Orson Scott Card’s October essay is available over on Audible.com. His subject this month is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Sirens Of Titan!
“The job that science fiction is supposed to make us rethink reality, make us live in a different universe”
You can check it out on the site itself, or simply listen direct |MP3|. Sirens Of Titan is literary fiction using SF set-dressing – Card promises we’ll love it, even when we hate it.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
6 CDs – 6.8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433248221
Not too long from now, when exiles from a blistering Earth huddle miserably in Martian colonies, the only things that make life bearable are the drugs. Can-D “translates” those who take it into the bodies of Barbie-like dolls. Now there’s competition: a substance called Chew-Z, marketed under the slogan “God promises eternal life. We can deliver it.” The question is: What kind of eternity? And who—or what—is the deliverer?
In this wildly disorienting fun house of a novel, populated by God-like—or perhaps satanic—take-over artists and corporate psychics, Philip K. Dick explores mysteries that were once the property of St. Paul and Aquinas. His wit, compassion, and knife-edged irony make this novel moving as well as genuinely visionary.
The Call of Earth
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
9 CDs – 10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433218781
For millennia, the planet Harmony has been protected by the Oversoul, an artificial intelligence programmed to prevent thoughts of war and conquest from threatening the fragile remnant of Earth’s peoples. But as the Oversoul’s systems have begun to fail, a great warrior has arisen to challenge its bans. Using forbidden technology, the ambitious and ruthless General Moozh has won control of an army and is aiming it at the city of Basilica.
Basilica remains in turmoil. Wetchik and his sons are not strong enough to stop an army. As Lady Rasa, through whom the Oversoul speaks, attempts to defeat Moozh through intrigue, Naifeh and his family prepare to voyage to the stars in search of the planet called Earth.
2012: The War for Souls
By Whitley Strieber; Read by Joe Barrett
10 CDs – 11.7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433234842
December 21, 2012, may be one of the most watched dates in history. Every 26,000 years, earth lines up with the exact center of our galaxy. At 11:11 on December 21, 2012, this event happens again, and the ancient Mayans calculated that it would mark the end not only of this age but also of human consciousness as we know it. What will actually happen? Now Whitley Strieber explores 2012 in a riveting roller-coaster ride of fiction.
A mysterious alien presence unexpectedly bursts out of sacred sites all over the world and begins to rip human souls from their bodies, plunging the world into chaos. As courage meets cowardice and loyalty meets betrayal, heroes emerge, villains reveal themselves, and in the end something completely unexpected happens that lifts the characters into a new life—and sounds a real-world warning for the future.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Orson Scott Card’s September essay is available over on Audible.com. His subject this month is Larry Niven’s Protector!
“Larry Niven spews out incredible ideas the way other writers spew out commas and periods”
You can check it out on the site itself, or simply listen direct |MP3|. Protector isn’t just one of Larry Niven’s finest novels, it is one of the finest novels in all of SF. Check out our review of the audiobook version HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Orson Scott Card’s August essay is up on Audible.com. His subject is Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes!
You can check it out on the site itself, or just have a listen |MP3|. In what may be a world exclusive, Card compares the writing styles of Ray Bradbury to Isaac Asimov. And, there’s mention of the new Stefan Rudnicki narrated edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Posted by Jesse Willis
A pentaverate from Blackstone Audio! :)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
By Jules Verne; Read by Simon Prebble
7 CDs – 7.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433243806
Geologist Otto Lidenbrock is perusing an ancient Icelandic manuscript when he discovers a mysterious encrypted note. The message reveals the account of a sixteenth-century explorer who claims to have found a passageway to the center of the earth.
In his quest to penetrate the planet’s primordial secrets, the impetuous professor, together with his quaking nephew, Axel, and their devoted guide, Hans, sets off immediately for Iceland. Descending through the belly of a volcano into the bowels of the Earth, they discover an astonishing subterranean world of prehistoric proportions.
A classic of science fiction that helped give birth to the genre, this imaginative speculation on the earth’s nature is both a rousing adventure story and an apt portrait of the psychology of the questing scientist.
Wyrms
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Emily Janice Card
9 CDs – 11.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433218542
The sphere is alien in origin but has been controlled by Man for millennia. A legend as old as the stars rules this constructed world: when the seventh seventh seventh human heptarch is crowned, he will be the Kristos and will bring either salvation or destruction.
Patience is the only daughter of the rightful heptarch, but she, like her father, serves the usurper who has destroyed her family, for she believes that duty to one’s race is more important than duty to one’s self. But the time for prudence has passed, and Patience must journey to the heart-soul of this planet to confront her own destiny and her world’s.
The Man in the High Castle
By Philip K Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
7 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433214523
It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that first established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction, breaking the barrier between genre fiction and the serious novel of ideas. Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.
Already Dead
By Charlie Huston; Read by Scott Brick
8 CDs – 9 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433235795
From the Battery to the Bronx, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe Pitt is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. Now some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. It ain’t easy going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan. But it’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition and finds himself searching for a little rich girl who’s gone missing. Now anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, a crazy cult is stalking him, and Joe’s got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the sun comes up.
Winterfair Gifts
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
2 CDs – 2.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433250170
This Hugo-nominated novella adds a delightful extra chapter to Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, describing the wedding of Miles and Ekaterin and events leading up to it.
In the festive season of Winterfair on the planet Barrayar, Lord Miles Vorkosigan is making elaborate preparations for his wedding. The long-awaited event stirs up romance and intrigue among his eccentric family and friends, particularly for bioengineered space mercenary Sergeant Taura and shy, diffident Armsman Roic. But Miles also has an enemy who is plotting to turn the romantic ceremony into a festival of death.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Orson Scott Card’s latest aural essay is up on Audible.com. This month it’s all about Robert A. Heinlein, and his pick is Podkayne of Mars!
Go check it out, or just have a listen |MP3| to hear what Card thinks about RAH and Poddy both and then be sure check out the new Blackstone Audio’s release of Podkayne of Mars (it’s already on Audible.com, but hasn’t hit their hardcopy shelf yet)! It’s a terrific juvie.
Posted by Jesse Willis