Science Fiction and Politics University Course continues

Online Audio

Science Fiction and Politics Professor Courtney Brown‘s course at Emory University is a Political Science course entitled Science Fiction and Politics (Political Science 190). We’ve talked about this course more than once. But, as the new lectures appear in the feed, this podcast gets renewed interest, and thus prompts new posts. So here’s another, this one lists all the currently available lectures (Spring 2007 is now completed at Emory). Brown’s lectures below are from two semesters and feature some incisive political insights found in more than a dozen SF novels.

Lectures available:

01: Introduction and Overview |MP3|
02: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1 of 2) |MP3|
03: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (2 of 2) |MP3|
04: Foundation And Empire by Isaac Asimov |MP3|
05: Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov |MP3|
06: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1 of 2) |MP3|
07: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (2 of 2) |MP3|
08: The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1 of 2) |MP3|
09: The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (2 of 2) |MP3|
10: The Uplift War by David Brin (1 of 2) |MP3|
11: The Uplift War by David Brin (2 of 2) |MP3|
12: Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (1 of 2) |MP3|
13: Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (2 of 2) |MP3|
14: How to write your essays |MP3|
15: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1 of 2) |MP3|
16: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1 of 2) |MP3|
17: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1 of 2)|MP3|
18: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (2 of 2)|MP3|
19: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1 of 2) |MP3|
20: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (2 of 2) |MP3|
21: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (1 of 3) |MP3|
22: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (2 of 3) |MP3|
23: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (3 of 3) |MP3|
24: Neuromancer by William Gibson (1 of 2) |MP3|
25: Neuromancer by William Gibson (2 of 2) |MP3|
26: On free will [based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy] (1 of 2) |MP3|
27: On free will [based on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World] (2 of 2) |MP3|
28: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1 of 2) |MP3|
29: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (2 of 2) |MP3|
30: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (1 of 2) |MP3|
31: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (2 of 2) |MP3|
32: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (1 of 2) |MP3|
33: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (1 of 2) |MP3|

You can subscribe to the podcast via this feed:

http://www.courtneybrown.com/classes/scifi/mp3/cb_SciFiPoliticsClass1.xml

Also, Dr. Brown tells me that he’s been getting requests from some of his students for more female Science Fiction authors. He asks if we have any “top-of-the-list suggestions?” He’s been using Hugo and Nebula award winning novels, but we all know that there are plenty of novels out there that haven’t won a Hugo or a Nebula that are still worthy of examination. Can you think of any Dr. Brown should add to his class for next year?

New Arrivals – Doc Smith, Octavia Butler, Robert A. Heinlein

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals

Three new titles from three different publishers.

Audiobook - Vortex Blaster by Doc E E SmithVortex Blaster
By E.E. “Doc” Smith; Read by Reed McColm
1 MP3 Disc or 6 CDs, Approx. 7.5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books In Motion
Published: 2007
ISBN: 159607793X (MP3 disc); 1596077921 (CDs)

From the back cover:
One man against the basic energy of the universe, unleashed in ravening fury that was “Storm” Cloud. Unique was the only way to describe him, yet alone in his single-handed battle. The appalling destructiveness of a loose atomic vortex could be cancelled out only by destroying the vortex itself. While not even the most massive and modern of electronic computers could figure out how to destroy a loose vortex, “Storm” Cloud could and did.

To Galactic Civilization, the loose vortices were just one menace among many. It was “Storm’s” unique brain, itself a computer with fantastic powers that enabled him to select and direct a duodecaplylatomate bomb with exactly the right energy to snuff each vortex out of existence. The day a runaway vortex exploded in his home was the day “Storm” Cloud became the Vortex Blaster!

Science Fiction Audiobook - Fledgling by Octavia Butler read by Tracey LeighFledgling
By Octavia E. Butler; Read by Tracey Leigh
10 CDs, Appox. 12.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780792746713

From the back cover:
Fledgling, the late Octavia E. Butler’s final novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted–and still wants–to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of “otherness” and questions what it means to be truly human.

Science Fiction Audiobook - Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. HeinleinRocket Ship Galileo
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Spider Robinson
5 CDs, 4 Cassettes or 1 MP3 disc – 5.5 hrs [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780786162765 (CDs); 9780786147892 (cassettes); 9780786172092(MP3 disc)

From the back cover:
Ross Jenkins, Art Mueller, and Morris Abrams are not your average high-schools students. While other kids are cruising around in their cars or playing ball, this trio, known as the Galileo Club, is experimenting with rocket fuels, preparing for their future education at technical colleges.

Art’s uncle, the nuclear physicist Dr. Donald Cargraves, offers them the opportunity of a lifetime: to construct and crew a rocket that will take them to the moon. Cargraves believes their combined ingenuity and enthusiasm can actually make this dream come true. But there are those who don’t share their dream and who will stop at nothing to keep their rocket grounded.

The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show podcast.

Blackstone Audiobooks for Spring & Summer 2007

SFFaudio News

Audiobooks - Blacksone Audio Blackstone Audiobooks has a solid line-up of Science Fiction and Fantasy for the spring and summer 2007. Among the many titles is Variable Star, the “collaboration” between Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson which of course will be read by Spider Robinson. Also, interesting, but not listed below, Blackstone will be selling the The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas. Already underway is the Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series, the first of which came out this month – these are re-issued and re-recorded with multiple narrators, likely by master audiobook producer Stefan Rudnicki (the series was previously recorded in abridged versions for Dove Audio, with readings by Nana Visitor).

Here’s the all-new line up:

Science Fiction AudiobookMemory
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: March 2007

Science Fiction AudiobookRed Prophet (#2 In The Alvin Maker Series)
By Orson Scott Card; Read by various readers
[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: March 2007

Science Fiction AudiobookWhere’s My Jetpack?
By Daniel H. Wilson; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: April 2007

Science Fiction Audiobook - Variable Star by Robert A Heinlein and Spider RobinsonVariable Star
By Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 2007

Science Fiction AudiobookThe Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
By Jack Finney; Read by Kristoffer Tabori
[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 2007

New Year? New Releases!

Audiobook New Releases

Audio Renaissance starts a bold new series, and at 30 hours long so will you be…

Audio Renaissance - Off Armageddon Reef by David WeberOff Armageddon Reef
By David Weber; Read by Oliver Wyman
25 CDs – 30 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: January 2007
ISBN: 1427200653
Humanity pushed its way to the stars—and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out. Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they’ve built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.

What’s next for Michael Crichton? Yes…

Harper Audio - Next by Michael CrichtonNext
By Michael Crichton; Read by Dylan Baker
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: November 2006
ISBN: 006087306X
Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why an adult human being resembles a chimp fetus? And should that worry us? There’s a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease?The audiobook also includes an interview with Crichton!

Written by a 15 year old, who sold it to the movies! Now here’s the true test of his success, the audiobook…

Random House Audio - Eragon by Christopher PaoliniEragon
By Christopher Paolini; Read by Gerard Doyle
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: October 2006
ISBN: 0739330942
Fifteen-year-old Eragon believes that he is merely a poor farm boy—until his destiny as a Dragon Rider is revealed. Gifted with only an ancient sword, a loyal dragon, and sage advice from an old storyteller, Eragon is soon swept into a dangerous tapestry of magic, glory, and power. Now his choices could save—or destroy—the Empire.

Now this sounds very, very interesting…

Tantor Media - The Sky People by S.M. StirlingThe Sky People
By S.M. Stirling; Read by Todd McLaren
12 CDs or 2 MP3-CDs – 15 hours[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: January 2007
ISBN: 1400103452 (CDs), 1400153458 (MP3-CDs)
The first of a series of alternate-history tales based on a brashly entertaining premise: that in the 1960s, Russian and American space probes to Mars and Venus revealed not the arid worlds of our reality, but the colorful Mars and Venus of old pulp Science Fiction adventure. In The Sky People, it’s 1988, the Cold War is still raging, and Marc Vitrac has been assigned to Jamestown, the US Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. But all is not well. There is also a Russian base on Venus. Outside the bases is a wilderness swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs—and lost races of people who seem to be human. An even greater mystery than lost races awaits Marc—as well as a danger that may well threaten the entire human race.

It is always a good day when you see a new Infinivox title…

Audiobook - The Chief Designer by Andy DuncanThe Chief Designer
By Andy Duncan; Read by Jared Doreck
2 CDs – 132 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1884612547
An Alternate history novella that won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. This story, an alternate history masterpiece, as told from the point of view of Korolev, the “Chief” who managed the most crucial years of the secret Soviet space program, and his assistant and eventual successor, Aksyonov. The story spans from World War II, when Korolev was released from a prison camp to design rockets, to 1997 and the Mir space station.

Long promised and now released…

Dandelion Wine by Ray BradburyDandelion Wine
By Ray Bradbury; FULL CAST
MP3-CD, Cassettes or CDs -[RADIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Colonial Radio Theatre / Blackstone Audio
Published: January 2007
ISBN: 9780786173501 (MP3-CD), 978-0786147144 (Cassettes), 9780786165827 (CDs)
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole world that lies beyond. It is a pair of new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather’s renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley bell on a hazy afternoon.

Blackstone continues their release of Heinlein classics! this time with narration by Spider Robinson…

Blackstone Audio - Rocket Ship Galileo Rocket Ship Galileo
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Spider Robinson
Cassettes, CDs or MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: January 2007

Ross Jenkins, Art Mueller, and Morris Abrams are not your average high-schools students. While other kids are cruising around in their cars or playing ball, this trio, known as the Galileo Club, is experimenting with rocket fuels, preparing for their future education at technical colleges. Art’s uncle, the nuclear physicist Dr. Donald Cargraves, offers them the opportunity of a lifetime: to construct and crew a rocket that will take them to the moon. Cargraves believes their combined ingenuity and enthusiasm can actually make this dream come true. But there are those who don’t share their dream and who will stop at nothing to keep their rocket grounded.

Plug plug! I’m reliably informed this novel will be complete very shortly, download the first 2/3rds immediately and for free thanks to podiobooks.com…

Badge Of Infamy
By Lester del Rey; Read by Steven H. Wilson
15 MP3s – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: December 2006 – January 2007
Status: In Progress
Daniel Feldman was a doctor once. He made the mistake of saving a friend’s life in violation of Medical Lobby rules. Now, he’s a pariah, shunned by all, forbidden to touch another patient. But things are more loose on Mars. There, Doc Feldman is welcomed by the colonists, even as he’s hunted by the authorities. But, when he discovers a Martian plague may soon wipe out humanity on two planets, the authorities begin hunting him for a different reason altogether.

Already reviewed, but a new release nonetheless – is it the first audiobook created on a dare (?)…

Librivox Audiobook - The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose FarmerThe Green Odyssey
By Philip Jose Farmer; Read by Mark Nelson
10 MP3s or 10 OGG Vorbis files – 6 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: December 2006
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Alan Green is a space traveler stranded on a barbaric planet. He’s been taken as a slave and made a consort to an insipid and smelly queen. His slave-wife, though beautiful and smart, nags him constantly. He’s given up hope of ever returning to Earth when he hears of two astronauts who have been captured in a kingdom on the other side of the planet, and sets out on an action-packed journey on a ship sailing across vast grasslands on rolling pin-like wheels in a desperate scheme to save them and return home.

posted by Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Challenge MET with an unabridged reading of The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer!

SFFaudio News

Meta SFFaudio - SFFaudio Contest - Make audiobook win an audiobookMORE BIG BIG NEWS!

Mark Nelson, a prolific narrator at LibriVox.org has written in to announce he has already COMPLETED and RELEASED one of the public domain Speculative Fiction novels listed in the SFFaudio ‘make an audiobook, win an audiobook’ challenge!

In an email dated “Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:39:27 -0800” Mark wrote:

“I don’t know if any others took you up already and recorded any of the others on your list, but a complete audiobook of The Green Odyssey has just been published on LibriVox”

Well Mark, at least one other person has recorded one of the public domain novels, but it appears you are the first to both complete and release one which is what is required by the challenge. And The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer |Manybooks.net| was indeed one of the novels from the challenge!

For those playing along at home… in mid-November I challenged anyone to turn any one of a number of previously unreleased public domain novels into an unabridged single voiced audiobook. As an incentive, I offered a BRAND NEW unabridged commercial audiobook to the first person to complete and release one from the list. It appears Mark has, in fact, done that!

All that is necessary now is the verification – namely me listening to the novel and comparing it to the Maybooks.net text – but by all accounts it certainly appears that Mark has met this challenge! This therefore, almost certainly, means that Mark will be receiving a free audiobook of his choice. Either Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick, Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein or Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Now, if you are CURRENTLY making, or were PLANNING on making your very own novel based on the challenge, don’t stop now! Let me know which novel you are working on. I’d like to know what you’re doing. And, we might even be able to scrounge up a BRAND NEW professionally narrated audiobook for you too!

In the meantime SFFaudio is proud to present the first (provisionally) completed Speculative Fiction novel in our ‘Make an Audiobook, Win an Audiobook Challenge’:

Librivox Audiobook - The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose FarmerThe Green Odyssey
By Philip Jose Farmer; Read by Mark Nelson
10 MP3s or 10 OGG Vorbis files – 6 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: December 2006
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Alan Green is a space traveler stranded on a barbaric planet who has been taken slave and made a consort to an insipid and smelly queen. His slave-wife, though beautiful and smart, nags him constantly. He’s given up hope of ever returning to Earth when he hears of two astronauts who have been captured in a kingdom on the other side of the planet, and sets out on an action-packed journey on a ship sailing across vast grasslands on rolling pin-like wheels in a desperate scheme to save them and return home.

Click HERE to get it directly from LibriVox!

Congratulations Mark and thanks!

FULL CAST AUDIO tells us to expect Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, Robert A. Heinlein and Kenneth Opel AUDIOBOOKS!

Audiobook Publisher - Full Cast AudioDaniel Bostick, producer director and actor at Full Cast Audio tells us…

“The following recordings are coming down the pipline in the next few of months:

THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS by Tamora Pierce (December 2006)
PRINCESS ACADEMY by Shannon Hale (January 2007)
THE STAR BEAST by Robert A. Heinlein (1st quarter 2007)

For trivia fans: Fantasy Author Tamora Pierce and her husband Timothy Liebe will play cameo voice roles in PRINCESS ACADEMY.

Breaking news: We are in the casting stage of SKYBREAKER, Kenneth Oppel’s sequel to AIRBORN [SFFaudio Review Forthcoming]. It will record in February 07 for release later in the year.

We’re also considering participation in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial in Kansas City next summer.”

Cool stuff.