Recent Arrivals: Paperbooks: Philip K. Dick, Ray Nelson, Ted Chiang, Carolyn Keene, Garth Ennis, Robert E. Howard, Timothy Truman, and John C. Wright

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Here’s a stack of new paperbooks that have recently hit my desk: Included are The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Secret Of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (1931 edition), Stories Of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, Jennifer Blood, (Vol. 1) by Garth Ennis, King Conan: The Scarlet Citadel by Timothy Truman, and Count To A Trillion by John C. Wright.

There’s a mistake on my part in the video. The Scarlet Citadel is adapted from a Robert E. Howard Conan story, as it turns out it is one of the ones I haven’t read.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #147 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model
The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #147 – Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (21 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it by Jesse, Tamahome, Mr Jim Moon, Wayne June and Mirko Stauch. Here’s the ETEXT.

Talked about on today’s show:
S.t.a.u.c.h., comic book explosion sounds, “thwip”, Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, Hypnobobs Podcast, Hypnogoria.com, Jim Moon’s audio essay about ghouls, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Amicus Press, Beyond The Grave, The Monster Club, The H.P. Podcraft Podcast, The Tomb, The Call Of Cthulhu, The Crawling Chaos, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Festival, nobody wants to talk about art, Neonomicon, Pickman’s Necrotica, Night Of The Living Dead, Richard Burton, the German audio drama adaptation, The Thing On The Doorstep (annotated by S.T. Joshi), I Am Providence: The Life And Times Of H.P. Lovecraft, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Robert E. Howard, Omar Epps, House, M.D., “no nordic man”, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, lead-lined coffins, a slurry of sauce, “the lesson”, “subway accident”, The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath, Bradford Dillman, “for procreational purposes”, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Unnameable, Gustav Dore’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, the power of art, Supernatural Horror In Literature, Aristotle’s Poetics, Algernon Blackwood, YogSothoth.com, What The Moon Brings, a ghoulish sense of humor, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, eldritchdark.com, Out Of Space And Time, Cotton Mather, spectral evidence, the original waterboarding, The Horror At Red Hook, He, Audio Realms, The Mountains Of Madness, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, two one sided conversations, what would Lovecraft write today?, The Lovecraft Chronicles by Peter Cannon, Lovecraft’s racism, Mr. Nigger Man (Lovecraft’s cat), racist paint colours, WWII, xenophobia, the strange and the stranger, Samuel Loveman, mythologizing the author, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Poe himself is the star of The Raven, laughing in horror, the Night Gallery paintings, Hannes Bok, a wolf with a mullet, a modern adaptation, The Rats In The Walls, if a story can be spoiled it’s probably not worth reading (or re-reading), Tam would have dropped his shit, Joanna Russ, Cthulhu 2000, Poe wrote his wife to death, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, The Crawling Chaos, “psychedelically cosmic”, Jim Moon’s Necronomicon woodcuts, 16th century Pickman,

Pickman's Model - as adapted for Tower Of Shadows #9

Pickman's Model - original Weird Tales illustration

Pickman painting #1

Pickman painting #2

Pickman painting #3

Pickman painting #4

Pickman painting #5

Pickman painting #6

Pickman painting #6 DETAIL

Hannes Bok illustration of Pickman's Model

Pickman's Model - adapted for Skull Comics, No.4, (1972) by Herb Arnold

Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Pickman's Model - iIllustrated by David Prosser (1965)

Mitch Jenkins - Ghoul photo

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #146 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG – Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #146 – Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson, read by Gregg Margarite. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (16 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it with Jesse, Gregg Margarite and Ray Nelson himself!

Talked about on today’s show:
This story was suggested by a listener [thanks], Eight O’Clock In The Morning, a terse procedural aspect of the text, Ray is a fan of bare bones writing, alien forks and knives, inspired by flies, a new adaptation of Eight O’Clock In The Morning (on IMDB), John Carpenter’s They Live, occupy wall street, the 1% aren’t just mean, one of the best short story adaptations, Nada = nothing, a traitless character, a modern fable, The Twilight Zone, sowing a distrust of television, “Work Eight Hours, Play Eight Hours, Sleep Eight Hours”, Ray co-wrote The Ganymede Takeover with Philip K. Dick, Gregg likes it, The Ganymede Takeover has been translated 15 times, Ray and Phil are a hit in France, Edgar Allan Poe owes his classical status to Baudelaire, the short story form itself, Again, Dangerous Visions, Hillside School in Berkley, CA, Ray went to school with Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin, France, 1950s, Harlan Ellison, Jean Paul Sarte, book smuggling, Henry Miller, Ray gave Phil acid twice, Philip K. Dick’s acid trips (and flashbacks), answers vs. questions, public and private realities, Ray loves radio theatre, the new audio drama, Tim Heffernan, The Drama Pod, The Cosmic Circle on KPFA, live broadcast, live TV, Saturday Night Live, Your Show Of Shows, Mel Brooks, Woody Allan, Larry Gelbart, the last unsafe TV show was Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, anthology series, The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Carleton E. Morris, radio drama in Canada, Carleton E. Morris, Prairie Home Companion, appointment radio, X Minus One, Dimension X, Escape, Suspense, I Love A Mystery, BrokenSea’s OTR Swag Cast, The Temple Of The Vampires, Bill Hollweg, The Quantum Door, Gregg gets to be Rod Serling, Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter, Egypt, Texas, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, paperbook publishing is tough, we want ebook and audiobook editions of , iambik.com, $0.30, William Blake, Laser Books, pseudonyms, RayNelson.com, cartoonism, American Window Cleaner Magazine, “Inflate my girl James … the Viagra is kicking in.”, the propeller beanie, Flying Down To Rio, the 1939 Worlds Fair, The World Of Tomorrow, Elektro the smoking robot, Treasure Island, Hitler’s swastika farm at the world’s fair, The Old Beatnik, Herb Caen, how the beatniks got their name, Jack Kerouac, a synchronistic view of the universe, theology, the University Of Chicago, my Edgar Allan Poe drawing, why don’t people draw more often?, every little kid knows how to draw, essay writing, the death of newspapers, the smell of a used bookstore, How To Fuck Like The Stars aka How To Do It, drawing, writing and smuggling pornography, the Wikipedia entry on Ray Nelson, “Push where it gives”, singing black spirituals in a cowboy suit in Paris, Ray “Tex” Nelson aka Tex The Singing Cowboy, Jeffrey Lord’s Richard Blade, Harlequin Books, Slave Of Sarma by Jeffrey Lord (read by Lloyd James), California Ray, Allen Ginsberg, “I wrote verse. I wrote verse and verse as I went along.”, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Howl, the San Fransisco Renaissance, Sex Happy Hippie, Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Marion Zimmer Bradley, I, Lesbian by Lee Chapman (aka Ray Nelson and Marion Zimmer Bradley), copyright, fanzines, the smell of a mimeograph machine, Ray Bradbury, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft is more like a blogger than a 1950s writer, Farnsworth Wright, Astounding Stories, Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, extraterrestrial monsters, cosmic horror, L. Sprague de Camp, H.P. Lovecraft in a dress, flipped his lid, the Fascinators are fascinating, the adaptation of They Live, Frank Armitage, scripting They Live, the sunglasses, the venetian blind glasses, Blade Runner, Total Recall, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Thing From Another Planet, John W. Campbell, John Carpenter’s music, Roddy Piper doesn’t look like an everyman, the five minute fight scene works great!, Keith David, Seeing Ear Theatre, Tales From The Crypt |READ OUR REVIEW|, Eight O’Clock In The Morning is a kind of Lovecraftian tale, The Lurking Fear, “anything includes everything.”

Eight O'Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson

They Live - based upon The Story Eight O'Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson

Got A Light Buddy?
The Children

They Live - Indian poster art

They Live - illustration by Jeremy Wheeler

THEY LIVE poster from Printed In Blood

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: How to download TORRENT files

SFFaudio Commentary

TorrentsI recently received email from a friend asking me to send him files that are easily available as a torrent.

This is pretty funny considering that the guy in question has had hundreds, more likely thousands, of complete copies of his creations downloaded, via torrent, to users all over the planet.

This got me thinking that probably a good many other creators and fans are in the same position – they’ve heard of torrents – would like to use them – but don’t have a friend who uses them. You just need a friend to walk you through it.

Well friends I’m here to tell you that torrents are extremely easy to use, very quick and very safe, just so long as you pay attention to a few details.

It’s actually pretty easy.

Torrents are specialized internet files, very similar to podcast feeds. Like podcast feeds they work to automatically retrieve the content you want. And just like podcast feeds they work only with specialized software.

But why would you want to use one?

Two reasons to use torrents:

1. Torrents do not greatly burden a content creator as he or she need not host the files for very long before they’re off and growing in the wild

2. Torrents are particularly good at the distribution of suppressed materials (take the case of the example given father below)

Software needed:

1. µTorrent is a free and easy to use torrent client (that’s just a piece of software for getting torrents)

Three quick facts to keep in mind after installation:

1. Torrent files end in “.torrent” – when you click on one, and when you’ve got µTorrent installed, you’ll get the download of the file you want (just as long as there are seeders)

2. A seeder is a torrent user who has a complete copy of the download that you want

3. You will see the extensions of the file types you are going to download – this means you can pick and choose the kinds of files you want to end up on your computer

uTorrent 1.7.7

Example of a torrent:

Queen Of The Black Coast is a free full cast audio dramatization, that was suppressed by legal threats. It’s producers no longer host it. But it is available as a torrent on the torrent tracker website ThePirateBay.org (and other torrent tracking websites).

The Pirate Bay - QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST Example

Clicking on the green double down arrow (pictured above) will download the “.torrent file” which will interface with your installed µTorrent software to get you the audio drama. Note the number of seeders listed too. If there are zero seeders then you probably won’t be able to download the complete file or files. And if there are many seeders then the file will come down faster than if there are few. Once you complete your download, and hit “stop” in µTorrent, you will no longer be seeding.

Using torrents will open up a whole new part of the internet to you and make many more parts of the web useful too. A good place to start exploring with your new torrent skills is RadioArchive.cc. RadioArchive.cc is a domain entirely devoted to radio, offering radio drama, audiobooks (broadcast on radio), factual programs and every other kind of audio goodness that public radio services are known for. Happy torrenting!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #135 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #135 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome, and Jenny talk about recently arrived audiobooks, new releases and more.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Year’s Top Short SF Novels edited by Allan Kaster, including “Return to Titan” by Stephen Baxter (set in the Xeelee Sequence), “Jackie’s-Boy” by Steven Popkes, “The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis, “Seven Cities of Gold” by David Moles, “A History of Terraforming” by Robert Reed, “Several Items of Interest” by Rick Wilber, and “Troika” by Alastair Reynolds.  Two were finalists for the Hugo Award this year.  The Seven Cities of Gold is also a video game!

Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley, narrated by the amazing Bronson Pinchot. Originally published serially as “Time Killer” in Galaxy Science Fiction (1960).  Jesse wants to do this as a readalong, but Jenny wants something newer than 1960.

Earth Strike: Star Carrier, Book One by Ian Douglas.  Tamahome is a sucker for space, and this is the first of two books that are available in Audible.  Scott doesn’t care much for military sci-fi, but didn’t mind Starship Troopers, Ender’s Game, and Forever Peace.  What matter is the focus – Scott is looking for a good story, which is hard to find.  “Too much science?” Deep Space Nine.  “Not all Muslims are fanatic, lieutenant…” Is it too politically correct?  Tamahome is a sucker for women who kick ass too, this is right up his alley!

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, also Sputnik Sweetheart, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, After Dark.  46 hour commitment for the audio book, originally published as three separate volumes.  Jenny can’t stop reading it!  Aomame = “green peas.”  Publisher says it is a love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, and a dystopia to rival George Orwell.  Tamahome heard that Q sounds like “nine” in Japanese.  Don’t read too much Murakami in a row! Look for cats and spaghetti.

Five books by Philip K. Dick from Brilliance Audio – The Divine InvasionNow Wait for Last Year, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The Simulacra, and Lies, Inc.  More details in Dick’s newly published journal, Exegesis. Reading about authors vs. just reading their work.  East of Eden on A Good Story is Hard to Find and Steinbeck’s novel journal.  Jesse relates more to life in the suburbs. Rewrite of “The Unteleported Man.”  Gregg Margarite discussed Exegesis on his podcast – “a lot of work to slog through.”

Lots of collections from Brilliance Audio – Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin, Wild Cards II: Aces High edited by George R. R. Martin, Songs of Love and Death edited by George R. R. Martin, and Down These Strange Streets edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. We complained about lack of contents and Brilliance has started including them – thank you!  Up next – contents printed on specific discs. George R. R. Martin is spending his time on anthologies because he is not your bitch!  Warriors anthology is cross-genre. Someone should make an audio book of Best of the Best edited by Gardner Dozois.  Tamahome likes “Trinity” by Nancy Kress, but the print in the book is too tiny for anyone over 40.

Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton. Only available outside of the United States, queue proprietary publisher rant by the SFF Audio crew, in fact Jenny posted a sassy one in her blog. Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct detective novels and a reimagined New York City.  Robert E. Howard does a similar thing with countries.  Perfectly genetically engineered female cops (Paula Myo from the Commonwealth Saga) end up with personal problems.

Two picks for post-apocalypse fans – Swan Song by Robert McCammon and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.  Swan Song is highly rated.  Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon has been recommended to Scott multiple times.  Swan Song reminds Jenny of The Stand with a promise of fantastical elements. Destiny’s Road also comes out December 1.  Death and destruction ends in rejoicing!

Angry Robot and Brilliance Audio have published seven novels that Scott previously posted aboutDarkness Falling by Peter Crowther, Debris by Jo Anderton, Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, Reality 36 by Guy Haley, Roll: The Nightbound Land by Troy Jamieson, Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett, and Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Jenny heard Lauren Beukes on Writing Excuses, and Tamahome heard she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Zoo City. Reality 36 has a pie fetish? Oh PI fetish. Tamahome likes cyberspace but not LARPing, John Anealio wrote an Angry Robot Theme song, What is wild magic? Maybe quail.  Angry Robot is doing interesting stuff, also won the World Fantasy Award for professionals in the field this year, and they are doing eBooks the right way.

The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan. Jesse will read books out of spite. “Dude! Your homophobia is calling.” “It’s fiction, not you!” From Tamahome’s second tier – Nothing to Lose: The Adventures of Captain Nothing by Steve Vernon.  Some confusion which should be cleared up when it is released.  Something may have been lost in the translation from the Nova Scotian. Might be like Dark Knight, except for actually being a bad guy.  Batman finding his voice, Batman vs. the Clown. The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente (A Dirge for Prester John #2) – “she writes with the original unicorns.”  “That’s probably because she doesn’t actually have a head.” The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherill.  One of the Neil Gaiman Presents titles.  “The Minotaur sits on an empty pickle bucket….” Anything like American Gods? Realistic restaurant world portrayal. All Clear by Connie Willis, half of this year’s Hugo Award.  Pavane by Keith Roberts is another Neil Gaiman Presents title.  Alternate history and steampunk?  Other novels of loosely related stories – Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick, Accelerando by Charles Stross, Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Gogt. Light by M. John Harrison – Tamahome finds it to be “unpleasant” between the masturbating and the killing.  Why is this one of Neil Gaiman’s top novels of the last 10 years?  Reinvention of space opera, but the end result is hard to take.  Stephen King’s newest – 11-22-63Ring by Stephen Baxter (from the Xeelee Sequence), Baxter even explains why aliens don’t visit in his Manifold Trilogy, which is based on the Fermi paradox. “That’s it!  Go to your rooms!”  “Everybody out of the pool!” Digital vs. disc, subscription vs. individual purchase, Audible.com sale, Black Friday and Cyber Monday – we are ready for holiday gift giving!  Evacuation Day instead of Thanksgiving. Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke, Jo Walton’s Revisiting The Hugos, the SF Masterworks series (from the U.K.), Jenny’s Around The World bookshelf

From Stephen Baxter’s Ring:

Lieserl was suspended inside the body of the Sun.

She spread her arms wide and lifted up her face. She was deep within the Sun’s convective zone, the broad mantle of turbulent material beneath the growing photosphere. Convective cells larger than the Earth, tangled with ropes of magnetic flux, filled the world around her with a complex, dynamic, three-dimensional tapestry. She could hear the roar of the great gas founts, smell the stale photons diffusing out toward space from the remote core.

Posted by Jenny Colvin