William Gibson – Page 10

The SFFaudio Podcast #014

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #014 – Plenty of exciting jibber jabber for you today. It’s a good show, as long as you define good very narrowly.

Talked about on today’s show:
Wall-E, our infamous Wall-E is a criminal post, Bolt, Bill C-61, Brian Murphy‘s review of The Halloween Tree, Poe’s Children, StarShipSofa’s Richard K. Morgan interview, Hour 25, converting m3u into MP3, Coeur de Lion‘s podcast, the difference between “mainstream fiction”, “literary fiction” and “slipstream fiction”, Peter Straub, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, James Wallace Harris’ post about Science Fiction as a religion, A Man In Full, Tom Wolfe, Mike Resnick’s Starship series, space opera, David Brin, Startide Rising, the impenetrable Kelly Link, evolution in art, William Gibson‘s literary journey, Charles Stross is for connoisseurs of SF, modern painting’s inaccessibility: Voice of Fire, on an child’s SF education: give them Heinlein, Bradbury and Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, The Call Of The Wild, Goosebumps, Gaiman’s signed poster deal, converting children to my religion: treating books with reverence, audio drama: Johnny Chase: Agent Of Space, review of Queen Of The Black Coast, amateur and professional audio drama, Colonial Radio Theatre vs. Broken Sea Audio Productions.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Prisoners of Gravity on Robots and Artificial Intelligence

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s another episode of Prisoners Of Gravity uploaded to YouTube (and audio’d by SFFaudio). The three videos below make up the bulk of one episode from the 2nd season of PoG. The episode is titled “Robots & Artificial Intelligence“. In the show, Commander Rick and guests talk to and about, Douglas Adams, Gregory Benford, Karel Čapek, Isaac Asimov, Nancy Kress, George Zabrowski, Stanislaw Lem, Robocop, Frank Miller, Robert J. Sawyer, Donald Kingsbury, Brian Fawcett, Pamela Sargent, Lewis Shiner, Roger Penrose, Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek and Judith Merril and William Gibson, John Varley. This is a terrifc survey of the cross’d subjects of robots and AI. Check it out…

Prisoners Of Gravity – “Robots & Artificial Intelligence”
1 |MP3| – 25 Minutes [AUDIO FROM VIDEO]
Broadcaster: TV Ontario
Broadcast: Thursday, January 24th, 1991

“This week’s topic is Robots… unfortunately, NanCy, Commander Rick’s computer, changes the topic on him to Artificial Intelligence; Commander Rick manages to discuss a little of both with his guests. Including clips from Hardware and Robocop 2.”

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 3 of 3:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: What are we missing?

SFFaudio Commentary

SFFaudio Meta By any measure of the times were living in, there is a new audio renaissance. More audiobooks are getting made now than ever before. And more SF, Fantasy and Horror audiobooks are being released than ever before. Here’s a list of the top 10 SFF novels from Sci-Fi lists:

1. Frank Herbert Dune
2. Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game
3. Isaac Asimov Foundation
4. Douglas Adams Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
5. George Orwell 1984
6. Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land
7. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
8. William Gibson Neuromancer
9. Isaac Asimov I, Robot
10. Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey

All of these novels have had UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK releases at some point or another. Several have had more than one unabridged release! That’s wonderful. But I’m still not satisfied. What novels are we still missing? Or rather, what novels are you missing.

Personally I’m missing a few, here’s a list of just 10 titles I’ve picked from out of the air. I’d like to see any and all of these made into unabridged audiobooks:

1. Scott Lynch The Lies Of Loch Lamora
2. Dan Simmons Hyperion
3. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle The Mote In God’s Eye
4. Clifford Simak Way Station
5. Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination
6. Steven Gould Jumper
7. Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space
8. Robert J. Sawyer Golden Fleece
9. John Brunner Stand On Zanzibar
10. Ken MacLeod The Star Fraction

What novels are missing from your audiobook shelf?

Posted by Jesse Willis

William Gibson’s Burning Chrome to air on BBC7

Online Audio

BBC7‘s Yes it is a re-run, but what a re-run it is! The 7th Dimension slot has aired Burning Chrome at least a couple times previously. The first time was way back in 2003. I’ve heard this Gibson story more than once now, and it is a terrific listen. First published in Omni magazine back in 1982 it tells the story of professional hackers trying to pull off a big heist. One line from this story — “…the street finds its own uses for things” — has become a widely-quoted aphorism.

Burning Chrome
By William Gibson; Read by Adam Sims
2 Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
BROADCASTER: BBC 7 / The 7th Dimension
BROADCAST: Oct. 18th & 19th (Thursday and Friday) @ 6.30pm and 12.30am (UK Time)
Set in the world of cyberspace and computer hacking. Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack are trying to figure out a way of pulling off the one big score that will make them rich. But industrial espionage is a dangerous business, especially when they decide to rip off Chrome, the most ruthless figure in the local mob subsidiary.

posted by Jesse Willis

William Gibson interviews about Spook Country

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC Radio One North By North West Studio One Book Club - Hosted by Sheryl MacKay of CBC Radio and John Burns of the Georgia Straight - image credits go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmv/

The Words At Large podcast, an amalgam of book related tidbits from CBC radio programs, has an in-depth interview with William Gibson about his latest novel Spook Country. This originally aired in the NXNW Studio One Book Club slot on Saturday September 15th. You can download the |MP3| direct or get the file by subscribing to the podcast feed:

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/wordsatlarge.xml

Also, there was a great interview with William Gibson on NPR’s “On Point” program, in which Gibson speaks about Spook Country. From the introduction…

“Now the man who coined the term cyberspace is writing wild fiction set in the here and now”

Gibson’s recent writing (starting with Pattern Recognition) is a swing away from futuristic science fiction – about this, Gibson later remarks, “One of the conclusions that I’ve come to is that science fiction is never about the future, really . . . it’s always about the day in which it was written.” Gibson also predicts “within a decade from now cyberspace with be a nostalgic term”; much in the same way that the use of “electric” as a prefixed adjective in the 19th century went away when electric devices became commonplace, so will the term “digital” be subsumed.

Here’s the direct link to the |MP3| file for the interview.

[Special thanks to Moriond]

And of course, this post mentioning CBC means I must mention that… Apocalypse Al must be freed!

posted by Jesse Willis

German language Radio Drama alive and well

SFFaudio Commentary

“Der Himmel ueber dem hafen hatte die farbe eines fernsehers, der auf einen toten kanal eingestellt ist.”

Neuromancer Radio Drama in GERMAN

If regular old Neuromancer is just too prosaic for your discerning tastes might I recommend the German language radio drama version?

Have a listen to a sample RealAudio track, its an urbane, laid-back delivery of William Gibson’s familiar story in audio dramatization form. The production is speckled with subtle musical cues and unexpected lines in English. It’s awesome. Thanks to Carsten Schmitt for the tip-off!

The entire drama is available on a 3-CD set through Der Audio Verlag (which translates into “The Audio Publishinghouse”). Also in the Der Audio Verlag catalogue are more German language radio dramatizations of the works of Isaac Asimov, Stanislaw Lem and many others. Especially cool sounding is the one titled Erinnerungsmechanismus by Philip K. Dick (which translates back into English as “Memory Mechanism”) There’s something comforting about the idea that radio drama is alive and well in Germany… aber es drückt mich nieder, daß mein Deutscher nicht bis zur Aufgabe ist.

posted by Jesse Willis