Scott Danielson has been writing about audiobooks for donkey’s years. Starting back in November he got one more outlet for his itchy fingers. His column in a new online Science Fiction and Fantasy review magazine called The Fix is cleverly titled “Audiobook Fix“. December is the second month of publication – in the latest column (December) you’ll find he covers the Writers of the Future, Vol. 23 audiobook and A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card. Find it here!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The holiday season is upon us. Don’t forget that favorite stocking stuffer―audiobooks. The gift of the word that can be heard!
A War of Gifts
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Scott Brick and Stefan Rudnicki
2 CDs, 2.5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781593976316
LISTEN TO A CLIP!
The children come from many nations and many religions; and while they are being trained for war, religious conflict between them is not on the curriculum. But Dink Meeker, one of the older students, doesn’t see it that way. He thinks that giving gifts isn’t exactly a religious observation, and on Sinterklaaus Day he tucks a present into another student’s shoe.
This small act of rebellion sets off a battle royal between the students and the staff, but some surprising alliances form when Ender comes up against a new student, Zeck Morgan. The War over Santa Claus will force everyone to make a choice. This audiobook is a must-give stocking stuffer for every Ender fan on your Christmas list.
Magic Kingdom for Sale – Sold
By Terry Brooks; Read by Dick Hill
12 CDs -14 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audiobooks
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423350125
Landover was a genuine magic kingdom, with fairy folk and wizardry, just as the advertisement promised. But after he purchased it, Ben Holiday learned that there were a few details the ad had failed to mention.
The kingdom was in ruin. The Barons refused to recognize the king, and the peasants were without hope. A dragon was laying waste the countryside, while an evil witch plotted to destroy everything.
Ben’s only followers were the incompetent Court Magician; Abernathy, the talking dog who served as Court Scribe; and the lovely Willow – but she had a habit of putting down roots in the moonlight and turning into a tree. The Paladin, legendary champion of the Kings of Landover, seemed to be only a myth and an empty suit of armor.
Metal Swarm; Book Six in the Saga fo Seven Suns
By Kevin J. Anderson; Read by David Colacci
16 CDs -19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audiobooks
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781597372275
For years, the alien Klikiss robots have pretended to be humanity’s friends, but their seeming “help” allowed them to plant an insidious Trojan Horse throughout the Earth Defense Forces. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating war, swarms of ancient black robots built by the lost insectoid Klikiss race continue their depredations on helpless worlds with stolen and heavily armed Earth battleships.
Among the humans, the Hansas’ brutal Chairman struggles to crush any resistance even as King Peter breaks away to form his own new Confederation among the colonies who have declared their independence.
And meanwhile, the original, voracious Klikiss race, long thought to be extinct, has returned, intent on conquering their former worlds and willing to annihilate anyone in the way.
Stoneheart; Book One in the Stoneheart Trilogy
By Charlie Fletcher; Read by Jim Dale
Playaway Digital-10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2007.
Here’s an audiobook we received from Playaway. We reviewed the Playaway earlier this month. Read the review.
We also have a special discount code for first time purchasers.
To receive 20% off, just go to www.playawaydigital.com and during checkout enter this code:
SFFaudio20
This title is also available as a 6 CD set from the publisher, Scholastic. And yes, Jim Dale is the ever-popular narrator of the Harry Potter series.
A city has many lives and layers. London has more than most. Not all the layers are underground, and not all the lives belong to the living. Twelve-year-old George Chapman is about to find this out the hard way. When George breaks the head from a stone dragon he awakes an ancient power that has been dormant for centuries. Now that George has disturbed the fragile truce between the warring statues of London, he is forced into a race for survival where nothing is what it seems and and it´s never clear who to trust. And this is just the beginning as the statues of London awake…
We constantly get great stuff from Blackstone. Every few weeks we seem to get a title by Orson Scott Card or Lois McMaster Bujold. I decided to check their site to see how many audiobooks by these authors they have published recently. The tally:
Orson Scott Card-13 unabridged audiobooks
Lois McMaster Bujold-13 unabridged audibooks
And the great authors keep coming in!
Something Wicked This Way Comes
By Ray Bradbury;
Performed by Jerry Robbins and the Colonial Radio Players
2 CDs – 2 Hours [AUDIODRAMA]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210792
“By the pricking of my thumbs…something wicked this way comes.”
Ray Bradbury has dramatized his literary classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes, into this first-class audio drama, produced by The Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air, complete with a full cast, sound effects, and original music.
“Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show” comes to Greentown, Illinois, one week before Halloween. Two boys, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, soon discover the evil of this carnival, which promises to make your every wish and dream come true. But with those wishes and dreams comes a price that must be paid. Behind the mirrors and the mazes is the nightmare of a lifetime.
Invasive Procedures
By Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston;
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs, 12 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210822
George Galen is a brilliant scientist, a pioneer in gene therapy. But Galen is dangerously insane. He has created a method to alter human DNA, not just to heal diseases, but also to “improve” people: make them stronger, make them able to heal more quickly…and make them compliant to his will.
Frank Hartman is also a brilliant virologist, working for the government’s ultra-secret biohazard agency. He has discovered how to neutralize Galen’s DNA-changing virus. Now he is the one man who stands in the way of Galen’s plan to “improve” the entire human race.
This taut thriller takes the listener a few years into the future and shows the promise and danger of new genetic medicine techniques.
Rocannon’s World
By Ursula K. LeGuin; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
5 CDs, 5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210822
A good week at SFFaudio!
Space Boy
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
2 CDs -2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207648
Is it space travel that children dream of, or merely visiting other worlds? Todd had always set his heart on being an astronaut, but when he meets an alien and travels to another world, he doesn’t use a spaceship; he just hangs out in his own back yard.
In Space Boy, Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, takes listeners into a strange and wonderful future, where people from another world regularly visit Earth, usually without being noticed. And when humans travel to their world, they find themselves dangerously weak and powerless, until Todd finds a way to set both worlds to rights.
By turns funny and painful, Space Boy is Card at his best, exploring human nature for the entertainment of readers young and old.
A Civil Campaign
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
16 CDs – 19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207099
Lord Miles Vorkosigan has a problem that all his new power can’t solve: unrequited love for the beautiful Vor widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Ekaterin is violently allergic to marriage as a result of her first exposure. But as Miles learned from his late career in galactic covert ops, if a frontal assault won’t do, go to subterfuge.
Miles has a cunning plan, which, of course, has to be worked out in between District succession scandals and plans for the Emperor’s wedding. And if no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, just imagine what all Miles’s friends and relatives can do to his romantic strategy.
Master of Space and Time
By Rudy V. B. Rucker; Read by Scott Grunden
5 CDs – 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207709
Madcap inventor Harry Gerber is hopeless when it comes to surviving in the real world. So he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe. Assisted by his straight-men co-conspirators, Joe Fletcher and the comely Sondra Tupperware, and powered by gluons—the stuff that holds our very atoms together—Gerber creates a blunzer, enabling him to change the very nature of reality.
From a mirror-image world where sluglike parasites make slaves of humanity, to trees and bushes that grow fries and pork chops, to a rain of fish, Master of Space and Time takes listeners on the ultimate joyride. But once the gluons at the core of Harry’s creation run out, disaster looms for Harry and his friends.
High physics and high jinks combine for a wild voyage that blurs the line between science and magic.
Blood Fever
By Karen Marie Moning; Read by Joyce Bean
8 CDs – 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423341932
MacKayla Lane’s ordinary life underwent a complete makeover when she landed on Ireland’s shores and was plunged into a world of deadly sorcery and ancient secrets.
In her fight to stay alive, Mac must find the Sinsar Dubh – a million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, which holds the key to power over both the world of the Fae and of Man. Pursued by Fae assassins, surrounded by mysterious figures she knows she cannot trust, Mac finds herself torn between two deadly and irresistible men: V’lane, the insatiable Fae who can turn sensual arousal into an obsession for any woman, and the ever-inscrutable Jericho Barrons, a man as alluring as he is mysterious.
For centuries the shadowy realm of the Fae has coexisted with that of humans. Now the walls between the two are coming down, and Mac is the only thing that stands between them….
This first one has me chompin’ on the bit!
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson; Read by Robertson Dean and Yuri Rasovsky
10 CD, 11 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433203299
In Matheson’s vampire classic I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and transformed the unfortunate survivors into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire, hungry for Neville’s blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?
This recording also includes a sampling of other horror stories by Richard Matheson, some comic, all scary: “Buried Talents,” “The Near Departed,” “Prey,” “Witch War,” “Dance of the Dead,” “Dress of White Silk,” “Mad House,” “The Funeral,” “From Shadowed Places,” and “Person to Person.”
Heartfire; Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 5
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Full Cast
10 CD, 12 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207730
Peggy is a Torch, able to see the fire burning in each person’s heart. She can follow the paths of each person’s future, and know each person’s most intimate secrets. From the moment of Alvin Maker’s birth, when the Unmaker first strove to kill him, she has protected him. Now they are married, and Peggy is a part of Alvin’s heart as well as his life. But Alvin’s destiny has taken them on separate journeys. Alvin has gone north into New England, where knacks are considered witchcraft and their use is punished with death. Peggy has been drawn south, to the British Crown Colonies and the court of King Arthur Stuart in exile. For she has seen a terrible future bloom in the heartfires of every person in America, a future of war and destruction. One slender path exists that leads through the bloodshed, and it is Peggy’s quest to set the world on the path to peace.
Genesis of Shannara; Elves of Cintra, Book 2
By Terry Brooks; Read by Phil Gigante
12 CD, Approx. 14 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brillance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423322658
Across the ruined landscape that is America – hopelessly poisoned, plague-ridden, burned, and besieged by demon armies bent on exterminating all mortal life – two pilgrims have been summoned to serve the embattled cause of good. Logan Tom has journeyed to desolate Seattle to protect a ragged band of street urchins and the being known as the gypsy morph, who is both mortal and magical, and destined to save mankind unless he is destroyed. Likewise, Angel Perez has her own quest, one that will take her from the wreckage of Los Angeles to a distant, secret place untouched by the horrors of the nationwide blight – a place where the race of Elves has dwelled since before man existed. But close behind these lone Knights of the Word swarm the ravening forces of the Void.
As the menacing thunder of war drums heralds the arrival of the demons and their brutal minions in Seattle, the young survivors who call themselves the Ghosts are forced to brave the dangerous world of gangs, mutants, and worse to escape the invasion. And Logan Tom must infiltrate a refugee compound to rescue Hawk, the leader of the street urchins, who has yet to learn the truth about who and what he is. Meanwhile, Angel Perez has joined an equally urgent mission: to find the Ellcrys, a fabled talisman crucial to protecting the Elven realm against an influx of unspeakable evil from the dread dimension known as the Forbidding. But Angel and her Elven allies must beware – for a demon spy, with a monstrous creature at its command, walks among them.
Audible.com has posted a new FREE audio interview/conversation between audiobook narrator Stefan Rudnicki and SF authors Orson Scott Card and Ben Bova. The talk is predominately about the role and value of audiobooks in the greater reading environment. Also covered is Card’s love of audiobooks (he’s a big big fan), Bova’s role in the creation of the Ender franchise and place of religion is science and Science Fiction. You can get the audio for it right HERE (but of course you’ll need to have an audible account).
Audible also tells us that: “Bova’s new book, The Aftermath (Book Four of The Asteroid Wars), is now available in audio at Audible.” That’s one of the many titles produced by Rudnicki for Audio Renaissance. OSC’s next “Ender” novel, A War of Gifts, will be released through Audio Renaissance and Audble October 30th 2007.
