The SFFaudio Podcast #173 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Thousand Deaths by Jack London

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #173 – A Thousand Deaths by Jack London, read by Julie Hoverson (of 19 Nocturne Boulevard). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (29 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, Julie Hoverson, and Matthew Sanborn Smith

Talked about on today’s show:
Jack London’s first professional sale, “the hirsute fruit”, the LibriVox version, is the protagonist supposed to be female?, “I don’t know what’s real”, a disintegrated Saint Bernard, a Freudian story, The Island Of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, vivisection on a South Pacific Island, a mad scientist, oedipal literature, London’s own life, H.P. Lovecraft, re-animation, archaic language, Frankenstein, a well educated sailor with an interest in science, obliquely obtuse, The Call Of The Wild, peregrinating, “overly smarty-pantsy”, is it all a dream?, a conscious death, horror, drowned sailors owe their revivers, Poultrygeist, the catalyst event, “an amoral scumbag”, Phineas Gage, blowing smoke up the near drowned, the disintegration door, Doctor Manhattan, Fallout: New Vegas, the disintegration ray, dis-integrate, anti-gravity, electrolysis, synthetic clothing, “animal charcoal”, The Shadow And The Flash is Jack London’s take on The Invisible Man, not just dogs and boats, London’s Polynesian stories, sink the Farallones, San Francisco, suspended animation, chest tampering, death vs. approaching death, drowning vs. poisoning, exploring the boundaries of death, Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe, zombies, coffin bells, meteor insurance, “I brought you in [to this world] and I can take you back out”, Bill Cosby, Jack London’s writing voice, action³, verb heavy vibrancy, a raging socialist, is it interesting or is it good?, lockjaw, psychological damage, the ending is ambiguous, a dilettante and a wastrel, do deaths mature you?, an inversion of the prodigal son, what would Eric S. Rabkin say about this story?, time travel, early Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe -> Fitz-James O’Brien -> Lord Dunsany -> William Hope Hodgson -> Ambrose Bierce, “gonzo”, “where do your ideas come from?”, There’s a Crapp For That, picturemypoo.com, eww, Flatliners, spiritualism vs. materialism, ghosts, patents, olympics, Julie Hoverson’s copyright, patent and trademarks podcast?, shotgun shelled powered battering ram, Julie Hoverson is incredibly busy, thanks Julie!, Jonathan Davis, “don’t surprise the actors”,

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 4RadioArchives.ccMike Walker’s H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence is a 43 minute dramatized biographical broadcast that aired on BBC Radio 4 on September 10, 1983.

There’s currently a direct download of an MP3 available HERE and it’s also available over on RadioArchive.cc via |TORRENT|.

Directed by Shaun McLaughlin

Cast:
Narrator … Hugh Burden
Lovecraft’s letters … David March
Excerpts from the stories … Blayne Fairman and Garrard Green

[also via Lovecraft eZine and HPLovecraft.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #138 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Crawling Chaos by Winifred V. Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #138 – The Crawling Chaos by Winifred V. Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft, read by Wayne June. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (21 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it (by Jesse, Tamahome, Jim Moon and Wayne June). Here’s the ETEXT.

“In The Crawling Chaos the narrator flees inland, taking his adjectives with him.” -L. Sprague de Camp (from Lovecraft: A Biography)

Talked about on today’s show:
Wayne June is still alive!, first impressions of The Crawling Chaos, Wikipedia’s plot summary of The Crawling Chaos, dream logic, an opium vision, the tripiness, the philosophy behind The Crawling Chaos, The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe, the self as a haunted palace, Poe is so 19th century, The Raven, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, entropy, there is no meaning in this uncaring universe, “and all the planets mourned”, you’d need a lot of Prozac (or opium) to go through a life like that, the catharsis of apocalypse, a cosmic apocalypse, the plot is a jumble of junk, the biblical echoes, “only the gods reside there” (in Teloe), a very old testament vibe, “lest you turn into a pillar of salt”, the protagonist is us (mankind), Lovecraft’s recurring themes, the ordinary man who swaps places with another, The Shadow Out Of Time, Polaris, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, transcendental mind-swap stories, the story was a pseudonymous collaboration between Elizabeth Berkley (aka Winifred V. Jackson) and Louis Theobald, Jun. (aka H.P. Lovecraft), Nyarlathotep, “send me some money”, a lot of dross with a powerful effect, “the year of the plague”, the “oriel window” is an eyeball!, “calm down Howard”, “he’s in his own brain”, who or what is “the crawling chaos”?, the ocean pounding is his heart beating, “We’re all doomed!”, what is the crawling chaos?, S.T. Joshi, Rudyard Kipling, the peninsular beach house, Tiger Tiger (from The Jungle Book), The Tyger by William Blake, is the beautiful youth Mowgli?, who are “they”?, a fawn faced youth, Weena from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, did Winifred read The Time Machine before sleep?, what is the meaning of “Teloe”? is it teleology, reaching for meaning or purpose and losing it, Amber and Chalcedony, pleasure barges bound for blossomy Cytheron, Liquid Gold, Lord Dunsany, the heavenly host, the destruction of the physical (the corpse-like clay), black clouds like vultures, Supernatural Horror In Literature by H.P. Lovecraft, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear”, City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe, opium addiction, why opium?, Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Charles Baudelaire, a waking dream, if the story was written in the 1960s…, LSD, morphine and Morpheus (dream), a waking dream, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, The Doors Of Perception, out of Plato’s cave, Philip K. Dick, mindset and environment, mescaline, dreams vs. drug trips, journeys into the unconscious, Mouthpiece by Edward Wellen, decoding the death ravings of Dutch Schultz (HERE), William Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, “French Canadian Bean Soup”, stream of unconsciousness, Frances vs. French people, “swimming through New York”, The Librarian TV series, “perfectly ordinary strange adventures”, puns are big for the subconscious, Samuel R. Delany, Groucho Marx.

The Tyger by William Blake

The United Co-Operative, April 1921 - The Crawling Chaos

Posted by Jesse Willis

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast

SFFaudio Online Audio

Miette’s Bedtime Story PodcastHere’s a podcast that I’ve been listening to, on and off (mostly off), for years. Miette is a mystery to me and seemingly pretty much everyone else. She’s been putting out a weekly (or so) podcast since 2005 and yet we don’t know a lot about her. We know she loves to read short stories. That she’s got an accent people don’t easily pin down, and that she’s got a dog. Other than that…. well, we really don’t know.

What makes it all even more puzzling is that she’s an “obscurantist.”

Now I like the obscure, but she, well… she’s just out there – Miette has gone past the obscure and into the hinterlands of the truly odd. Every once in a while I want to throw her a lasso (or a lifeline) but I’m kind of afraid because she might pull me out there with her!

That sheer out-there-ness also makes me feel so normal. Miette’s the absolute omega to the omnivorous celebrity mainstream and me I’m just the guy who gets to say “sorry I don’t have TV” three or four times a week.

Perhaps Miette is from a parallel universe?

It would explain a lot.

Assembled below are some of the Miette-read tales that attracted me to her podcast. None of them are youur typical short story – most are experimental in some way, usually they’re at least odd, strange, or weird. The thing is though, these tales that I’ve picked here are the most centric of Miette’s stories!

SFFaudio interest:

Fun With Your New Head
By Thomas Disch; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Cask of Amontillado
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
By J.G. Ballard; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Red Room
By H.G. Wells; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

I See You Never
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

How the World Was Saved
By Stanislaw Lem; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Necrophil
By Felipe Alfau; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A story about a woman who dies too much.

The Yellow Wallpaper
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Aprrox. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Aprrox. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

On An Experience In A Cornfield
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Judgment
By Franz Kafka; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

A World of Sound
By Olaf Stapledon; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
By Ursula K. Le Guin; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

of Aural Noir interest:

A Letter to A.A. (Almost Anybody)
By Charles Willeford; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Lost Soul
By Ben Hecht; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

It Had To Be Murder
By Cornell Woolrich; Read by Miette
2 MP3s – Approx. 84 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://www.miettecast.com/feed/

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Exiles Club by Lord Dunsany

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxQuasar 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

Happy Public Domain Day 2008!

SFFaudio Commentary

CopyrightWatch.caSince the inception of the SFFaudio in 2003, and especially since the SFFaudio Challenge back in 2006, there have been many queries directed my way about copyright. I’ve had no formal training, but having a blog and getting questions about it means I’ve had to learn quite a bit about it. Copyright is a form of protection grounded in law granting original works of artistic creation protection for a set period. Various copyright laws are in force in many countries of the world. One source I’ve found for my own country is the indispensable CopyrightWatch.ca blog. As today is the first of 2008, this day marks the birth of many new public domain works. As CopyrightWatch author Wallace McLean points out “thousands, indeed millions, of creative works from the collective cultural past of our little planet and its many countries [become] Public Domain [today] in most countries of the world” That makes January 1st a birthday party of sorts! Included amongst the newly public domain works are some by notable SFF authors. Here are a few of the details from the extensive post on the blog…

In the largest bloc of countries of the world, with the majority of the world’s population, the general copyright term of life+50 expired no later than midnight this morning for the works whose author, or last-surviving of multiple authors, died in 1957. These works, which have passed out of copyright and become part of our commonly-held cultural heritage, include works of art and literature, accounts of discovery and adventure, biographies and autobiographies, scientific and philosopical treatises, film and theology, architecture and poetry; in short, products of the human mind in every medium, in every field of creativity, discovery, and endeavour.

The life+50 class of the newly-Public Domain includes:

The King Of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord DunsanyAnglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany

Brigands Of The Moon by Ray CummingsAmerican pulp sci-fi author Ray Cummings

And many more!




The second-largest bloc in the world copyright map, with about half the countries of the life+50 universe, is the life+70 universe, which includes much of Europe (this means that works by authors, or last-surviving authors, who died in 1937 are now public domain in the life+70 countries. Authors or other creators of “works” who died in 1937) include:

The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. LovecraftAmerican fantasy and science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft

Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens by J.M. BarrieScottish novelist and dramatist J.M. Barrie

And many more!


In the United States, unpublished works by the life+70 class of authors are also in the public domain as of today, joining published works by the same authors, if published before 1923. Published works by those auhors, if published after 1922, may still by under copyright in the U.S. In Canada and the United Kingdom, however, the situation is reversed. While published works by authors who died 50 or more years ago are public domain in Canada (or more than 70 years ago in the U.K.), unpublished works, such as letters and other papers, are still under copyright in Canada for works by authors who died after 1949, and in the U.K. for unpublished works by all authors, no matter how long ago they died. This anamolous class of unpublished works will not see their British Public Domain Day until January 1, 2039, or in Canada until January 1, 2049, unless and until the Parliaments of the two countries finally see fit to eliminate this confusing and culturally counterproductive bit of legislative stupidity.

Also entering the public domain around the world today are works of anonymous or pseudonymous authorship which were published in 1957 (or whichever other year applies according to your local copyright term for such works.)

But let us nevertheless pause to celebrate the gains that the public domain has made today, in Canada and throughout the world. It’s your past, your cultural heritage, your public domain. Promote it, celebrate it, and use it, or we will lose it.


Happy Public Domain Day 2008! If you start making audiobooks or audio dramas out of these author’s works let me know. I’ll make links!

Posted by Jesse Willis