Mark Twain – Page 14

The Washington Post: article about Mister Ron and his podcast

SFFaudio News

Our friend Mister Ron (of the Mister Ron’s Basement podcast) was recently written about for a 700 word newspaper article in The Washington Post!

The story, by columnist John Kelly, is titled A new voice for the humorists buried deep in the newspaper bin. In it we get a real picture of what Mister Ron is doing with his long running podcast (he’s podcast a stunning 1,500 episodes so far), a real sense of the connectedness modern newspaper journalists feel for their centenary predecessors, and what Mr. Ron’s basement actually looks like (it’s full of books, comics and newspapers).

The Washington Post

Here’s the start:

“In the basement of his Woodbridge home — surrounded by comic books and paperbacks, crumbling hardbacks and yellowing newspapers — Ron Evry is conjuring up a vanished world.

It’s a world of patent medicine-hustling mountebanks and pushy insurance salesmen, of clueless wives and blustering bosses, of penny farthing bicycles and steam trains and celluloid collars and mistaken identities and close scrapes and comically ill-planned get-rich-quick schemes.

It’s a world that you would have recognized instantly if you had been reading a newspaper a century or more ago.

Back then, just about every U.S. newspaper published short, humorous stories, brief bits of fiction set amongst the shipping news and the ads for liver pills. Mark Twain and O Henry did that sort of thing better than anybody, but plenty of other writers did it, too: Stanley Huntley, Fanny Fern, Ellis Parker Butler, Stephen Leacock…”

To read the rest of the article go |HERE|, to hear what happened when Mister Ron’s visited our podcast, check out The SFFaudio Podcast #013 |MP3|.

To subscribe to Mister Ron’s Basement podcast use this feed:

http://misterron.libsyn.com/rss

Congrats Mister Ron!

Posted by Jesse Willis

1882 Time Travel story on Mister Ron’s Basement

SFFaudio Online Audio

When Mark Twain was accused of plagiarizing Max Adeler’s The Fortunate Island for his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court he responded by saying that he read Adeler’s story, liked it, and thought there was no resemblance. However, the Adeler story he compared to his own that appeared in the 1882 Fortunate Island book was a different one – An Old Fogy – one of the first time travel stories ever written.

For tonight’s Saturday Night Special story we have presented An Old Fogy, the tale of an old man (written in 1882) who wished to return to simpler times of sixty years previously. The old man gets his wish.

If you could imagine a Twilight Zone episode written in 1882, you might have this brilliant tale.

Time: approx forty-one minutes.

The Mr. Ron’s Basement Podcast will be moving to a new server in a couple of months after over four years at slapcast, but the link is certainly good for a while.

You’ll find the story at:

http://slapcast.com/users/revry/7263

Posted by Mister Ron

Barnes & Noble: Try 9 FREE Short Stories

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a “FREE” deal (for Mac and PC users) that, despite some convoluted wrangling with OverDrive, is still worth it…

HERE is the offer. From the notes:

“This offer may be redeemed once per customer and entitles customer to free copies of eligible Audiobook MP3 titles at bn.com or its mirror sites. Offer ends May 16, 2009 at 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time”

It also says:

“Please Note:you must have a valid credit card on file with bn.com or enter one during checkout in order to obtain the free eligible Audiobook MP3 titles, even if these free items are the only items in your order. However, your credit card will not be charged for the free Audiobook MP3 titles.”

But, payment methods of PayPal or “telephone order” are also offered as options. Be also aware you must also enter a USA shipping address (even though these are digital downloads). After the checkout process you’ll also need to install OverDrive’s “Media Console” software in order to download the files. That’s annoying, but more annoying is the 2,000 word essay on which rights you are giving up to use the stupid software. After that you’ll get an email linking you to a B&N download page, where you can one-click a download for each story – which in turn will allow you to two-click your actual MP3 downloads. Then after the actual download of the actual MP3 a search of your hard drive for the title of the story will reveal where the files were hidden on your computer.

So like I said, the offer WAS WORTH IT, at least for me. It took about 25 minutes all told to get the two stories that interested me. For that time invested I’ve got myself a novel, Blackstone Audio’s The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (read by the incomparable Grover Gardner), and a Harper Audio short story called Best New Horror by Joe Hill (read by David Ledoux). It’s a cool horror tale from the collection called 20th Century Ghosts. The other 7 titles may be good too, I’m not sure its worth the wrangling and searching – I couldn’t tell who wrote some of them, or what they were about. So, if you do give this offer a shot please let me know if you find something else worthwhile in the 9 freebies. I’ll delete OverDrive’s “media console” within the next couple of days. I’ll give you 48 hours to convince me to use it again.

[via SFsignal]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #013

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #013 – We’ve got an absolutely unique interview with the incredibly cool Mister Ron from the Mister Ron’s Basement podcast! Mister Ron has a podcast devoted to humorous fiction from the 19th and early 20th century.

In the interview we talked about Mister Ron’s podcast, H.G. Wells, Sherlock Holmes spoofs, August Derleth, Solar Pons, O. Henry, Stephen Leacock, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Bud Grace, Piranha Club, Stanley Huntley, A Journey To The Sun, Pfaff’s Beer Cellar, Mortimer Thomson, podcasting, archive.org.

Also talked about on today’s show:
Audiobooks, The Little Book, Selden Edwards, The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman, time travel, James P. Hogan, Thrice Upon A Time, movies, what’s right with Frequency, what’s right and wrong with the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie, and what’s worrisome about the new Star Trek movie trailer and finally what’s playing this week on BBC7.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #012 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #012 – Our sickest show yet. How sick? Well, I’d like Stanley Kubrick to direct the next Conan movie. We also talk about the SFFaudio Challenge #3, which is not as bad as Red Sonja (1985).

Talked about on today’s show:
Fallout 3 has a built-in radio drama (The Adventures Of Daring Dashwood), The Little Book, Selden Edwards, time travel, The Book Of Lies, Brad Meltzer, Nelson DeMille, The Border, The Third SFFaudio Challenge, Muureen O’Brien, Maria Lectrix Podcast, The Risk Profession, Donald E. Westlake, Spider Robinson, John D. MacDonald, Travis McGee, John Varley, The Persistence Of Vision, Scott Brick, Aural Noir, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Frederic Brown, The Fabulous Clipjoint, H. Beam Piper, Murder In The Gunroom, Galaxy Press, Elantris, Brandon Sanderson, Dennis Stocks, LibriVox, Masters Of Space, E.E. “Doc” Smith, E. Everett Evans, R.J. Davis, BSAP’s Queen Of The Black Coast, Robert E. Howard, Bill Hollweg, Stevie Farnaby, Brian Murphy, The Silver Key, Brett Ratner’s new Conan movie, HBO’s new A Song Of Ice And Fire show.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mr. Ron: A Jules Verne SPOOF & Twain’s Connecticut Yankee

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mr. Ron, of Mister Ron’s Basement podcast, has some exciting listening on offer. First up, and being serialized over the next four shows, is an extremely rare story. It’s a spoof of Jules Verne’s Science Fiction, written while Verne was still in his prime. Though it was credited to “Jules Verne, Jr.” it was actually written by Stanley Huntley. Huntley was an immensely popular 19th century newspaper humorist – though today he is now nearly forgotten. This tale, A Trip to the South Pole; Book One, was serialized for three weeks in 1880 in the legendary Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. Mr. Ron will offer it over the course of four episodes. Of it, he sez: “It is an insanely funny spoof of Verne, and the more familiar you are with Verne’s works, the funnier it is.” – and indeed it sounds like a dead -on parody of Verne!

A Trip to the South Pole; Book One
By Stanley Huntley; Read by Mister Ron
4 Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: April 2008

Also, starting with Episode #1038, Mr. Ron will begin his serialization of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. At the rate of one chapter a week, it will take nearly a year to complete it.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
By Mark Twain; Read by Mister Ron
? Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: Begun April 2008 –

You can subscribe to this long running podcast , and get daily dispatches from the basement, via this feed:

http://slapcast.com/rss/revry/index.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis