metaSFFaudio – Page 7

Auxiliary Memory talks FREE SCIENCE FICTION

SFFaudio News

James Wallace Harris of the Auxiliary Memory blog has written a 1,400 word opinion piece on Free Science Fiction. Jim has lots of questions, and lots of answers. One answer is a repeated mentioning of SFFaudio (thanks Jim!). Here’s a little sample:

“Just subscribing to two web sites, SF Site and SFF Audio via RSS feeds will keep you informed of more good free SF&F reading and listening than you can handle, even if you’re out-of-work or out-of-school.”

Check out the entire post HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Visitors

SFFaudio News

We’ve been pretty excited to see the numbers of visitors to SFFaudio.com going up of late. Its very hard for us to gauge the exact volume of readers of the site – but we’ve got a few numbers we can throw at you.

On an average day we typically see the following…

An average of about 1,500 page loads.

An average of about 1,000 unique visitors.

An average of about 150 returning visitors.

Here’s is a breakdown of the kinds of browsers used by the last 500 visitors to view the website:

# -|- % -|- BROWSER -|- VERSION

169 33.80% MSIE 7.0
160 32.00% Firefox 2.0.0
-60 12.00% MSIE 6.0
-51 10.20% Safari 1.2
-37 7.40% Opera 9.26
–6 1.20% Mozilla 5.0
–3 0.60% Firefox 3.0b5
–2 0.40% Mozilla 4.0
–2 0.40% [Google.com – Mountain View, CA]
–2 0.40% Netscape 7.2
–2 0.40% Firefox 1.5.0
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.5
–1 0.20% MSIE 5.5
–1 0.20% Firefox 2.0
–1 0.20% Opera 9.25
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.0.2
–1 0.20% Firefox 1.0.7

The kinds of operating system being used typically breaks down something like this:

38.24% Windows XP
32.35% Mac OS X
17.65% Windows Vista
5.88% Linux
4.90% Unknown
0.98% Windows 2000

We have a few other factoids for you too…

Did you know SFFaudio is valued at more than two million dollars? Yep, it’s wiki-true, according to a page on Blogshares.com SFFaudio is currently valued at B$2,081,828.32! Woot! Where do we cash that in? Maybe nowhere – BlogShares.com is only a simulated (fantasy) stock market for blogs. Players invest fictional money to buy stocks in an artificial economy. Blogs are the companies, and instead of issuing shares and producing products they issue an obscure and likely valueless commodity known as ‘Ideas’. In our industry (Science Fiction Literature Blogs) we’re currently ranked as the 51st most successful blog! In your face Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas (just kidding, please don’t hurt us).

Another blog valuation service, created by a blogger who blogs about making money by blogging (here’s another mirror for you pal) – sez that SFFaudio is worth $44,034.12 USD (as of the time of this post).

Also, on our right hand column, you can now see a couple of stats tracking things – one, is a number, currently at 0191884 (at the time I wrote this). That’s the number of unique visitors since about this time last year. The other thing, nearby that big number, is something called an “IP2Map” – which will show the last 100 visitors to the site on a map. Kind of cute.

So, as the folks at Engadget would say “How Would You Change SFFaudio?”

Posted by Jesse Willis

UPDATED Author Pages

SFFaudio News

Meta SFFaudio Hey! Check out the newly revised Author Pages – there you’ll find links to hours and hours of FREE LISTENING.

For the H.P. LOVECRAFT page we’ve added the links to more than THIRTY online audiobooks, novellas, short stories and articles in the MP3 format.

ANDRE NORTON’s page includes several full length novels and a few short stories.

ALAN E. NOURSE’s page has one novel, three short stories, and two radio dramas.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: Why History, Noir and pretty much anything else I like are really just Science Fiction

SFFaudio Commentary

I live and breathe Science Fiction, but like many, I have some trouble defining what that term actually means. Sometimes I use Damon Knight’s definition for it… “Science Fiction is what I point to when I say it.” Sometimes I classify a story as a Fantasy even though it appears to be SF (think Star Wars), often this is because of its flagrant disregard for science. But Fantasy isn’t just the wastebasket under Science Fiction – far from it. I see Fantasy as a branch of SF (though I know other people see SF as a branch of Fantasy). If you visit the site often you also may notice I tend to capitalize the “S” and the “F” – it is even in our website logo – I insisted on that point. We had some debate, Scott and I, about whether the site should just be called SFaudio.com, I argued for the extra F, to represent Fantasy. Poor old Horror, always the ugly sister, was left out of the site name entirely. Sometimes therefore I use the “SF” abbreviation, the logic being, “SF,” other than it being shorter, can also stand for “Speculative Fiction” – which includes Horror (and Fantasy too).

Now, before you say, “Jesse, WTF are you capitalizing all these abstract nouns?” I’ll explain that too… I capitalize the Science Fiction the way many folks capitalize the “H” in “Him” when referring to God. And other than this one I don’t think you’ll find a single post in which I’ve personally abbreviated Science Fiction as “sci-fi.” On that issue, I’m with Harlan Ellison:

“…the hideous neologism ‘sci-fi’–which sounds like crickets fucking–is at the core of this seeming malaise. What is called ‘sci-fi’ is _not_, repeat NOT, science fiction. It is special effects movie/television produced by and for imbeciles. Giant lizards, moronic space battles with spaceships acting as if they were Spads and Fokkers dogfighting in atmosphere, recycled fairy tales, and illiterate appeals to paranoia. They bear as much relation to science fiction of quality (whether film or tv or books or magazines) as Dachau did to a health spa.”

Gotta love Harlan, he doesn’t mince words – he sautés them. But back to the matter at hand… the funny thing, despite my attempt at inclusivity I’ve got standards when it comes to what qualifies as what. SF is what I say it is, but I can’t just point to anything. So, for instance, we don’t talk about mainstream literature here. It isn’t that a lot of it isn’t good – as that’s also true about SF, Fantasy and Horror. The reason mainstream literature doesn’t get the mentioned here is that mostly, even when it is well written, a lot of it still really, really sucks. I mean that quite literally. It sucks. It sucks your time, it sucks your money and it doesn’t give you anything to show for it. Sure you’ve got a kind of satisfaction, some internal catharsis perhaps, but it doesn’t give you anything to challenge your beliefs. This month’s Oprah bestseller is little better than next month’s paperweight, except that a paperweight made of paper is already rather redundant. There’s a reason you’ll find some of these books in the supermarket check-out isle, it is because they are, like candy, something you pick up quite casually. And the fiction I read, and the fiction we tell you about, better not be that god-damned casual!

This all came to mind as I was listening to a non-SF podcast recently…

Philosophy Bites, is a podcast that interviews “top philosophers” in “bite-sized” segments. The hosts are: David Edmonds, a philosopher and writer whose day job is making radio documentaries for the BBC, and Nigel Warburton, another philosopher/writer who teaches and blogs about philosophy. They take their podcasts seriously. A recent guest, Alain de Botton, famous for his decidedly not SF, bestselling book The Consolations Of Philosophy brought up this very topic, turning the everyday experience (for our purposes, mainstream fiction) into matters of deep philosophy |MP3| subscribe to the podcast via this feed:

http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/rss

One alternative to mainstream literature about everyday experience is mainstream historical fiction. Sometimes I read or listen to a historical fiction novel (or should that be Historical Fiction) that I want to talk about on SFFaudio, but can’t because it doesn’t tie into SF, F or H. In cases of extreme delight though I can usually somehow stretch the boundaries of what I normally would consider proper SF to suit my purposes. A post about Crazy Dog Audio Theatre’s Infidel, which is based on true history, for instance, was saved by calling it Horror. The reasoning being that the Horror genre, includes the idea of “moral horror”, horror that comes not from fear for one’s bodily integrity, but fear for one’s beliefs, fear one’s values – the kind of fear you get when you watch true Film Noir, like Chinatown say.

I deem these kinds of tales eminently philosophical. Which ties back into Science Fiction, as SF is, when you get up close and personal to it quite actually Philosophical Fiction.

But then again, one really ought to just has to stick to one’s guns and exclude a lot of stuff too. Stuff like the Hardcore History podcast….

The Hardcore History podcast, produced by Dan Carlin and his increasingly unlikely parter “Ben,” performs auditory miracles of storytelling using absolutely no fiction, or science at all. This is a pure History fan-boy show. There is no reasonable way that a blog about Science Fiction and Fantasy audio can mention this stunningly wonderful bi-monthly (or so) podcast with a straight face. At least not if it wants to pretend to be strictly topical blog. Subscribe via this feed:

http://www.dancarlin.com/dchh.xml

The only way one could post about Hardcore History and even pretend, with any honesty preserved, to be on-topic would be to compare it to an even less related program…

Entitled Opinions (which has just started it’s much anticipated fourth season) is a podcast radio program hosted by Professor Robert Harrison. Harrison teaches in the department of French and Italian and likely has never even read a Science Fiction novel in his life. Therefore I won’t ever mention his podcast here, except for one thing, EQ is a literary talk show that I like. Harrison interviews guests about issues that range from literature and philosophy to politics and sports. I have a feeling that one day, given infinite time, he might talk about SF.

To cap it all off, one feels absolutely flummoxed about a short story like….

To Build A Fire
By Jack London; Read by Betsie Bush
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
A man and his husky, travel through the Klondike in seventy-five below zero weather (Fahrenheit).

This story came to mind after reading another website’s discussion of Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations. The two tales are, essentially, the same ruthless story. That is, in terms of both tales’ focused intent to push naturalism upon the reader’s mind. Except that The Cold Equations is, by every conceivable imagining of the definition, at the very center of Science Fiction. The story has spaceships, planetary colonization, ballistic physics and is set in the future! That surely makes it SF. To Build A Fire has none of these things. It is set in the late 19th century Klondike, is contemporary to when it was written, and it doesn’t have any of the usual SF elements (tech, time travel, etc.). Without any fantastic elements at all can it be SF? Not SF then? Jack London isn’t often considered an SF writer. But, on the other hand it is fiction about science, and the consequences it truly has upon us. Fiction about science? Put another way, that must be SF!

Now, Naturalism as a literary movement, was just developing during the late nineteenth century (when London was writing). Its roots go back to ideas of scientific determinism and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Naturalism contended that human beings are determined by their heredity and the laws of nature and are thus controlled by their environment and their physical makeup rather than by than by appeals to spirituality or even to the power of human reason.

“Natural philosophy,” that’s what science used to be called back before it was called science.

It is my contention then, that “Science Fiction,” and all its relatives, Horror, Fantasy and Noir, (H, F, N) are quite literally philosophical fiction in disguise.

Of course, now it being as the case that I’ve shown in the above good reason as to why SF, and its related capitalized consonants, are all tied into philosophy we ought to forgive a little meta-post like this one, now and again eh?

Posted by Jesse Willis

UPDATE: Hey! Check out this audio interview with Thomas Hibbs (author of a new paperbook about Film Noir entitled Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption). In the interview Hibbs ties Noir and Horror together quite nicely.

2nd Annual SFFaudio Challenge – Make an Audiobook get an Audiobook

SFFaudio Commentary

SFFaudio’s Make An Audiobook Win An Audiobook Challenge #2 The SFFaudio Challenge # 2

We’re back with more FREE AUDIOBOOKS, but in order to get em, you have to work.

At SFFaudio we love UNABRIDGED Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror audiobooks. So we’re going to make you create them. There’s a goldmine of new public domain content available in etext form, but not so much on audio, so comes our 2nd Annual SFFaudio Challenge! Last year’s Challenge netted listeners around the world six previously unrecorded audiobooks. And just like last year’s challenge the 2008 Challenge is designed to prompt burgeoning narrators to record speculative fiction audiobooks that have not yet been released by audiobook publishers.

Remaining Official Challenge Titles:

***CLAIMED BY PAUL MANNERING on DEC. 20th 2007***
Beyond The Black River (A Conan Tale)
By Robert E. Howard
|Gutenberg Project Australia|
Beyond The Black River first appeared in 2-part serial form in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the May and June 1935 issues. Set, as with all the Conan tales, in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age (12,000 years ago) it concerns Conan fighting the savage Hyborian Picts in the unsettled lands beyond the infamous Black River that borders the mightiest kingdom of the Hyborian age, Aquilonia. It is considered an undisputed classic Conan tale and often cited as one of Howard’s best stories.

***CLAIMED BY Morgan Sterling Saletta on NOV. 13th 2008***The Hour Of The Dragon (A Conan Novel)
By Robert E. Howard
|Gutenberg Project Australia|
This, Howard’s only novel, (aka Conan the Conqueror) first appeared as a serial in WEIRD TALES magazine, spread over 5 issues from late 1935 to mid 1936. It takes place when Conan is about forty-five, during his reign as King of Aquilonia, and follows a plot by a group of conspirators to depose him in favor of the heir to Conan’s predecessor who Conan killed to gain the throne. There’s a bit of romance in this one too!

Gladiator
By Philip Wylie
|Arthur’s Classic Novels|
Hugo Danner is a man different from you and me, his scientist father gave him an incredible gift of strength, which isolated him early in life, the novel is his search for his place in the world. It is considered the inspiration for the character Superman and therefore all superhero stories.

***CLAIMED BY PAUL MANNERING on NOV. 21st 2007***
The Dark World
By Henry Kuttner
|Arthur’s Classic Novels|
A 1946 novel about an immortal with amnesia who gains a conscience, has a power struggle with sharply defined and overtly color-schemed characters. Dolloped with generous bloodshed and swordplay, on a planet that is a mixture of Earth and some otherworldly place. Sounds like Zelazny’s Amber books doesn’t it? Indeed, The Dark World influenced Roger Zelazny’s better know novels.

***CLAIMED BY KURT LaRUE on NOV. 11th 2007***
The Time Axis
By Henry Kuttner
|Arthur’s Classic Novels|
The story of four adventurers from the 20th century who face a power of ultimate destruction at the end of time. This was published as an Ace paperback in 1965 but the original magazine publication was in the January 1949 issue of Startling Stories. This is a story of time travel, matter transmitters and “Mechandroids”. Makes use of the Banach-Tarski paradox.

***CLAIMED BY CLAIRE CHAPMAN on JAN. 25th 2008***
The Valley Of The Flame
By Henry Kuttner (writing as Keith Hammond)
|Arthur’s Classic Novels|
A short 1946 novel, 96 pages long. Henry Kuttner’s groundbreaking Fantasy work of time, warriors, women and cats. Kuttner’s writing depicts another world, with a warrior race and man-beings who cannot stand a woman appointed to rule them: Raft wasn’t an imaginative man. He left all that to Dan Craddock, with his Welsh ghosts and his shadow-people of the lost centuries. Still, Raft was a doctor, and when those drums throbbed in the jungle something curious happened here in his little hospital of plastic shacks, smelling of antiseptic.

Last And First Men
By Olaf Stapledon
|Gutenberg Project Australia|
A work of unprecedented scale, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. The story follows a repetitive cycle, with many different civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates genetic engineering, and the idea of superminds composed of many telepathically-linked individuals.

***CLAIMED BY SCOTT CLOUS on OCT. 28th 2008***
Sirius
By Olaf Stapledon
|Gutenberg Project Australia|
A 1944 novel about a dog artificially developed to have superhuman intelligence. Eminently suitable for someone with a British accent.

Last Men in London
By Olaf Stapledon
|Gutenberg Project Australia|
When I am in your world and your epoch I remember often a certain lonely place in my own world, and in the time that I call present. It is a comer where the land juts out into the sea as a confusion of split rocks, like a herd of monsters crowding into the water. Another one where an English accent would be an asset.

***CLAIMED BY The ZOMBIE ASTRONAUT on NOV. 13th 2007***
Police Your Planet
By Lester del Rey
|Project Gutenberg|

***CLAIMED BY GEORDON VanTASSLE on APR. 9th 2008***
The Wailing Asteroid
By Murray Leinster
|Manybooks.net|
First published in 1960. I’ve read the paperback of this one, it is quite fun.

***CLAIMED BY DAVID SOBKOWIAK on NOV. 28th 2007***
Space Prison (AKA The Survivors)
By Tom Godwin
|Manybooks.net|
This one sounds like a winner, A race of humans inadequate to be kept as slaves are left by their captors to perish on an barren and harsh planet. As they die from fever, animal attacks, starvation and sheer stress all that is left to keep the remnant going is the desire for an impossible revenge. Published 1958.

***CLAIMED BY REG PLATT and TEXAS RADIO THEATRE on MARCH 24th 2008***Lone Star Planet
By John Joseph McGuire and H. Beam Piper
Manybooks.net|
Perfect for a narrator with, or who can manufacture, a Texan accent! Winner of a Prometheus Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel. A tongue-in-cheek tale features a planet full of Texans whose dinosaur-sized cattle have to be herded with tanks, and whose system of government derives its character from H.L. Mencken’s essay The Malevolent Jobholder.

Man Of Many Minds
By E. Everett Evans
|Durendal.org|
Originally published in 1953 by Fantasy Press.

Spell of Catastrophe
By Mayer Brenner
|MayerBrenner.com|
A mid-sized funny fantasy novel from 1987 (our only Creative Commons title so far). Because of the Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0) this can’t be released commercially. Bear that in mind before claiming this title in our challenge. <--- THIS NOVEL IS BEING PODCAST BY THE AUTHOR Release Rules

Above are listed the official selections, any one of which, completed promptly, will garner the producer an audiobook a chance for their choice of a Challenge Prize. But, we’ve got a few rules…

1. In order to participate you’ll need to contact me fist, explain which of the titles you’d like to narrate, set a tentative schedule for completion. I will then mark the entry as “claimed”. After the claim has been made you will need to actually release the recording to receive a prize (and the admiration of SFFaudio listeners). Recordings must be by single individuals, unabridged and available to the public, either for free and/or purchase.

2. I cannot absolutely confirm that these titles will be out of copyright in your country. We believe them all (except the single creative commons one) to be public domain in all the major English speaking countries of Earth. Any audiobook produced and released in good faith will be eligible for a prize. If after completing a project you find evidence to the contrary you are still eligible to win a prize. In such cases, where a completed audiobook cannot be publicly released for copyright reasons, you’ll still need to prove to me that it was actually completed and of course fufill all the other eligibility requirements (namely being the creation of an unabridged single voiced narration by a single individual of one of the titles in the Challenge).

3. Entries are judged only upon completion and release. If release is in the form of a serial posting on a server, by podcast or however, the audiobook will not be deemed completed until the entire story, novella, novelette or novel has been posted. Completion time is judged by notification in my email showing where it can be immediately downloaded and or physical receipt of proof of completion (CDs, MP3-CD, etc.) along with evidence that it is available for purchase.

3. The release may be through LibriVox, Podiobooks.com, any other website, your own – or someone else’s podcast, through audible.com or on commercially available CDs or an mp3-cd (or anywhere else available to the public). You can make your recording public domain, like many challengers did last year, or release it commercially. We don’t care how you release it, just that it gets released.

4. In order to qualify for a Challenge Prize you’ll need to get me a copy of the audiobook and show its availability to others – in other words it must actually be released and be shown to be released. Prize winners are judged based on the time of release, not the time you get a copy to me. So, if you’re planning on releasing a complete novel, and you want to spread the podcast of it over six months, your entry will be eligible only after the final chapter is released. If you plan on selling it in a retail chain, or website, great, but until someone can actually buy it your audiobook is not considered “released.”

5. Prizes are given out on a first released, first choice basis. Once our official prizes are exhausted we will probably not be able to furnish a challenger with a prize. But, we have lots of prizes! Prizes will be sent via mail to any address in the world.

6. In the case of two or more Challengers releasing a project on the same day precedence will be determined by the timestamp on the email I receive.

7. A few words about copyright. Here are some rules we used in compiling this Official Challenge Titles list: In Canada: Copyright expires 50 years after the author’s death (50 years ‘post mortem auctoris’). In the USA: All copyrights prior to 1923 have expired. Stories written between the years 1923-1963 the expiration of that copyright is 28 years if the copyright was not renewed. If copyright was renewed, works copyrighted between the years 1923-1963 are still under copyright for an additional 95 years. All works copyrighted between 1964-1977 are copyrighted for 95 years. All works copyrighted between the years 1978 and 2007 are copyrighted for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. Australia: Copyright expires 70 years after the author’s death or 50 years after the author’s death if that death occurred prior to 1955. The United Kingdom: Copyright expires 70 years after the author’s death.

8. There is one creative commons title on this year’s list. Unlike the others this title cannot be released as a copyrighted audiobook. A creative commons release is required. For more details on creative commons click HERE.

9. SFFaudio reserves the right to revise the rules and strike titles from the Challenge Titles list as necessary.

10. As Steve Eley is so fond of saying… “Have fun.”

ADDENDUM RULES:

11. As per rule 9 there is a new rule. A claimant must complete and release their claimed title prior to making another claim. The only exception to this is Paul Mannering’s claim of Beyond The Black River. Mannering claimed a second title before rule 11 existed. [rule 11 added on December 20th 2007]

THE 2nd CHALLENGE PRIZES:

A special thanks goes out to all our PRIZE SPONSORS: Infinivox, Buzzy Multimedia, Blackstone Audiobooks, The HPLHS, Brilliance Audiobooks and Wonder Audiobooks. These are the wonderful prizes they’ve sent us to send you:

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre Presents: H.P. Lovecraft’s
“At The Mountains Of Madness”
Based on the novel by H.P. Lovecraft; FULL CAST
1 CD – 75 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS)
Published: 2007
Bringing Lovecraft’s tale to life as it might have been adapted for radio during his lifetime. In the style of The War Of The Worlds and The Shadow. The CD comes with clippings from a 1930s newspaper chronicling the expedition’s progress in the Antarctic and reproductions of photographs of the ancient city taken by Danforth and Dyer which corroborate their findings. There’s even a reproduction from Danforth’s sketchbook, depicting the Elder Things and their fantastical murals. And of course it’s beautifully produced and packaged with the same deranged attention to detail that you’ll find in other HPLHS products.

A Colder War
By Charles Stross; Read by Pat Bottino
1 CD – 80 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612482
Roger Jourgensen has the same feeling now, as an adult reading this intelligent assessment, that he had as a child, watching the nuclear powered bombers sleeping in their concrete beds. There’s a blurry photograph of a sleeping giant pointed at NATO, more terrifying than any nuclear weapon. SIGNED by CHARLES STROSS!!!

Lobsters
By Charles Stross; Read by Shodra Marie and Jared Doreck
1 CD – Approx. 70 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612466
Themes: / Science Fiction /Technology / Love / Politics /
Manfred Macx comes up with ideas a that will make strangers rich. He does this for free. In return he has virtual immunity from the tyranny of cash. There are drawbacks. The IRS is investigating him because they don’t believe his lifestyle can exist without racketeering. The Southern Baptists Conventions have denounced him as a minion of Satan. And his dominatrix left him for reasons he’s uncertain on. SIGNED by CHARLES STROSS!!!

Antibodies
By Charles Stross; Read by Jared Doreck and Shondra Marie
1 CD – 54 Minutes 16 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612474
Themes: / Science Fiction / Singularity / Conspiracy / Artificial Intelligence / Parallel Worlds /Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when a member of the great and the good is assassinated. You can kill a politician but their ideas usually live on. They have a life of their own. How much more dangerous, then, the ideas of mathematicians? SIGNED by CHARLES STROSS!!!

Local Custom
By Sharon Lee and Steve Miller; Read by Michael Shanks
8 CDs – Approx. 10.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Buzzy Multimedia
Published: 2005
ISBN: 096572557X (CDs)
“Each person shall provide his Clan of origin with a child of his blood, who will be raised by the Clan and belong to the Clan, despite whatever may later occur to place the parent beyond the Clan’s authority. And this shall be Law for every person of every Clan.”

Eifelheim
By Michael Flynn; Read by Anthony Heald
14 CD, 17.5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433206115
In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and was never resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical physicist girlfriend, Sharon, become interested. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn’t. Why? What was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago? A winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award and a Hugo Nominee!

Dark Lord: Book One of the Falconfar Saga
By Ed Greenwood; Read by Christopher Lane
11 CDs – 14 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423348917
When he mysteriously finds himself drawn into a world of his own devising, writer Rod Everlar is confronted by a shocking truth – he has lost control of his creation to a brooding cabal of evil. In order to save his creation – and himself – he must seize control of Falconfar and halt the spread of corruption before it’s too late. Dark Lord is the first epic installment in The Falconfar Saga from bestselling author Ed Greenwood.

Anthropological Note
By Murray Leinster; Read by Tara Platt
1 MP3 – 54 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audiobooks
Published: 2007
Miss Cummings, a female anthropologist, is set down in the middle of a Venusian Krug village to study the alien culture…

Beyond Lies the Wub & The Hanging Stranger
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Mac Kelly
1 MP3 – 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audiobooks
Published: 2007
A trading spaceship often has to carry unusual cargo. But none as strange as the blubberous pig-like alien known as the wub….

Coming Attraction
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Paul Jenkins
1 MP3 – 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audiobooks
Published: 2007
In a future New York City, an Englishman saves a girl from a speeding coupe with fish hooks on its fender…

The Wind People
1 MP3 – 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audiobooks
Published: 2007
To save her newborn son, Dr. Helen Murray has to remain behind on an alien world….

COMPLETED TITLES:

The Blue Tower
By Evelyn E. Smith; Read by Betsie Bush
Completed: November 30th 2007
1 |MP3| Approx. 34.5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Claimed: November 18th 2007
Completed: November 30th 2007
The Belphins came from the stars, they are the caretakers of humanity – but not everyone thinks they should rule.

Queen Of The Black Coast (A Conan Novelette)
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Bill Hollweg
|GET IT HERE|
Claimed: November 15th 2007
Completed: Dec 12th 2007
In the seacoast kingdom of Argos, after a brush with the Hyborian legal system, Conan hops aboard a southward bound ship. Off the coasts of Kush the ship is boarded by black corsairs under the Shemitish she-devil, Bêlit. Conan joins her crew, becomes her consort, and for a long time they harry the Hyborian and Stygian ports. During this stage of his career, Conan gains the name of Amra, the Lion, which is to follow him throughout his later life.

Red Nails – A Tale Of Conan
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Mark Kalita
|GET IT HERE|
Claimed: November 20th 2007
Completed: January 6th 2008
“Red Nails, a tale featuring the legendary Conan the Barbarian, was written by Robert E. Howard and began its written serialization in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales. This thrilling audio novella begins with pirate-adventuress Valeria of the Red Brotherhood on the run after slaying a notable brigand. She is followed by Conan and the two soon fight their way to a great, walled city inhabited by two warring peoples. The adventure seekers soon find themselves embroiled in the feud and mayhem ensues as the city’s rulers make unholy plans for the mighty Cimmerian and his feisty female companion. Listen now as an ancient evil returns from oblivion and a wicked sorceress seeks to gain immortality at the cost of our Hyborian heroes!”

Time Crime
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Nathan Lowell
Podiobook – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: March 2008
“The Paratime Police had a real headache this time! Tracing one man in a population of millions is easy—compared to finding one gang hiding out on one of billions of probability lines! This story from 1955 has rocket ships, time travel, slaves, post-hypnotic suggestions, drugged citizens, and a complete disregard for human rights. And those are the good guys. As a look back in time at “classic” science fiction, it’s an interesting snapshot of a time when tobacco was common, sexism was unconscious, and female characters were a long way from Lara Croft.”

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

Legacy
By James H. Schmitz; Read by Maureen O’Brien
29 Zipped MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: January 2008 – July 2008
Strange ancient machines possessing vast power have been discovered. Ruthless people want to control them. Governments, industries, and universities claw for jurisdiction, and scientists for discoveries and status. Trigger Argee just wants to go home and see her boyfriend — but first, she’s got a lot of mess to sort out.

Space Viking
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 7.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 6th 2008
A galactic war has left the Terran Federation in ruins. Formerly civilized planets have decivilized into barbarism. Space Vikings roam the wreckage, plundering and killing for gain. Lord Lucas Trask of Traskon was no admirer of the Space Vikings, but when murder takes his wife on his wedding day, Trask trades everything he has for his own Space Viking ship and sets out on a galaxy-wide quest for revenge.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/space-viking-by-h-beam-piper.xml

Space Tug
By Murray Leinster; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
11 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – 6 Hours 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 16th, 2008
Joe Kenmore heard the airlock close with a sickening wheeze and then a clank. In desperation he turned toward Haney. “My God, we’ve been locked out!” Through the transparent domes of their space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and disbelief pass across Haney’s face. But it was true! Joe and his crew were locked out of the Space Platform. Four thousand miles below circled the Earth. Under Joe’s feet rested the solid steel hull of his home in outer space. But without tools there was no hope of getting back inside. Joe looked at his oxygen meter. It registered thirty minutes to live.

Subscribe to the podcast:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/space-tug-by-murray-leinster.xml

The Wood Beyond the World
By William Morris; Read by Cori Samuel
12 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 9th, 2008
The Wood Beyond The World is a fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first modern fantasy writer to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. His use of archaic language has been seen by some modern readers as making his fiction difficult to read, but brings a wonderful atmosphere to the telling. Morris considered his fantasies a revival of the medieval tradition of chivalrous romances. In consequence, they tend to have sprawling plots of strung-together adventures. In this story, Walter leaves his father and his own unfaithful wife and sets sail in search of adventure. This he finds aplenty, encountering love, treachery and magic in the Wood of the title and travelling through the Mountains of the Folk of the Bears. But can he find happiness and peace by means of this Quest?

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-wood-beyond-the-world-by-william-morris.xml

The Cairn on the Headland
By Robert E. Howard; Read by David Drage
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Dial P For Pulp
Podcast: March 2008
What lies beneath the stone cairn on the headland of Clontarf, where the Christian Irish defeated the pagan Vikings in pitched battle a thousand years ago? An unscrupulous extortionist plans to uncover the secret. First published in the January 1933 issue of Strange Tales of Mystery And Terror magazine.

Posted by Jesse Willis

SFFaudio.com Promo MP3

SFFaudio News

Meta SFFaudio This may be a first, a promo for a website. SFFaudio does not podcast, but we’ve been asked more than a few times to give a promo to podcasts and radio shows that we talk about. Now we can reply with an actual professionally recorded promo – created for us by Gregg Taylor of Decoder Ring Theatre. If you’re a podcaster, have a radio show or are podcasting your novel plug our slick 33 second promo |MP3| into your show and we’ll add yours to the list of promoters below along with a link to where listeners can hear your promo (if you have one).

The penultimate installment Look Into The Sun on James Patrick Kelly‘s Free Reads podcast has just run our promo! Listen to a promo for JPk’s Free Reads podcast and StoryPod (an Audible Podcast) |MP3|.

The Sci Phi Show podcast has played our promo! Here’s the The Sci Phi Show‘s own promo |MP3|.

The LibriVox community podcast has played our promo! Here’s a link to the FLASH animation promo for LibriVox.

The Sonic Society podcast has played our promo. Here’s the SS promo |MP3|.

The Beam Me Up podcast and radio show in Rockland Maine has played our promo.

KFAI’s Sound Affects – A Radio Playground has played our promo! Tune in to Sound Affects between 9:30-10:30 PM (Central Time) in the Minneapolis/St. Paul. region – 90.3 FM Minneapolis, 106.7 FM St. Paul. Listen to the hilarious promo for it (performed by the original Arthur Dent) |MP3|.

Ken Newquist of the Nuketown Radioactive podcast has played our promo! Here’s the Nuketown Promo |MP3|.

Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine has played our promo! Woot! Here’s the vintage, but oh-so-cool promo |MP3| for EPod!

The Slice Of Sc-Fi podcast has played our promo! Go check out Slice Of Sci-Fi’s site the best source on the net for news about TV and Movie SF.

The Dial P For Pulp podcast has played our podcast! Listen to its own pulpy promo |MP3|.

The Forgotten Classics podcast has played our promo! Go have a listen to this thoughtful literary podcast.

The Frequency Of Fear podcast, hosted by the zero-g zombie with an A+ podcast has played our promo! Listen to this fantastically awesome promo for TFoF |MP3|. Yarrrg!

The Time Traveler Show has played the SFFaudio promo! Joy! Have a listen to a modern |MP3| and vintage |MP3| versions of The Time Traveler Show‘s own promos.

Dragon Page – Cover To Cover has played our promo! This venerable program doesn’t seem to have a promo so I’m going to plug the show with their podcast feed: http://www.dragonpage.com/podcastC2C.xml

Jack Mangan’s Deadpan podcast has played our promo! Why not have a listen to the deadpanningest podcast on Earth!?!?!

The Rev Up Review has played our promo! Have a listen to the RuR promo then go subscribe!

Paul Campbell of Cossmass Productions‘ Estavlin’s Legacy (a podcast audio drama) and Rebels Of The Red Planet (a podcast novel from the SFFaudio Challenge) has played our promo a half dozen times! We love Paul! Here are his promos for Estavlin’s Legacy |MP3| and Rebels Of The Red Planet |MP3|.

Bill Hollweg from Broken Sea Audio Productions‘ podcast of The Planet Of The Apes has played our promo on the final installment of their fan amalgam of the Pierre Boule novel and the Michael Wilson/Rod Serling film. You can subscribe to the podcast via this feed:
http://www.brokensea.com/planetoftheapes/feed

Ulysses Galactic Guides and Bounties, one of Broken Sea Audio Production`s many original audio drama podcasts has played our promo! Check out the show HERE.

The Buffy Between The Lines podcast audio drama has played our promo! Check out the show and the promo |MP3|. Buffy Between The Lines is a fan-created by Buffy fans from around the world. Each season focuses on the “summer” spaces between the seasons of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series. Cool huh?

Dani Cutler’s Truth Seekers podcast has played our promo! Have a listen to the Truth Seeker’s promo |MP3|.

PodioMedia Chat has played our promo (in advance of airing the interview with me, Jesse Willis). Have a listen to PMC’s |MP3| promo!

Posted by Jesse Willis