Tantor Media – Page 7

Review of “There Are Things I Want You to Know” about Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson and Marie-Francoise Colombani

SFFaudio Review

“There Are Things I Want You to Know” about Stieg Larsson and Me
By Eva Gabrielsson and Marie-Françoise Colombani; Read by Cassandra Campbell
5 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 9781452652344
Themes: / Biography / Sweden / Family /
Sample |MP3|

There is only one person who can tell Stieg Larsson’s story better than he can, and that is his lifelong companion, Eva Gabrielsson. This is her book.

There is no doubt that writing this book was a blend of catharsis and revenge for Stieg Larsson’s life partner. For the listener it provides deep insights into the man, his habits and his motivations for writing his books. All that annoying coffee drinking in the books actually IS a reflection of Stieg’s own life habits and I now forgive him for the every detailed sip in the books.

I am also left wanting to read the other perspectives on Stieg’s life, in case Eva’s is not objective in her views. It “feels” as though she is truly telling the story of a man who truly brought his fight for justice and morality from his life to his fiction. (There are other biographies out there.) He blended facts and fiction – and for those of us listening from North America – provided a view of political troubles in our idealized Sweden. Eva adds another layer of Swedish conservatism with her difficulties as Stieg’s lifelong partner, having no children, her union went unrecognized by the state and Stieg’s assets were claimed by his almost estranged father and brother.

Of note to you, dear readers, is the fact that both Stieg and Eva were huge Science Fiction fans. If you haven’t dipped into the trilogy yet, Eva’s explanation of Salander’s (the main character) cyborg-like brain in a Pippi Longstocking body with superhuman strength may whet your appetite.

It is clear as Eva’s tale unfolds that she was intimately involved in the unfolding of Stieg’s trilogy. In a way they are her stories too – the books – their children in some odd way. This story may be the story of her custody battle for the rights to finish writing (raise to adulthood) Stieg’s final book, The Vengeance Of God. From listening to her tale and her writing style, I am positive that she will have no difficulty bringing the story to completion, should she be given the opportunity.

The reader, Cassandra Campbell, has been the narrator (or one of) in a host of books I have listened to and enjoyed (especially The Help). I was surprised that she pronounced the Swedish words and places perfectly adding immensely to my enjoyment of this audiobook.

Posted by Elaine Willis

The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

Robert E. Howard's The Black Stone - art by Gene Day

The Black Stone is one of Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu Mythos stories. I happen to think it’s is one of his best – which is saying something because Robert E. Howard was an absolutely terrific Horror writer. I probably first encountered it as an adaption, it was a backup story written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Gene Day in the March 1982 issue of Savage Sword Of Conan (#74). That was actually quite a spectacular issue of the magazine and the The Black Stone, which only took up ten pages, was wonderful. FNH has posted a two part reading of the story to his Cthulhu podcast and it’s well read too:

The Black Stone
By Robert E. Howard; Read by FNH
2 MP3 Files – Approx. 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Cthulhu Podcast
Podcast: July 2011
|ETEXT|
A biliophile, with extensive knowledge of history, anthropology and ancient religion, reads of a forgotten geological feature in the mountains of Hungary. He decides to take his vacation there, mid-summer, and encounters legend, history and a terrible manifestation from an unspeakably distant epoch. First published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cthulhupodcast

Here’s another reading, from a cool podcast I’ve just discovered. I expect to be listening to a lot more episodes from it:

The Black Stone
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Jim Moon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 56 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Hypnobobs
Podcast: January 23, 2011
A biliophile, with extensive knowledge of history, anthropology and ancient religion, reads of a forgotten geological feature in the mountains of Hungary. He decides to take his vacation there, mid-summer, and encounters legend, history and a terrible manifestation from an unspeakably distant epoch. First published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales.

Podcast feed: http://hypnogoria.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

The Black Stone is also available in print. The Ballantine Del Rey collection titled The Horror Stories Of Robert E. Howard (ISBN: 0345490207) was released as an audiobook edition available from Tantor Media (read by Robertson Dean):

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Robertson Dean
2 MP3-CDs – Approx. 24 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
ISBN:
Sample |MP3|

And of course there have been several other talented artistic interpretations of The Black Stone, here’s just a few:

The Black Stone - illustrated by Greg Staples

The Black Stone - illustrated by Lee Brown Coye (from Sleep No More)

Wolfshead cover illustration by Paul Lehr

Wolfshead cover illustration by Paul Lehr

The Black Stone - art by Jim & Ruth Keegan

The Black Stone - art by Jim & Ruth Keegan

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Fire Of Asshurbanipal by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

If you’re looking to add a Robert E. Howard story to your reading library, but don’t want to get started down the Conan path, look no farther than The Fire Of Asshurbanipal. It was the cover story for the December 1936 issue of Weird Tales!

Weird Tales December 1936 - The Fire Of Asshurbanipal by Robert E. Howard

WEIRD TALES The Fire Of Asshurbanipal - illustration by J. Allen St. John

The Fire Of Asshurbanipal was sold posthumously to Weird Tales by Howard’s father, then the only surviving member of Howard’s immediate family. The story features a pair of adventurers. One is an American, named Steve Clarney, and the other is an Afghan named Yar Ali. They make a fun pair.

Eric Wilkerson‘s depiction of Clarney, for the Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game, makes Clarney look like Indiana Jones (minus the whip), and that’s not wholly wrong. But Clarney isn’t an archaeologist, though he and Yar Ali are treasure hunters, and the period and setting is pretty close.

Eric Wilkerson's depiction of Steve Clarney

It is available in print as a part of easily the Ballantine Del Rey collection called The Horror Stories Of Robert E. Howard (ISBN: 0345490207); there was also a pair of deluxe releases by Subterranean Press. And most importantly there is a wonderful professionally narrated audiobook edition available from Tantor Media (it’s read by the talented Robertson Dean):

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Robertson Dean
2 MP3-CDs – Approx. 24 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
ISBN:
Sample |MP3|

The paper editions feature two stunning images from the story by Greg Staples.

The Fire Of Asshurbanipal as illustrated by Greg Staples

The Fire Of Asshurbanipal art by Greg Staples

Interestingly, a different version of the same novelette, The Fire of Asshurbanipal, was published in more recent times as a straight adventure story (same characters but minus the supernatural elements). That fantasy-free version and can be found in another Ballantine Del-Rey collection entitled El Borak And Other Desert Adventures (ISBN: 034550545X).

El Borak And Other Desert Adventures

And that one includes wondrous illustrations by the master of comic book covers Tim Bradstreet.

The Fire Of Asshurbanipal illustration by Tim Bradstreet

And the version available on Gutenberg Australia’s website is, of course, the original Weird Tales version, complete with references to the Necronomicon, Yog-Sothoth and other sundry Cthulhu mythos details. And that’s the version which has recently been podcast by FNH’s Cthulhu Podcast.

I think I first read this story about twenty-five years ago, and remembered it as a gripping adventure yarn with a fairly strong Lovecraftian feel. I picked it up second hand, in a used bookstore in a handsomely covered collection of ‘weird’ Howard stories called Wolfshead (ISBN: 055312353X). In that 1979 book, there is an excellent introduction by Robert Bloch in which he argues that the “stylistic excesses” found in Howard’s stories, like The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, can be “easily excused” because within Howard’s writing “lurks a dark poetry, and the timeless truth of dreams.”

That still sounds right to me. The Fire Of Asshurbanipal is exciting, happily and ornately adjectival, and carries about with it a heft that most adventure fiction can’t really come close to matching. Listening to this podcast edition I’ll admit it possesses a raw power that I still appreciate even today, much later in life. What jars most, of course, is the prominent position given to race, the reliance on instinctual knowledge, and the repeated use of jungle cat metaphors (which feel particularly out of place in the Arabian desert setting).

Over on the Black Gate blog Ryan Harvey argues that The Fire Of Asshurbanipal is cut from the same cloth as H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. I agree.

If you’re looking for more stories like The Fire Of Asshurbanipal I highly recommend another novelette, of more recent vintage, that follows in the tradition very well – That’d be Charles Ardai’s Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye (available in audio as a part of the Audio Realms audiobook Hunt Through The Cradle Of Fear |READ OUR REVIEW| and as an |ETEXT|).

For those who are more comics inclined, check out Joseph Remy’s 40 page webcomic adaptation of The Fire Of Asshurbanipal which begins |HERE|.

And in case you were wondering, the Asshurbanipal of the title was a 7th century BC Neo-Assyrian king famed for the creation of the Library of Ashurbanipal which held among its collection the Epic Of Gilgamesh. It is reported that Alexander the Great, upon seeing the great library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, was himself inspired to create his own library and that one became perhaps the most famous library of all.

Detail from the Paul Lehr’s cover for Wolfshead:

Wolfshead cover illustration by Paul Lehr

Posted by Jesse Willis

Tantor Media: FREE AUDIOBOOK: The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Tantor Media is releasing another new limited time FREE MP3 audiobook download. Despite what it looks like on the cover (apparently Sherlock Holmes had a Macbook Air) The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes is an all original, un-remixed, collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, first collected in 1894.

You will need to have an account with Tantor Media, and to login to it. Start by clicking HERE. Accounts are free and do not require a credit card. The free audiobook should be available through the end of June 2011. I know some folks have had difficulty figuring out how to either “log in” or “create an account.” You must have an account and be logged in to get to the download. It is a two step process as illustrated below.

Step 1: Create An Account And Log In

First Create An Account Or Log In

Step 2: After Signing In, You Get Your Download Link

After Signing In Get Your Download Link

As usual there was a bit of trouble the first couple of times I downloaded the zipped file, but it now works and downloads. You will, of course, also need to unzip the MP3s once the download completes.

The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Read by Simon Prebble
11 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: March 2010
Sample: |MP3|
|ETEXT|
The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close—the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. When The Final Problem was first published, the struggle between Holmes and his arch nemesis, seemingly to the death, left many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but it also led to his immortality as a literary figure. The stories that precede it included two narratives from Holmes himself—on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house—as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother Mycroft.

Stories included: Silver Blaze, The Yellow Face, The Stock-Broker’s Clerk, The ‘Gloria Scott’, The Musgrave Ritual, The Reigate Puzzle, The Crooked Man, The Resident Patient, The Greek Interpreter, The Naval Treaty, and The Final Problem.

I should also point out that like most publications of this collection in the USA, over that last 117 years, this collection omits The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box for what Wikipedia indicates are reasons of morality.

If you’re not quite so squeamish The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box is available through LibriVox as two MP3 Files (Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|). |ETEXT|

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Miéville, Spillane/Collins, Anderson, London, Wells, Zamyatin

New Releases

Here are six intriguing new releases that caught my eye and perhaps will yet catch my ears.

I haven’t read Miéville yet, maybe this is the one, its all about communication – or at least that’s the message I think this book is sending.

RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO - Embassytown by China Miéville Embassytown
By China Miéville; Read by Susan Duerden
Digital Download – Approx. 12 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 9780307913807
Sample: |MP3|
China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer—and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field—with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war. In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

Stacy Keach, the only narrator for this job…

BLACKSTONE AUDIO - Kiss Her Goodbye by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins Kiss Her Goodbye: A Mike Hammer Novel
By Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; Read by Stacy Keach
7 CDs – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 25, 2011
ISBN: 9781441787354
Mike Hammer has been away from New York too long. Recuperating in Florida after the mob shoot-out that nearly claimed his life, he learns that an old mentor on the New York police force has committed suicide. Hammer returns for the funeral—and because he knows that Inspector Doolan would never have killed himself. But Manhattan in the seventies no longer feels like home. Hammer’s longtime partner, Velda, disappeared after he broke it off for her own safety, and his office is shut down. When a woman is murdered practically on the funeral’s doorstep, Hammer is drawn into the hunt for a cache of Nazi diamonds that makes the Maltese Falcon seem like a knickknack and for the mysterious woman who had been close to Doolan in his final days. But drug racketeers, who had it in for Doolan, attract Hammer’s attention as well. Soon he is hobnobbing with coke-snorting celebrities at the notorious disco, Club 52, and playing footsie with a sleek lady DA, a modern woman on the make for old-fashioned Hammer. Everything leads to a Mafia social club where Hammer and his .45 come calling, initiating the wildest showdown since Spillane’s classic One Lonely Night.

I have no idea what this means:

“Poul Anderson’s classic fantasy, The Broken Sword, knocks The Fellowship of the Ring into a cocked hat.”—Guardian (UK)

That’s a good thing right?

BLACKSTONE AUDIO - The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson The Broken Sword
By Poul Anderson; Read by Bronson Pinchot
7 CDs – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 9781441786876
Thor has broken the sword Tyrfing so that it cannot strike at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds together earth, heaven, and hell. But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves in their war against the trolls, and only Skafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade Bölverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But Skafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling, who has taken his place in the world of men.

A collection of eight of Jack London’s best short stories – if you haven’t read the title story then you’re missing out on a great proto-Hard SF story! Awesomeness.

To Build A Fire And Other Stories
By Jack London; Read by Patrick Lawlor
5 CDs – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: May 25, 2011
Sample |MP3|
“To Build a Fire,” the best-known of Jack London’s many short stories, tells the tale of a solitary traveler on the Yukon Trail accompanied only by his dog as they endure the extreme cold. A classic narrative of a battle for survival against the forces of nature, “To Build a Fire” is London at his best. Also included here are “The Red One,” “All Gold Canyon,” “A Piece of Steak,” “The Love of Life,” “Flush of Gold,” “The Story of Keesh,” and “The Wisdom of the Trail.” A vital collection of works by one of the greatest short-story writers in American literature, this edition is sure to delight audiences of all ages.

I sense a serious but coming.

I Don’t Want To Kill You: Book 3 in the John Cleaver series
By Dan Wells; Read by Kirby Heyborne
8 CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: March 29, 2011
ISBN: 9781452600543
Sample |MP3|
John Cleaver has called a demon—literally called it on the phone—and challenged it to a fight. He has faced two of the monsters already, barely escaping with his life, and now he’s done running; he’s taking the fight to them. But as he wades through his town’s darkest secrets, searching for any sign of who the demon might be, one thing becomes all too clear: in a game of cat and mouse with a supernatural killer, the human is always the mouse. In I Am Not a Serial Killer, we watched a budding sociopath break every rule he had to save his town from evil. In Mr. Monster, we held our breath as he fought madly with himself, struggling to stay in control. Now John Cleaver has mastered his twisted talents and embraced his role as a killer of killers. I Don’t Want to Kill You brings his story to a thundering climax of suspicion, mayhem, and death. It’s time to punish the guilty. And in a town full of secrets, everyone is guilty of something.

Grover Gardner thinks this is the first time the book will be available in audio – I think he’s right!

We
By Yevgeny Zamyatin; Read By Grover Gardner
6 CDs – Approx. 7 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: March 28, 2011
ISBN: 9781452601601
Sample |MP3|
Set in the twenty-sixth century A.D., Yevgeny Zamyatin’s masterpiece describes life under the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful “Benefactor.” Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us all if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom. Clarence Brown’s brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years’ suppression.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Tantor Media: FREE AUDIOBOOK: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

Tantor Media has a new limited time FREE MP3 download of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells!

You will need to have an account, and to login. Start by clicking HERE. Accounts are free and should not require a credit card. The free audiobook should be available through May 31, 2011.

There was some bit of trouble the first couple of times we downloaded, but the zipped 99.4 MB file now works and downloads. You’ll of course need to be able to unzip the files too.

The Time Machine
By H.G. Wells; Read by Scott Brick
10 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 3 Hours 55 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2002
Sample: |MP3|
“I’ve had a most amazing time…” So begins the Time Traveler’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H. G. Wells’s successful career and earned him the reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes…and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.

First published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

Posted by Jesse Willis