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SFFaudio Challenge Audio: Rebels Of The Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay

SFFaudio Online Audio

Produced as part of the 2nd Annual SFFAudio Challenge, Rebels Of The Red Planet is now a FREE UNABRIDGED audiobook! All props go to Paul Campbell of Estalvin’s Legacy and Cossmass Productions for the entirety of the production. Paul tells us he’s taking a holiday in Spain staring tommorow. After this marathon of audiobook narration we should probably pay for the whole trip. Instead, cheap bastards that we are, we’ll offer him something far less expensive, but far more esteemed than mere money – our sincere appreciation. We at SFFaudio salute you Paul Campbell – and thank you for the hours of rebellious Martian fun you’ve brought to life!

I’m going to listen to the whole novel straight away.

When Paul gets back from that trip, he can choose his prize from among the Challenge offerings. If you’re inspired by Paul’s acheivement, check out the challenge, there are plenty of prizes left and titles to be claimed.

Now, here it is, first published by Ace Books in 1961 and now available for the first time as an audiobook (and podiobook) we are pleased to present…

Rebels Of The Red Planet
By Charles L. Fontenay; Read by Paul Campbell
18 MP3 Files – 5 Hours 54 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Cossmass Productions / Podiobooks.com
Published: December 2007 – April 2008
MARS FOR THE MARTIANS! Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars. The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times! But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics. And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy. Not only from the government’s desperate hatred of their movement, but also from the growing possibility that the new breed of mutated monsters would get out of hand and bring terrors never before known to man.

Subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://cossmass.co.uk/series/rebelsredplanet/feed

Or download the individual files from HERE.

Or get a custom Podiobooks feed HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – S.M. Stirling, Mary Shelley, Frank Herbert

New Releases

Another in S.M. Stirling’s alternate planet series (a parallel world first introduced in The Sky People), have a listen to the Dragon Page interview/chat with Stirling |MP3|, it too sounds like a cool book, The Sky People earned an SFFaudio Essential designation…

In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings
By S.M. Stirling; Read by Todd McLaren
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400106103 (CDs), 9781400156108 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
On Mars, early hominids evolved civilization earlier than their earthly cousins, driven by the needs of a harsh world growing still harsher as the initial terraforming ran down. Without coal, oil, or uranium, their technology was forced onto different paths, and the genetic wizardry of the Crimson Dynasty united a world for more than 20,000 years. Now, in a new stand-alone adventure set in this world’s 2000 AD, Jeremy Wainman is an archaeologist who has achieved a lifelong dream: to travel to Mars and explore the dead cities of the Deep Beyond, searching for the secrets of the Kings Beneath the Mountain and the fallen empire they ruled.

Unhyped, unbalyhooed, and probably the last novel that needs to be re-recorded, never the less I think the fact that Simon Vance is narrating makes this a worthy edition…

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley; Read by Simon Vance
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: February 2008
EAN: 9781400106349 (CD), 9781400156344 (MP3-CD)
Mary Shelley’s tragic story of a scientist who created a monster is perhaps even more compelling today than when it was written nearly two centuries ago. The brilliant Victor Frankenstein fashions a new form of life only to discover, too late, the irreparable damage he has caused.

Here’s the first in a new batch of old, non-Dune, Herbert novels getting their first unabridged releases…

Hellstrom’s Hive
By Frank Herbert; Read by Scott Brick
10 CDs, 1 MP3-CD – 4 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
EAN: 9781400105649 (CDs), 9781400155644 (MP3-CD)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: March 2008
America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects. First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as “Project 40,” Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter / Barsoom” books

SFFaudio Online Audio

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is best known for his Tarzan series of books. His second best known series is our topic for the day. The first three books in the John Carter of Mars series (AKA The Barsoom Series) are available via the tireless volunteers at Librivox! Enjoy…

A Princess of Mars (book one in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by various readers
29 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 2006
“Part One of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars-Series. Easy, swank, pulp read about an omnipotent gentleman teleported to Mars, finding an outlandish society of ape-, tree- and lizardmen, red-, white-, yellowmen, brains on legs, strange bastions and curious apparatuses, where the strongest survives and women are needy beauties to be saved. How can something be so platitudinous and at the same time so imaginative and enthralling?”

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/a-princess-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

The Gods Of Mars (book two in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by JD Weber
22 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 7 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 2006
“The Gods of Mars is a 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel, the second of his famous Barsoom series. It can be said that the novel set the tone for much science fiction to come. Its influence can clearly be seen in franchises such as Star Trek and Farscape. While Burroughs no doubt borrowed liberally from the pulp fiction of his day, particularly westerns and swashbuckling tales, the pacing and themes set the tone for the soft science fiction genre. The protagonist, John Carter, with his proficiency in hand-to-hand combat and flirtations with beautiful alien women, could be said to have set the mold for later influential icons like Captain James T. Kirk and James Bond. At the end of the first book, A Princess of Mars, John Carter is unwillingly transported back to Earth. The Gods of Mars begins with his arrival back on Barsoom (Mars) after a ten year hiatus, separated from his wife Dejah Thoris, his unborn child, and the Red Martian people of the nation of Helium, whom he has adopted as his own. Unfortunately, John Carter materializes in the one place on Barsoom from which nobody is allowed to depart: the Valley Dor, which is the Barsoomian heaven.”

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-gods-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

The Warlord Of Mars (book three in the John Carter series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by JD Weber and Kara Shallenberg*
16 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: August 2007
“Warlord of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel, the third of his famous Barsoom series. John Carter continues his quest to be reunited with his wife, the princess Dejah Thoris, and discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient mysterious Martian races.”* One point of interest, the reader for Warlord, JD Weber, mysteriously disappeared before recording the last chapter. After waiting several months, Kara Shallenberg recorded the last chapter.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-warlord-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

NPR’s Cultural History of Mars

SFFaudio Online Audio

All thanks to the Marooned: Science Fiction Books On Mars blog for this…

Originally broadcast on January 27, 2004 in the wake of Opportunity’s landing on the Red Planet, Cultural History of Mars is a 35-minute piece from National Public Radio’s program Talk of the Nation.

Hosted by Neal Conan, here’s a description of the piece: “Earthlings were fascinated by Mars long before sending rovers and landers to beam back three-dimensional color pictures of its surface. Does it have canals? Did little green men ever inhabit the planet? Will humans ever walk or live on Mars? NPR’s Neal Conan and guests discuss the history and mystery of Earth’s neighbor, from Galileo to War of the Worlds and beyond.”

Conan’s guests include Dr. William Sheehan, co-author of Mars: The Lure of the Red Planet (2001), David Catling, professor of astrobiology at University of Washington, and Mark Rahner, pop culture writer for The Seattle Times.

Covering both science and science fiction, the discussion mentions a Ray Bradbury episode from X-Minus One (radio drama, 1955), Percival Lowell, Mars Attacks! (film, 1996), H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sands of Mars (1951), Kim Stanley Robinson, Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles from Dimension X (radio adaptation, 1950/1951), Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character John Carter, C. S. Lewis, Robinson Crusoe on Mars (film, 1964), Angry Red Planet (film, 1960), Total Recall (film, 1990), and Rocketship X-M (film, 1950).

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7: The Last Days Of Shandakor by Leigh Brackett

Online Audio

BBC7’s the 7th Dimension is re-broadcasting their action-packed reading of a novelette by Leigh Brackett. The Last Days of Shandakor was originally published in April 1952 issue of Startling Stories magazine and was first broadcast on BBC7 back in March 2007.

NOTE: This is being broadcast in 2 parts on successive Sunday evenings with repeat broadcasts at 12:30am (Monday).

The Last Days Of Shandakor
By Leigh Brackett; Read by Nathan Osgood
Broadcast in 2 parts – Approx. 50 minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC 7 / 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday January 28th and Sunday February 3rd 2008
This is another new commission for the 7th Dimension.
An epic space adventure written in which Mars is portrayed as a dying planet where desperate Earthmen compete with the last Martians and other alien races for lost knowledge and hidden power.

And remember BBC7 provides the Listen Again service to catch it for 6 days following the broadcast!

posted by Jesse Willis

Challenger begins podcasting: Rebels of the Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay

SFFaudio Online Audio

Rebels Of The Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay Looking for old-fashioned pulpy goodness? Have a look, and a listen to the first chapter |MP3| of the newest SFFaudio Challenger’s podcast:

Rebels Of The Red Planet
By Charles L. Fontenay

The reader is Paul W. Campbell (of the “Cossmass” audio drama series Estalvin’s Legacy).

Rebels Of The Red Planet was first published in 1961 by Ace books. Fontenay was a WWII vet, who was “born in Brazil of a father who was by birth English and by parentage German and French, and of a mother who was by birth American and by parentage American and Scottish.” This mixed background caused him difficulty as he went from enlisted soldier to officer during the war. It seems that the security clearances for his secret work required clear citizenship. When not fighting wars or writing SF Fontenay was a newspaper man.

Here’s the blurb on Rebels Of The Red Planet:

Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.

You can subscribe to the feed via this URL:

http://cossmass.co.uk/series/rebelsredplanet/feed

Posted by Jesse Willis