The SFFaudio Podcast #016

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #016 – is really strange and very good – we talk about Dean Koontz, talking dogs, praise Robert J. Sawyer, his audiobooks and much more! Book covers, cover art, they matter!

Talked about on today’s show:
Audible.com, the new Audible Frontiers new releases, review of The Speed Of Dark, Mary Robinette Kowal, Blackstone Audio, The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick, Star Trek, Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, Peter F. Hamilton, Star Wars, Mike Resnick, The Last Colony, John Scalzi, Zoe’s Tale, William Dufris, Anathem, Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward, Tantor Media, A Case Of Conscience, James Blish, 100% FREE Audiobook Black River by Dean Koontz (which is an SF suspense novella), Microsoft’s Zune now compatible with Audible.com, Dean Koontz, Dragon Tears, Jay O. Sanders, talking dogs, our new DEAN KOONTZ author page, Intensity, Seize The Night, Fear Nothing, Dean Koontz short stories that should be audiobooked: Nightmare Gang, Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, RJS’ Flashforward as a TV series? = they’ll do it like the did The 4400, CERN, RJS predicted the current pope!, murder mystery Science Fiction, Illegal Alien, review of Calculating God, Golden Fleece, dinosaurs, Robert J. Sawyer’s weakest novel = End Of An Era (?), review of The Terminal Experiment, Wake, the WWW trilogy, available RJS audiobooks, Shed Skin, BBC Radio documentary on Wikipedia: The Wikipedia Story, Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation, The Wordy Shipmates, Vowelette, what “they” are doing wrong with audiobooks: no table of contents sux! No map sux!, Stefan Rudnicki‘s Skyboat Productions, Resonance, A.J. Scudiere, geology, magnetic polar reversal, review of Posing As People, Orson Scott Card, Mike Resnick’s Audible.com editorial, Stalking The Unicorn, Stalking The Vampire, cover art matters, Total Dick Head’s 2 hour celebration of Philip K. Dick’s 80th birthday.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Morphology, longevity, incept dates: Philip K. Dick’s 80th birthday

SFFaudio Online Audio

Pirate Cat RadioPirate Cat Radio has an interview with David Gill of the Philip K. Dick devotional blog Total Dick Head. The interview aired on Friday December 12 from 11:59pm to 2am. Have a listen to the |MP3| in celebration of the Philip K. Dick’s 80th birthday.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Release – Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick, read by Rudnicki

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals 

Mr SpaceshipMr. Spaceship
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
72 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2008

The war continues as a stalemate. The Yucconae, an alien race, are living organisms that can traverse outer space. The Earth’s drone rockets do not have a chance against the flexibility of a living organisms.

Working in a military research facility, Kramer comes up with a system of installing a man’s brain as the central processor of a rocket. Since a pilot could not withstand the pressures of deep space flight, a willing sacrifice will need to be made. Kramer’s ex-wife, Dolores, remembers an old professor, Professor Thomas, that she and Kramer had attended in college. Professor Thomas is near the end of his lifespan. His mind is still agile, and it is agreed that it is his mind that will go into the rocket. The plan is for the brain to be alive but not conscious inside the rocket.

But things don’t go as they should as some last minute modification allows Professor Thomas to return to consciousness and fully control the ship. And it’s not in the Professor’s plans to be a pawn to the Earth’s military. 

Available at Audible and iTunes.

 Posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

The Third Annual SFFaudio Challenge – make an AUDIOBOOK, get an AUDIOBOOK!

SFFaudio Commentary

The Third Annual SFFaudio ChallengeNovember 11th, that means it’s the time for our Third Annual SFFaudio Challenge! Today is a day of celebration, a party united, throughout the People’s Republic of SFFaudio. Today, we celebrate the collective achievements of our selfless workers and artists, who are working united for the creative common good, or in the public domain. Today is the day we begin making you make new audiobooks.

To that end, we’re got a nice stack of OUT OF PRINT, EXTREMELY HARD TO FIND and UTTERLY AWESOME audiobooks we’d love to give you. But, just like in year one, and year two, we’re going to make you show your loyalty to the medium, by making an audiobook out of one, or more, of the following titles…

SFF Challenge titles:

Atlantida
By Pierre Benoît
From 1919, the classic novel of finding the Lost Atlantis, translated by Mary C. Tongue and Mary Ross. Also titled The Queen of Atlantis. (64,863 words)
|MANYBOOKS.NET|

The Outlaws of Mars
By Otis Adelbert Kline
From 1933! Burroughs inspired Mars fiction. (49,417 words)
This Dateline Jasoom podcast has discussion of the relationship between Burroughs and Kline |MP3|
|MANYBOOKS.net|

***CLAIMED BY Sonny on November 18th 2008***
Attrition
By Jim Wannamaker
“ONE OF OUR STAR SHIPS IS MISSING!” – told in narrator friendly first person! From Analog’s November 1961 issue. (9,679 Words)
|Project Gutenberg|

***CLAIMED BY Carol Newkirk on November 21st 2008***
A World Called Crimson
By Darius John Granger
|Project Gutenberg|
This was the cover story for the September 1956 issue of Amazing Stories! (14,299 words)
|PROJECT GUTENBERG|

***CLAIMED BY David Drage (of the DIAL P FOR PULP Podcast) on November 12th 2008***
Citadel
By Algis Budrys
Space colonies! From the February 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. (8,799 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

***CLAIMED BY Craig Napier on December 7th 2008***
A Question Of Courage
By J. F. Bone
Military SF. The cover story from Amazing Stories December 1960! (8,357 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

The Crowded Earth
By Robert Bloch
From Amazing Science Fiction Stories October 1958. (37,310 words)
|Project Gutenberg|
REMOVED FROM THE CHALLENGE: Because it’s now BEEN DONE

***CLAIMED BY Paul Campbell (of the Cossmass Podcast) on November 14th 2008***
Empire
By Clifford D. Simak
From 1951, “A Powerful Novel of Intrigue and Action in the Not-So-Distant Future.” (49,898 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

***CLAIMED BY Robert Kublawi on March 30th, 2009***
Gold in the Sky
By Alan E. Nourse
From 1958! YOU WILL MEET– Greg Hunter. Test pilot–happy only when his life hung in the balance. Tom Hunter. A pioneer–his frontier was hidden in test tubes. Johnny Coombs. A prospector–he returned from the asteroids too soon. Merrill Tawney. An industrialist–he sought plunder even beyond the stars. Major Briarton. A government man–his creed was law and order. (39,250 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

Operation: Outer Space
By Murray Leinster
From 1958.(Word count 59,589)
|Project Gutenberg|

***CLAIMED BY Diane Severson on November 13th 2008***Project Mastodon
By Clifford D. Simak
“An interesting variation on the standard time-machine theme. No loops encountered. The short story is tersely written and the end, when technicalities clear, abrupt. This makes it an early example of hard SF with a time machine.” From the March 1955 issue of Galaxy. (12,408 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

The Sound of His Horn
By Sarban (aka John William Wall)
From 1952! A young naval lieutenant, is captured by the Germans and wakes up in a hospital bed – more than 100 years later. The Germans have won the war, and the Third Reich stretches from the Urals to the Atlantic. Non Aryans are bred as slaves. Count Hans von Hackelnberg, master of the Reich’s forests, rules his domain with the iron fist of a feudal lord. His passion is hunting. At night the sound of his horn echoes eerily through the moonlit forest as the pack closes in on its prey. A pack of half naked cat girls, their hands sheathed in iron claws and their bellies starved of fresh meat. And their quarry, as Alan discovers too late, is … himself! (40,039 words)
|Project Gutenberg|

Wandl the Invader
By Raymond King Cummings
Originally published in 1932. Later, printed as half of an ace double! A New Planet Menaces the Solar System! (48,181 words)
|Manybooks.net|

Aural Noir Challenge titles:

***CLAIMED BY Damaris Mannering on November 28th 2008***
The Fabulous Clipjoint
By Frederic Brown
“After almost a decade of publishing pulp sci-fi and mystery short stories, Fredric Brown had his first novel published in 1947. Entitled THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT, it was both a marvelous mystery as well as a superb ‘coming-of-age’ story. The novel was so well received that it won the prestigious Edgar award for the Best First Mystery Novel by an American the following year. Brown would go on to write 6 more novels and at least 2 short stories starring young Ed Hunter and his fraternal uncle Am as they solved mysteries in and around Chicago. All were excellent, but this first one is special.”
|Munseys/Black Mask*|
*One source says this novel is a Creative Commons release (and perhaps a version is). However, I STRONGLY suspect the novel itself is entirely public domain. Either way, this needs to be audiobooked!

***CLAIMED BY Dominic Slyfield on December 12th 2008***
Murder in the Gunroom
By H. Beam Piper
From 1953. The only mystery/crime novel by the famouse Science Fiction author H. Beam Piper! When a gun collector is found dead on the floor of his locked gunroom, the coroner’s verdict is “death by accident.” But the widow has her doubts. She employs a private detective and a pistol-collector himself, to catalogue, appraise, and negotiate the sale of her late husband’s collection – all the while trying to figure out “who-dun-it?” (67,503 words)
|PROJECT GUTENBERG|

Rules:

We’ll be using the same 11 rules from the 2nd SFFaudio Challenge.

Prizes:

DH Audio Mystery Audiobook - This Won’t Kill You by Rex StoutThis Won’t Kill You
By Rex Stout; Read by David Elias
1 Cassette – Approx. 60 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: DH Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0886468655
Nero Wolfe couldn’t care less about baseball, even the World Series final game–until four players are drugged. Now a team’s chances, and maybe their star players, are dead. Evidence is hard to find, so Archie Goodwin dodges fists and acid while the boss keeps one little secret from the police.

DH Audio Mystery Audiobook - Omit Flowers by Rex StoutOmit Flowers
By Rex Stout; Read by
1 Cassette – Approx. 82 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: DH Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0886469767
“In my opinion it was one of Nero Wolfe’s neatest jobs and he never got nicked for it.” Floyd Whitten was stabbed in the back – literally – at a family business meeting. Wolfe has too many relative to pick from. Trickery is called for and no one lies better than ace associate Archie Goodwin.

Durkin Hayes Mystery Audiobook - Invitation to Murder by Rex StoutInvitation to Murder
By Rex Stout; Read by Saul Rubinek
1 Cassette – Approx. 73 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Durkin Hayes Audio
Published: 1996
ISBN: 0886468833
Archie Goodwin gives up a weekend date to ask sharp questions about a poisoning. The case takes a deadly turn that forces the reluctant Nero Wolfe to leave his brownstone house in order to rescue Goodwin from a strange murder scene.

DH Audio Science Fiction Audiobook - Isaac Asimov Presents Volume 6Isaac Asimov Presents Volume 6
Edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Read by Rene Auberjonois?
1 Cassette – Approx. 93 Minutes [UNABRIDGED*]
Publisher: DH Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0886469732
Includes:
The Ship Who Sang” by Anne McCaffery
A Spaceship with a woman’s brain is teamed up with a living male partner. His name is Jennan, the ship loves him and if he’s harmed, she could go crazy
Though Dreamers Die” by Lester del Rey
A mutant bacteria, vicious beyond imagination devastates earth. The desperate survivors flee to an unexplored planet where man can start over – if the plague doesn’t sneak along.
*This one says its abridged by I believe that is an error.

DH Audio Science Fiction Audiobook - Isaac Asimov Presents Volume 7Isaac Asimov Presents Volume 7
Edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Read by Rene Auberjonois?
1 Cassette – Approx. 104 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: DH Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 088646983X
Includes:
Allamagoosa” by Eric Frank Russell
The Last Monster” by Poul Anderson
Why Johnny Can’t Speed” by Alan Dean Foster

DH Audio Audiobook - Isaac Asimov’s All Time Favorite Science Fiction Stories Volume IIIsaac Asimov’s All Time Favorite Science Fiction Stories Volume II
Edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Read by Rene Auberjonois
1 Cassette – Approx. 72 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Durkin Hayes
Published: 1997
ISBN: 0886469481
Includes:
World Of A Thousand Colors” by Robert Silverberg
Impostor” by Philip K. Dick

DH Audio Audiobook - Isaac Asimov’s All Time Favorite Science Fiction Stories Volume IVIsaac Asimov’s All Time Favorite Science Fiction Stories Volume IV
Edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Read by Rene Auberjonois
1 Cassette – Approx. 90 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Durkin Hayes
Published: 1997
ISBN: 0886469570
Includes:
The Victim From Space” by Robert Sheckley
Honorable Enemies” by Poul Anderson

The Reel Stuff
Edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg; Read by Various
6 Cassettes – 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: DH Audio
Published: 2000
ISBN: 0886465745
Includes:
Johnny Mnemonic” by William Gibson, read by Christopher Graybill
Amanda and the Alien” by Robert Silverberg, read by Colleen Delany
Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim, read by Terence Aselford
The Forbidden” by Clive Barker, read by Vanessa Maroney
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, read by Terence Aselford
Nightflyers” by George R.R. Martin, read by Christopher Graybill
Air Raid” John Varley, read by Nannette Savard
Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin, read by Richard Rohan
|READ OUR REVIEW|

COMPLETED TITLES:

LibriVox Science Fiction Audiobook - Cat And Mouse by Ralph WilliamsCat And Mouse
By Ralph Williams; Read by Betsie Bush
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 3 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 5th 2008
This was the cover story for the Astounding Science Fiction issue for June 1959. Set in Alaska, and being a most unusual Science Fiction story – it’s about hunting!

LibirVox Science Fiction - The Creature From Beyond Infinity by Henry KuttnerThe Creature From Beyond Infinity
By Henry Kuttner; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
7 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 19, 2009
A lone space traveler arrives on Earth seeking a new planet to colonize, his own world dead. At the same time a mysterious plague has infected Earth that will wipe out all life. Can a lone scientist stop the plague and save the world? Or will the alien find himself on another doomed planet?

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-creature-from-beyond-infinity.xml

LibriVox Science Fiction - Operation Terror by Murray LeinsterOperation Terror
By Murray Leinster; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – 5 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 19, 2009
An unidentified space ship lands in a Colorado lake. Equipped with a paralyzing ray weapon, the creatures begin taking human prisoners. A loan land surveyor and a journalist are trapped inside the Army cordon, which is helpless against the mysterious enemy. Can they stop the aliens before it is too late?

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/operation-terror-by-murray-leinster.xml

Forgotten Classics presents… The Aliens by Murray LeinsterThe Aliens
By Murray Leinster; Read by Julie Davis
2 MP3s – 2 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Forgotten Classics
Podcast: January 2009
First published in Astounding SF’s August, 1959 issue.
The human race was expanding through the galaxy … and so, they knew, were the Aliens. When two expanding empires meet … war is inevitable. Or is it …?

Part 1 |MP3| and Part 2 |MP3|

LibriVox Science Fiction - The Hunters Out Of Space by Joseph E. KelleamHunters Out of Space
By Joseph E. Kelleam; Read by Elliot Miller
19 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Publlished: May 7, 2009
Jack Odin has returned to the world of Opal, the world inside our own world, only to find it in ruins. Many of his friends are gone, the world is flooded, and the woman he swore to protect has been taken by Grim Hagen to the stars. Jack must save her, but the difficulties are great and his allies are few.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/hunters-out-of-space-by-joseph-kelleam.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

LibriVox - The Pirates Of Ersatz by Murray LeinsterThe Pirates Of Ersatz
By Murray Leinster; Read by Elliott Miller
12 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 6 Hours 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 19, 2009
Bron is the offspring of infamous space pirates but instead of following in the family footsteps he decides to become an electronic engineer. Unfortunately, every time he tries to get out, something pulls him back in. This is a tongue-in-cheek space adventure along the lines of the Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison. It was originally published in the FEB-APR issues of Astounding Science Fiction in 1959.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/rss/3120

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals from Blackstone Audio: Bradbury, Card, Dick

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Three of the finest writers ever, from Blackstone Audio!

The Halloween Tree (audio drama) by Ray BradburyThe Halloween Tree
By Ray Bradbury; Performed by a full cast
2 CDs – 2 hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433232145

The Ships of Earth by Orson Scott CardThe Ships of Earth (Homecoming, Book 3)
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433218866

Valis by Philip K. DickValis
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Tom Weiner
7 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433253782

Posted by Scott D. Danielson