Mur Lafferty – SFFaudio

Review of The End is Nigh

SFFaudio Review

The End is Nigh (Apocalypse Triptych #1)
Edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey (full author and performer list below)
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing
Publication Date: 8 April 2014
[UNABRIDGED] – 15 hours, 8 minutes

Themes: / apocalypse / destruction / short stories /

Publisher summary:

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.

But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild.

Table of contents and audiobook narrator listings copied directly from John Joseph Adams’ website. If you want more detailed summaries of each story, I found the review at Tangent very good, particularly because it is so hard to keep track of short stories when you are listening instead of reading!

The audio was an incredible asset to this anthology, although I will probably also need to buy this for my shelf o’ anthologies. The best in audio are Removal Order, BRING HER TO ME, and The Fifth Day of Deer Camp.

My favorite stories were BRING HER TO ME and Goodnight Moon.

I’m most interested in the next installment (so please let there be a next installment) of Removal Order, Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through, and Spores.

What do I mean by next installment? The End is Nigh is the first volume of a triptych. It will be followed by The End is Now and The End Has Come, with some authors contributing linked stories. Very exciting concept, and as the Queen of Apocalypse there is no way I couldn’t read this.

Here are my more detailed impressions, story by story!

The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Shambling Guide to New York City
By Mur Lafferty; Read by Mur Lafferty

We’re on chapter 8 as the audiobook comes out week by week on |iTunes as a podcast|. If you want to hear this audiobook don’t wait to download it. Mur Lafferty’s agreement with the publisher is that she can only leave the audio files up for a week after she finishes all the chapters on the podcast. So get it while the getting is good.

So far I am enjoying this a lot. It is not another of those “the world is covered with zombies and we’re all just trying to survive” books. The supernatural world is existing camouflaged alongside ours, as we can anticipate from watching our heroine try to get a job writing travel guides.

I enjoyed Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps as a light take on superhero adventures, which were all the craze at the time. Shambling Guide seems like a similar take on the current zombie craze in literature so I look forward to seeing what sort of adventure tale is spun.

So far, this seems like a light, fun read that I would give to my mother or sister (who do not delve as deeply as I do into urban fantasy). And, depending on where the story goes, I might even pick up the print copy for my own shelves.

The book is available on on Audible, too.

Posted by Julie D.

With A Little Help by Cory Doctorow (and his friends)

SFFaudio Online Audio

Check out the impressive list of narrators reading the stories in this new FREE short story collection from Cory Doctorow. The Neil Gaiman read story, The Right Book, takes on the future of books, ebooks and publishing. The Wil Wheaton read story, Scroogled, imagines a future (or perhaps present) in which your Google searches shall be held against you in the airport security screening, free wi-fi and webcams everywhere means you’ve constantly surveilled and Cardinal Richelieu get’s his revenge. This is a very cool project.

I’ve added a HuffDuffer podcast feed for the the entire collection or pick and choose individual stories.

With A Little Help
By Cory Doctorow; Read by various
14 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 10 Hours 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Craphound.com
Published: December 7, 2010
With A Little Help is my first serious experiment in self-publishing. I’ve published many novels, short story collections, books of essays and so on with publishers, and it’s all been very good and satisfying and educational and so on, but it seems like it’s time to try something new. With A Little Help consists of 12 stories, all reprints except for “Epoch” (commissioned by Mark Shuttleworth) This book is also available as a limited edition hardcover, a free ebook (in several formats) and an audiobook. It is licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Download the book, buy the limited edition hardcover and audiobooks at craphound.com/walh. This cover by Rick Lieder. Three other covers available.

Podcast feed: http://huffduffer.com/tags/with_a_little_help/rss

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

1. Introduction
By Jonathan Coulton; Read by Jonathan Coulton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

2. The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Hugh A.D. Spencer
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

3. The Right Book
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Neil Gaiman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

4. Other Peoples’ Money
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Mur Lafferty
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

5. Scroogled
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Wil Wheaton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

6. Human Readable
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Spider Robinson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

7. Liberation Spectrum
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Leo Laporte
1 |MP3| – Approx. 55 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

8. Power Punctuation!
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

9. Visit The Sins
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Roy Trumbull
1 |MP3| – Approx. 49 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

10. Constitutional Crisis
By Cory Doctorow; Read by J.C. Hutchins
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

11. Pester Power
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Mary Robinette Kowal
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

12. Chicken Little
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Emily Hurson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 2 Hours 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

13. Epoch
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Jesse Brown
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

14. Afterword: I’m Only In It For The Money
By Russell Galen; Read by Russell Galen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

[Thanks tamahome02000‎!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

I Should Be Writing interviews Scott Sigler

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing interviews Scott Sigler. |MP3|

You can subscribe to the podcast at this URL:

http://isbw.murlafferty.com/feed/

Posted by Charles Tan

I Should Be Writing Interviews Scott Sigler

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing interviews Scott Sigler (Contagious). |MP3|

You can subscribe to the podcast at this URL:

http://isbw.murlafferty.com/feed/

Posted by Charles Tan

The Living Dead anthology being AUDIOBOOKED

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Living Dead is a paperbook anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. Here’s the premise from the book’s introduction:

“Most of the stories in this book are either inspired by Romero’s ‘unholy trilogy’—Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead—or are a reaction to it.”

There are 34 stories in the anthology. Three are currently available in audio form from Pseudopod and WBAI 99.5 FM’s Hour Of The Wolf (there are two different readings of the David Barr Kirtley story BTW).

Here’s the Table of Contents with the AUDIO adaptations noted:

* Introduction by John Joseph Adams
* This Year’s Class Picture by Dan Simmons
* Some Zombie Contingency Plans by Kelly Link
* Death and Suffrage by Dale Bailey
* Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie
* Blossom by David J. Schow
* The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
* The Dead by Michael Swanwick
* The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer
* Malthusian’s Zombie by Jeffrey Ford
* Beautiful Stuff by Susan Palwick
* Sex, Death and Starshine by Clive Barker
* Stockholm Syndrome by David Tallerman; Read by Cheyenne Wright |MP3|
* Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead by Joe Hill
* Those Who Seek Forgiveness by Laurell K. Hamilton
* In Beauty, Like the Night by Norman Partridge
* Prairie by Brian Evenson
* Everything is Better With Zombies by Hannah Wolf Bowen; Read by Mur Lafferty |MP3|
* Home Delivery by Stephen King
* Less Than Zombie by Douglas E. Winter
* Sparks Fly Upward by Lisa Morton
* Meathouse Man by George R. R. Martin
* Deadman’s Road by Joe R. Lansdale
* The Skull-Faced Boy by David Barr Kirtley; Read by David Barr Kirtley |MP3|
* The Skull-Faced Boy by David Barr Kirtley; Read by Ralph Walters |MP3|
* The Age of Sorrow by Nancy Kilpatrick
* Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman
* She’s Taking Her Tits to the Grave by Catherine Cheek
* Dead Like Me by Adam-Troy Castro
* Zora and the Zombie by Andy Duncan
* Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite
* Followed by Will McIntosh
* The Song the Zombie Sang by Harlan Ellison® and Robert Silverberg
* Passion Play by Nancy Holder
* Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man by Scott Edelman
* How the Day Runs Down by John Langan

Here’s more:

From WBAI 99.5 FM’s Hour Of The Wolf and David Barr Kirtley’s podcast:

A discussion of the book (with editor John Joseph Adams, author David Barr Kirtley and host Jim Freund) at |MP3|

Listener calls |MP3|

And, here’s the “Zombieriffic” claymation video that was mentioned in the listener calls…

Posted by Jesse Willis