The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – First podcast in 2008, in seven separate installments, here it is, the legendary, unconquerable epic that they didn’t want you to hear. It’s back, stronger, and wholly united into one massive adventure … the mighty BrokenSea Audio Productions adaptation of The Queen Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard!
Posted by Jesse Willis
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; 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:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Pygmalion’s Spectacles was first published in 1935 in the aptly named Wonder Stories magazine. Four years after it’s first publication it was reprinted in Startling Stories as a “classic” and it was placed in their “Scientifiction Hall Of Fame.” It was reprinted again in Fantastic Story magazine in the Spring 1955 issue. Three magazine publications is a rare occurrence for any SF story. So, what makes this story special?
Well, this tale of utopia, immortality, and romance, is also, most probably, the very first story to feature the concept of virtual reality.
Here’s the description from the Wikipedia entry:
A comprehensive and specific fictional model for virtual reality was published in 1935 in the short story Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the story, the main character, Dan Burke, meets an elfin professor, Albert Ludwig, who has invented a pair of goggles which enable “a movie that gives one sight and sound […] taste, smell, and touch. […] You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.”
And though the ideas may be pioneering, the plot of Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar to Fitz-James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, itself an excellent SF tale. The tone of their respective endings differs, but their plot, in which a man falls in love with an intangible woman, is straight out of the Greek mythology that Weinbaum alludes to. And they both use science, rather than magic to get to their respective endings.
There is, I should also point out, a LibriVox |MP3| recording of the Metamorphoses by Ovid, a 2,000 year old poem featuring the myth of Pygmalion.
Here is a |PDF| made from the Pygmalion’s Spectacles publication in Fantastic Story. And here are two LibriVox versions (my advice, go for the first one):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13,2009
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Chrystal Layton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 17, 2007
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Lumen Winter (from Wonder Stories, June 1935):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Virgil Finlay (from Fantastic Story Magazine, Spring 1955):
Painting of Pygmalion and the statue by Jean-Baptiste Regnault:
[Thanks to Tim at The Drama Pod for the reminder]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Here’s a sweet find from the CBC Digital Archives! It’s Alan Maitland, perhaps you know him as “Front Porch Al”, reading Moonlight (aka In The Moonlight) by Guy de Maupassant.
It was first broadcast on CBC Radio’s As It Happens on August 2, 1993.
The tale of a misogynist priest, the Abbé Marignan, who is ruled purely by reason, but whose view of life and love is influenced by the magic and splendour of moonlight.
And, I’m pleased to offer a different translation of the same story in |PDF| form.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Just Another Perfect Day
By John Varley; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
34 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Lightspeed Magazine
Published: 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Memory / Aliens / Love / New York /
Stefan Rudnicki expertly narrates this story, which is perfectly suited for audio. John Varley wrote the story in the form of a letter (or letters) to the main character from the main character, who can only remember his life up to a certain point. Since a lot of time has passed since that point, and a lot of things have happened, he needs to be told what’s going on every single morning. These letters do the job.
Varley, of course, is amazing. In the space of this short story he explores not only the concept that this character is in essence a new person every single day, but also what it means to those who love him and those who find his difference especially meaningful. Varley originally published this story in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1989. It’s a great one.
I continue to admire what John Joseph Adams and Prime Books are doing with Lightspeed Magazine. From the audio perspective, I greatly appreciate the professional quality of this podcast. This is an excellent story, the narration is wonderful, and the audio is professional. As good as it gets!
Links:
Just Another Perfect Day by John Varley
Direct Link to the |MP3|
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The SFFaudio Podcast #118 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk about Philip K. Dick’s wonderful novelette Upon The Dull Earth (available in Blackstone Audio’s The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Volume 2)
Talked about on today’s show:
Beyond Fantasy Fiction, the prolific Philip K. Dick, Galaxy Magazine, H.L. Gold, is Upon The Dull Earth Fantasy or Science Fiction, suburban romance?, rural romance, Jesse loves the setting, cedars, angels, The Odyssey, On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, Jesse’s terrible Philip K. Dick impersonation, a wooden faucet?, a one way ladder to another plane, using your coffin as a cocoon, “Rick, I cut myself.”, Rick is responsible for her death, is Rick in hell?, Silvia is a sick chick, shortly after Silvia’s incineration, blood from a New Jersey abattoir, Upon The Dull Earth would be perfect for the A Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, God has moved on up, HE is capitalized, she’s Fantasy, he’s Science Fiction, she’s elf-like, he’s machine-like, iron and spirits don’t mix, ridding one’s self of civilization, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle |READ OUR REVIEW|, uisge beatha mean “the water of life” (or whisky), is Silvia depressed?, YA, valkyries, insects, The Hanging Man had insects too, witch vs. saint, remember Prometheus and the fire?, ripples from the event, kraals of white skinned young women, is this all going on in Rick’s head, Rick picks up a hitchhiker to use him as a guinea pig, “you’re crowding me man”, going into the underworld to get back your dead girlfriend, when someone dies you mourn your loss, Plato (and Aristophanes’) story about the mythological division of male from female (The Symposium), “we were meant to be together”, “you complete me” and similar cliches, what happens at the end?, Fair Game by Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick stories often have a roadside cafe scene and a gas station scene, “like the doves in a John Woo movie”, where does the title of Upon The Dull Earth come from?, she was merely playing at death, disturbed spirits thirsty for blood, the natural of order of things has been violated, William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act 4, Scene 2, the character name Sylvia comes from the play, but sylvan means “of the wood”, is she a fairy?, HBO’s True Blood, Icarus, the Wikipedia entry for Upon The Dull Earth, the many mentions of clay, Wonder Woman came from clay, Batman: False Faces by Brian K. Vaughn, J. Michael Straczynski, the Golem, Ted Chiang’s Seventy-Two Letters, The Adventures Of Cavalier And Clay by Michael Chabon, capricious (adj.) Given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior, religion, Steven H Silver’s review of Seventy-Two Letters (and Stories Of Your Life And Other Stories), FREE TED CHIANG!, Saint Bernadette, Philip K. Dick really cares about the way the story is told, we never see inside a character’s mind, the authorial view, is Dick popular in for movies for this reason?, it’s grotesque!, she filled the Silex, “We’re all going to have wings!”, “We won’t be worms anymore”, Silvia’s looking for an abusive relationship, Blackstone Audio, the audiobook, Upon The Dull Earth is best read aloud, Tama didn’t know how fantastical Dick was, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, its a Noir Horror Science Fiction Fantasy story, anime, Berserk, Project A-Ko, Princess Mononoke, I only understand Japanese movies made by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, “I can barely understand the people wearing a Storm Trooper costumes”, Jesse needs some accessible anime, Spirited Away, what are the background assumptions in anime, Cowboy Beebop intro, Luke’s review of Solaris on SFBRP, Erik S. Rabkin, Just Imagine is a crazy musical with plenty of background assumptions (like prohibition), Hey Want To Watch A Movie? podcast, is there an MST3K podcast?, Tam was thinking of the non-podcast Rifftrax.com, readalong vs. watchalong, The Thing, The Thing From Another World, The Thing (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger, The Amazing Spider-Man, comic books vs. Hollywood, The Avengers will be written and directed by Joss Whedon, swastikas are banned in Germany, it’s a case of it’s time to end the podcast.
Posted by Jesse Willis
