually written by Michel Verne, Jules Verne’s son. But then just to confuse matters more it was published under Jules Verne’s name correctly a year later when the senior Verne re-wrote it (and changed the title to In The Year 2890). In any case, this tale is set a mere one thousand years in the future.

The Measure of a Man
By Randall Garrett; Read by D.E. Wittkower
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
“What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other … and act on it.” From the April 1960 of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Micromegas
By Voltaire; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
An 18th century tale (first published in 1752), Micromegas is significant in the pre-history of SF. Earth is visited by a pair of alien visitors, one from a planet circling Sirius and the other from the planet Saturn! This reading is also significant as it was recorded using a £1800 microphone!

The Sky Trap
By Frank Belknap Long; Read by Dr Special
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From Comet magazine’s July 1941 issue (the same issue that has Leigh Brackett’s A World Is Born – which is also available HERE). This is Dr. Special’s first recording for LibriVox. He reads it very well, even though there are a lot of lines like… “Good God Dave, do you suppose something has happened to space?”

Test Rocket
By Jack Douglas; Read by Lance
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the Amazing Science Fiction Stories magazine’s April 1959 issue (which had an amazing cover).

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox presents A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder by James De Mille

SFFaudio Online Audio

Back in February 2007 Robert A. Graff, of Rochester, NY, took up the first SFFaudio Challenge. He read 5 chapters of a novel and then — nothing — but, that isn’t quite the end of this story. Some half-dozen or so LibriVoxiteers have lent their voices, and they’ve now finished off A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder by James De Mille!

The novel was just catalogued yesterday – that makes it a mere 120 years since it was originally serialized in Harper’s Weekly in 1888. De Mille, the son of a United Empire Loyalist (for you American’s that’s what Benjamin Franklin called “Royalists”), was variously a professor of classics, rhetoric and history. He also holds the distinction of being Canada’s first Science Fiction author.

Strange Manuscript is considered a Swiftian satire, the setting is that of an Antarctic “lost world” inhabited by pre-historic creatures and an insidious death cult. It has been compared variously to Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Gordon Pym, H. Rider Haggard’s She, King Solomon’s Mines or even to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The title and locale were likely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s Ms. Found in a Bottle.

The main narrative follows the adventures of Adam More (keep that last name in mind), a British sailor shipwrecked on the homeward voyage from Tasmania. After More passes through a subterranean tunnel of volcanic origin, he finds himself in a lost world of prehistoric animals, plants and people, all sustained by a natural volcanic heat despite the long Antarctic night (which may remind you of Marvel comic’s Ka-Zar and his “Savage Land”). The secondary plot about the persons who found the manuscript written by More, forms a frame for the main narrative. In his strange volcanic world, More finds a highly developed human society comparable to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Erewhon by Samuel Butler and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The copper cylinder’s manuscript describes a society that has reversed the values of Victorian life: wealth is scorned and poverty is revered, death and darkness are preferred to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible.

A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder
By James De Mille; Read by various
31 zipped MP3s or Podcast – 9 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 2008
Adam More, a British sailor is shipwrecked in Antarctica. There he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has inverted the values of Victorian society. Wealth is scorned and poverty revered; death and darkness are preferable to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. At the beginning of each year, the government imposes wealth (the burden of “reverse taxation”) upon its unfortunate subjects as a form of punishment. A secondary plot about the four yachtsmen who find the manuscript forms a frame for the central narrative.

Get this audiobook via the podcast feed:

HERE

Posted by Jesse Willis