Commentary: A “Top 100 Sci-Fi Audiobooks” List

SFFaudio Commentary

Sci-Fi ListsLast year somebody* pointed out that a list of “The Top 100 Sci-Fi Books” (as organized by the Sci-Fi Lists website) was almost entirely available in audiobook form!

At the time of his or her compiling 95 of the 100 books were available as audiobooks.

Today, it appears, that list is approaching 99% complete!

I’ve read a good number of the books and audiobooks listed, and while some of them are indeed excellent, I’d have to argue that some are merely ok, and that others are utterly atrocious.

That said, I do think it is interesting that almost all of them are available as audiobooks!

Here’s the list as it stood last year, plus my added notations on the status of the missing five:

01- Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card – 1985
02- Dune – Frank Herbert – 1965
03- Foundation – Isaac Asimov – 1951
04- Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams – 1979
05- 1984 – George Orwell – 1949
06- Stranger In A Strange Land – Robert A Heinlein – 1961
07- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury – 1954
08- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C Clarke – 1968
09- Starship Troopers – Robert A Heinlein – 1959
10- I, Robot – Isaac Asimov – 1950
11- Neuromancer – William Gibson – 1984
12- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick – 1968
13- Ringworld – Larry Niven – 1970
14- Rendezvous With Rama – Arthur C. Clarke – 1973
15- Hyperion – Dan Simmons – 1989
16- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – 1932
17- The Time Machine – H.G. Wells – 1895
18- Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke – 1954
19- The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein – 1966
20- The War Of The Worlds – H.G. Wells – 1898
21- The Forever War – Joe Haldeman – 1974
22- The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury – 1950
23- Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut – 1969
24- Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson – 1992
25- The Mote In God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – 1975
26- The Left Hand Of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin – 1969
27- Speaker For The Dead – Orson Scott Card – 1986
28- Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton – 1990
29- The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick – 1962
30- The Caves Of Steel – Isaac Asimov – 1954
31- The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester – 1956
32- Gateway – Frederik Pohl – 1977
33- Lord Of Light – Roger Zelazny – 1967
34- Solaris – Stanisław Lem – 1961
35- 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea – Jules Verne – 1870
36- A Wrinkle In Time – Madeleine L’Engle – 1962
37- Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut – 1963
38- Contact – Carl Sagan – 1985
39- The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton – 1969
40- The Gods Themselves – Isaac Asimov – 1972
41- A Fire Upon The Deep – Vernor Vinge – 1991
42- Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson – 1999
43- The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham – 1951
44- UBIK – Philip K. Dick – 1969
45- Time Enough For Love – Robert A. Heinlein – 1973
46- A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess – 1962
47- Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson – 1992
48- Flowers For Algernon – Daniel Keyes
49- A Canticle For Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller – 1959
50- The End of Eternity – Isaac Asimov – 1955
51- Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard – 1982
52- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley – 1818
53- Journey To The Center Of The Earth – Jules Verne – 1864
54- The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin – 1974
55- The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson – 1995
56- The Player Of Games – Iain M. Banks – 1988
57- The Reality Dysfunction – Peter F. Hamilton – 1996
58- Startide Rising – David Brin – 1983
59- The Sirens Of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut – 1959
60- Eon – Greg Bear – 1985
61- Ender’s Shadow – Orson Scott Card – 1999
62- To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer – 1971
63- A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick – 1977
64- Lucifer’s Hammer – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – 1977
65- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – 1985
66- The City And The Stars – Arthur C Clark – 1956
67- The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison – 1961
68- The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester – 1953
69- The Shadow of the Torturer – Gene Wolfe – 1980
70- Sphere – Michael Crichton – 1987
71- The Door Into Summer – Robert .A Heinlein – 1957
72- The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick – 1964
73- Revelation Space – Alastair Reynolds – 2000
74- Citizen Of The Galaxy – Robert A. Heinlein – 1957
75- Doomsday Book – Connie Willis – 1992
76- Ilium – Dan Simmons – 2003
77- The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells – 1897
78- Have Space-Suit Will Travel – Robert A. Heinlein – 1958
79- The Puppet Masters – Robert A. Heinlein – 1951
80- Out Of The Silent Planet – C.S. Lewis – 1938
81- A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs – 1912
82- The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula K. Le Guin – 1971
83- Use Of Weapons – Iain M. Banks – 1990
84- The Chrysalids – John Wyndham – 1955
85- Way Station – Clifford Simak – 1963
86- Flatland – Edwin A. Abbott – 1884
87- Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan – 2002
88- Old Man’s War – John Scalzi – 2005
89- COMING SOON (October 15, 2012)Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – 1972
90- The Road – Cormac McCarthy – 2006
91- The Postman – David Brin – 1985
92- NEWLY AVAILABLEStand On Zanzibar – John Brunner – 1969
93- VALIS – Philip K. Dick – 1981
94- NEWLY AVAILABLE The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age – Stanisław Lem – 1974
95- NOT AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIOBOOK – Cities In Flight – James Blish – 1955
96- The Lost World – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – 1912
97- The Many-Colored Land – Julian May – 1981
98- Gray Lensman – E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith – 1940
99- The Uplift War – David Brin – 1987
100- NEWLY AVAILABLEThe Forge Of God – Greg Bear – 1987

In case you were wondering, the list was compiled using the following criteria:

“A statistical survey of sci-fi literary awards, noted critics and popular polls. To qualify a book has to be generally regarded as science fiction by credible sources and/or recognised as having historical significance to the development of the genre. For books that are part of a series (with some notable exceptions) only the first book in the series is listed.”

The “Next 100”, as listed over on Sci-Fi Lists, has a lot of excellent novels and collections in it too, check that out HERE.

[*Thanks to “neil1966hardy” from ThePirateBay]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: AudioGo: H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural edited by Stephen Jones

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently arrived, and currently being soaked in through my skin and ears, is this giant collection of weird fiction. Assembled from a list of stories found in H.P. Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror In Literature, it is a collection of well known and obscure classics by authors that H.P. Lovecraft loved.

Looking at the table of contents I noted that I’d already read several of the stories in this collection – including The Turn Of The Screw (we did a podcast about that one), the engimatic Christmas horror Markheim, the scientific ghost tale What Was It?, the unutterably creepy and horrific The Voice In The Night very recently, and many years ago, perhaps in high school, The Yellow Wallpaper. But even though I’ve read some of these stories already I’m still very excited. Each of the stories seems to be preceded by some relevant words by Lovecraft himself – and at the very least I will be listening to the mini-introductions to those stories I am well familiar with.

Until then I will content myself in listening to the unknown ones. For example, the frightful first person narrative of Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant is thrilling and wondering me in the exact same way The Horla almost exactly one year ago. It’s wonderful!

AUDIO GO - H.P. Lovecraft's Book Of The Supernatural edited by Stephen Jones

H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural
Edited by Stephen Jones; Read by Bronson Pinchot, Stephen Crossley, Davina Porter, Madeleine Lambert, Mark Peckham
MP3 DOWNLOAD – Approx. 16 Hours 44 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioGo
Published: August 1, 2012
Written by arguably the most important horror writer of the twentieth century, H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 essay Supernatural Horror in Literature traces the evolution of the genre from the early Gothic novels to the work of contemporary American and British authors. Throughout, Lovecraft acknowledges those authors and stories that he feels are the very finest the horror field has to offer: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, and Arthur Conan Doyle, each prefaced by Lovecraft’s own opinions and insights in their work. This chilling collection also contains Henry James’ wonderfully atmospheric short novel…The Turn of the Screw. For every fan of modern horror, here is an opportunity to rediscover the origins of the genre with some of most terrifying stories ever imagined.

Here’s the table of contents:
Introduction by editor Stephen Jones – Approx. 7 Minutes
Notes on Writing Weird Fiction By H.P. Lovecraft – Approx. 11 Minutes
The Tale of the German Student by Washington Irving – Approx. 14 Minutes
Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson – Approx. 49 Minutes
Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant – Approx. 34 Minutes
The Invisible Eye by Erckmann-Chatrian – Approx. 41 Minutes
The Torture by Hope by Villiers de l’Isle Adam – Approx. 15 Minutes
Ms. Found in a Bottle by Edgar Allan Poe – Approx. 29 Minutes
What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien – Approx. 34 Minutes
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce – Approx. 24 Minutes
The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James – Approx. 4 Hours 52 Minutes
The Dead Smile by F. Marion Crawford – Approx. 57 Minutes
The Wind In The Rose-Bush by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Approx. 38 Minutes
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Approx. 36 Minutes
The Recrudescence of Imray by Rudyard Kipling – Approx. 30 Minutes
The Hands Of Karma (Ingwa-banashi) by Lafcadio Hearn – Approx. 11 Minutes
The Burial Of The Rats by Bram Stoker – Approx. 1 Hour 7 Minutes
The Red Lodge by H.R. Wakefield – Approx. 35 Minutes
The Captain Of The Pole-Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Approx. 1 Hour 6 Minutes
The Villa Desiree by May Sinclair – Approx. 28 Minutes
The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson – Approx. 36 Minutes
Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen – Approx. 48 Minutes

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: AudioGo: H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural

New Releases

AUDIO GO - H.P. Lovecraft's Book Of The Supernatural edited by Stephen Jones

H.P. Lovecraft’s Book Of The Supernatural
Edited by Stephen Jones; Read by Bronson Pinchot, Stephen Crossley, Davina Porter, Madeleine Lambert, Mark Peckham
MP3 DOWNLOAD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudioGo
Published: August 1, 2012
Written by arguably the most important horror writer of the twentieth century, H. P. Lovecraft’s 1927 essay Supernatural Horror in Literature traces the evolution of the genre from the early Gothic novels to the work of contemporary American and British authors. Throughout, Lovecraft acknowledges those authors and stories that he feels are the very finest the horror field has to offer: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, and Arthur Conan Doyle, each prefaced by Lovecraft’s own opinions and insights in their work. This chilling collection also contains Henry James’ wonderfully atmospheric short novel…The Turn of the Screw. For every fan of modern horror, here is an opportunity to rediscover the origins of the genre with some of most terrifying stories ever imagined.

The audio sample says it includes “20 classics of the macabre.” I’ll try to get a list.

Here’s the TOC:

an introduction by editor Stephen Jones
Notes on Writing Weird Fiction By H.P. Lovecraft
The Tale of the German Student by Washington Irving
Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson
Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant
The Invisible Eye by Erckmann-Chatrian
The Torture by Hope by Villiers de l’Isle Adam
Ms. Found in a Bottle by Edgar Allan Poe
What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Dead Smile by F. Marion Crawford
The Wind in the Rose-Bush by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Recrudescence of Imray by Rudyard Kipling
The Hands of Karma (Ingwa-banashi) by Lafcadio Hearn
The Burial of the Rats by Bram Stoker
The Red Lodge by H.R. Wakefield
The Captain of the Pole-Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Villa Desiree by May Sinclair
The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson
Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen

[Thanks Amy!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Printable PDFs Posted

SFFaudio News

SFFaudio MetaI’ve created a PDF Page, that is a page full of printable PDFs. Most are short stories, most are in the public domain (in most places). There are more than fifty PDFs there. All ready for download and printing.

Now I’m afraid that most have no OCR. But on the other hand the files are unlocked and so you could OCR them yourself should you so desire.

It’s currently filed under out FEATURES page, but HERE‘s the direct link.

Please let me know if any of the files there don’t download.

Authors included:
Charles Beaumont, John Buchan, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Boucher, Emily Brontë, Lucy Clifford, John Collier, Philip K. Dick, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Laura Lee Hope, Robert E. Howard, W.W. Jacobs, Henry Kuttner, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, C.C MacApp, William Morrison, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edgar Pangborn, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Sheckley, T.S. Stribling, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, and Manly Wade Welman.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1988)

Aural Noir: Online Audio

BBC Radio 4RadioArchives.ccOne of (if not the most) adapted novels in the history of cinema is The Hound Of The Baskervilles. I myself love the novel and have seen at least a half dozen screen adaptations. But the latest adaptation I’ve witnessed is my new favourite.

Bert Coules’ 1988 BBC Radio adaptation is absolutely fantastic. It keeps nearly every scene I like from the novel. Better yet, it’s use of sound, to both cut from scene to scene and to drive the action forward, is absolutely masterful. Audio drama of this quality is just that step above. It’s truly wondrous listening!

According to the notes on RadioArchive.cc (where I got it) this version has never been rebroadcast on the radio. That’s a big shame, it’s an absolute treasure!

Even more strangely this adaptation is actually the first of two separate Bert Coules adaptations of Hound done for BBC Radio.

The torrent is HERE.

The Hound of the Baskervilles
Adapted from the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Performed by a full cast
2 MP3 Files via Torrent – Approx. 110 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC
Broadcast: 1988

Cast:
Sherlock Holmes … Roger Rees
Dr John H Watson … Crawford Logan
Sir Henry Baskerville … Matt Zimmerman
Dr James Mortimer … Peter Craze
Jonathan Stapleton … Jonathan Tafler
Beryl Stapleton … Caroline Gruber
Barrymore … Richard Tate
Mrs Barrymore … Barbara Atkinson
Mrs Hudson … Barbara Atkinson
Arthur Frankland … Norman Bird
Laura Lyons … Moir Leslie
Postmaster … John Baddeley

Violinist: Katherine Adams
Script by: Bert Coules
Produced and directed by: David Johnston

The Hound Of The Baskervilles - original  iIllustration

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #167 – READALONG: At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Podcast
Edgar Rice Burroughs' At The Earth's Core
The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #167 – Jesse, Tamahome and David Stifel talk about At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Talked about on today’s show:
the Burroughs Guy podcast, Pellucidar, A Princess Of Mars, Burroughs was a dynamic writer, 1913, Barsoom series, the Tarzan series, the Pellucidar or Inner World series, The Land That Time Forgot, Tarzan is next, Tarzan goes to Pellucidar (Tarzan At The Earth’s Core), airships, Jules Verne, The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Journey To The Center Of The Earth, Blackstone Audio, the hollow earth, lizard people, dry humour, Dian the beautiful and her brother Dekor, Abner Perry, Robert A. Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw, the well thought through world, the iron mole, an inverted world, Burroughs well lampshades the improbabilities he presents, the moon in the center of the earth (the pendant world), how does the time work in Pellucidar, the relativity of time, the naming of characters and places in Burrough’s worlds, Thoria vs. Thuria, must get loincloths, the 1976 movie version of At The Earth’s Core, princesses, romance, pet hyenadons, saggoths to shoggoth, H.P. Lovecraft, telepathy, the Mahars’ secret, Ja the king, like Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, near instant language learning, Doug McLure, Peter Cushing, a Connecticut Yankee, the pious Perry, Perry’s theory of time, colonialism, the white man’s burden, noble savage, Kull of Atlantis and Brule The Spear Slayer (the Pict), Beyond The Black River, Hooja the Sly One (an ignoble savage), the size of Pellucidar, Ringworld by Larry Niven, the Sahara, manifest density, telegaph line through to the center of the earth, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, “my prehistoric bride”, stone age tech, dinosaurs, giant fire breathing frogs, the various animals of Pellucidar, Hell is Earth, the raw food diet, a dainty cave wife, the illustrated At The Earth’s Core, ERBZine website, the vivisection/lockpicking scene, John Carter, Prince Of Persia, Peter Jackson, Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, David Stifel’s filmography, Sleeper Cell, Minority Report, Gods And Generals, Jeffrey Shaara, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, Gettysburg, Heaven’s Gate, G Vs. E, Six Feet Under, selling Tom Cruise drugs, David’s IMDB page, Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch, Tarzan Of The Apes is next, racism, that David Stifel guy, The Land That Time Forgot, David is in George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House at Theatricum Botanicum in Los Angeles!

David B. Mattingly - At The Earth's Core

Ace Books - At The Earth's Core - cover painting by Roy Krenkel, Jr.

At The Earth's Core - Frank Frazetta cover illustration

At The Earth's Core - cover painting by J. Allen St. John

At The Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs - MOVIE POSTER COVER

Map Of Pellucidar

Posted by Jesse Willis