zombies – Page 15

The Living Dead anthology being AUDIOBOOKED

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Living Dead is a paperbook anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. Here’s the premise from the book’s introduction:

“Most of the stories in this book are either inspired by Romero’s ‘unholy trilogy’—Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead—or are a reaction to it.”

There are 34 stories in the anthology. Three are currently available in audio form from Pseudopod and WBAI 99.5 FM’s Hour Of The Wolf (there are two different readings of the David Barr Kirtley story BTW).

Here’s the Table of Contents with the AUDIO adaptations noted:

* Introduction by John Joseph Adams
* This Year’s Class Picture by Dan Simmons
* Some Zombie Contingency Plans by Kelly Link
* Death and Suffrage by Dale Bailey
* Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie
* Blossom by David J. Schow
* The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
* The Dead by Michael Swanwick
* The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer
* Malthusian’s Zombie by Jeffrey Ford
* Beautiful Stuff by Susan Palwick
* Sex, Death and Starshine by Clive Barker
* Stockholm Syndrome by David Tallerman; Read by Cheyenne Wright |MP3|
* Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead by Joe Hill
* Those Who Seek Forgiveness by Laurell K. Hamilton
* In Beauty, Like the Night by Norman Partridge
* Prairie by Brian Evenson
* Everything is Better With Zombies by Hannah Wolf Bowen; Read by Mur Lafferty |MP3|
* Home Delivery by Stephen King
* Less Than Zombie by Douglas E. Winter
* Sparks Fly Upward by Lisa Morton
* Meathouse Man by George R. R. Martin
* Deadman’s Road by Joe R. Lansdale
* The Skull-Faced Boy by David Barr Kirtley; Read by David Barr Kirtley |MP3|
* The Skull-Faced Boy by David Barr Kirtley; Read by Ralph Walters |MP3|
* The Age of Sorrow by Nancy Kilpatrick
* Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman
* She’s Taking Her Tits to the Grave by Catherine Cheek
* Dead Like Me by Adam-Troy Castro
* Zora and the Zombie by Andy Duncan
* Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite
* Followed by Will McIntosh
* The Song the Zombie Sang by Harlan Ellison® and Robert Silverberg
* Passion Play by Nancy Holder
* Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man by Scott Edelman
* How the Day Runs Down by John Langan

Here’s more:

From WBAI 99.5 FM’s Hour Of The Wolf and David Barr Kirtley’s podcast:

A discussion of the book (with editor John Joseph Adams, author David Barr Kirtley and host Jim Freund) at |MP3|

Listener calls |MP3|

And, here’s the “Zombieriffic” claymation video that was mentioned in the listener calls…

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #003

Podcast

Generally, this is our third podcast. Furthermore, it is a podcast of deep functionality. It’s universal really. Long story short, we talked about stuff. Join us in our secret society [book readers] where I (Jesse) say things like: “Dune shot Science Fiction in the head.” and “Why I don’t like Science Fiction movies anymore.” and “You don’t name a king Augustus.” and “I hope the Earth explodes.”

In other words, the podcast’s length is commensurate with a function of your desire to listen to it.

Topics discussed include:

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, The Zombies Of Dr. Krell, Roger Gregg, The Sonic Society, Radio Drama Revival, Whipping Star, Frank Herbert, Tantor Media, Dune, The Road To Dune, Children Of Dune, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, MP3 to iPod Audiobook Converter, iTunes 8.0, zombies, StarShipSofa, SFSignal.com, Ian McDonald, The River Of Gods, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Stephen King, John Scalzi, Old Man’s War, Anathem, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, BBC Audiobooks America, Hard Case Crime, Ed McBain, The Lies Of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch, Dragon Page: Cover To Cover, Roger Zelazny, Locus, The Dead Man’s Brother, Robert McGinnis, Glen Orbik, Behind The Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed, Christa Faust, Money Shot, public libraries, secret societies, Podiobooks.com, Evo Terra, The Book Of The New Sun, Gene Wolfe, Grifter’s Game, Random House Audio, The Colorado Kid, Aural Noir, Sunshine, 28 Days Later, I, Robot, I Am Legend, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Fortress Draconis (a book with a king named Augustus), Robert Capa, John Searle, Brian Cox (physicist), IMDB.com

Posted by Jesse Willis

One Eighteen Migration – a zombie apocalypse podcast

SFFaudio Online Audio

One Eighteen Migration is a new podcast fiction series by Christian Haunton, Christopher Wiig, and Will Ross. I’ve listened to several shows now, and to be perfectly honest I don’t like it.

There are three main issues I have with the podcast:

1. It plays looped music and looped sound effects under the narration.

This doesn’t work. I believe, instead, that it is universally just a bad idea. I’ve said it many times in the past, and One Eighteen Migration use of music and effects doesn’t dissuade me of my belief. My empirical studies of audio stories have shown that they are not improved by playing music underneath them. Instead, a music or sound effect wallpaper comes off as if the creators are either not confident in the writing, the narrator, or both. Audio dramas are audio dramas, audiobooks are audiobooks – to split the difference comes off as a half-hearted attempt to do both. Adding music and effects just doesn’t work. The story must be completely adapted to be audio drama, or just remain audiobook. One Eighteen Migration is neither. Music can manipulate mood in film, or in audio drama, or set a scene for an audiobook story, but it cannot underscore a story and get the same effect as it does in a film or in an audio drama. But, it isn’t just neutral either, it contributes to a general noise making the narrator harder to hear in noisy listening conditions (like practically everywhere you take an ipod). Generally though, I think it just illustrates a temptation too common – to improve the work by adding to it. You can’t airbrush a story’s imperfections by painting them with a thick layer of music or adding in looped sound effects.

2. There is too much swearing.

I love swearing, I swear with great pleasure. But, swearing doesn’t work in scripted introductions or in a journal. When you script-in swearing, when it comes off casually, like it’s just another word, it lessens the effect of the naughtiness (defeating the point). Also, the narrator, Jonas, is supposed to be a college professor. I spent 16 years hanging out with college and university professors. Many do swear, but they sure don’t sound like Jonas. They tend to reserve their swearing for direct quotations and for when they spill a coffee on a pile of essays.

3. The story is too slow.

Greenly, South Dakota, its residents and such might have a great story to tell, but I’m not gonna be able to stick around for it. Even the shortest episode, the twenty-two minute opening show, felt very long-winded. It’s told first person past tense. But, the action is told entirely without dialogue. There is no back and forth, just reportage, diary style. Which of course also kills the suspense – which was already killed by being told in past tense (we can’t be worried about whether the hero is going to die if we are constantly reminded he’s telling us what happened today). Perhaps a journal entry style isn’t the best way to tell a zombie apocalypse story.

Subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://oneeighteen.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis

Night of the Living Dead audio drama 30 minute exerpt

SFFaudio Online Audio

SIMON AND SCHUSTER AUDIO has a podcast, back in October they released the first half hour of their Night of the Living Dead audio drama on it.

Have a listen |MP3| to the production that uses the original John Russo/George Romero cast to recreate the film in the audio drama format!

The program starts about half-way through the MP3.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Frequency Of Fear – OTR Science Fiction and Horror par excellence

Online Audio

The Zombie Astronaut‘s podcast Frequency Of Fear, back from a recently dead feed, is now undead (and working again). But even while his feed was rotting away the zombie was busy recording and releasing several new shows. The Zombie Astronaut makes one of the most professional sounding podcasts out there, think of it as a magazine of Old Time Radio drama edited by a brain-craving editor.

Plug the podcast feed into your podcatcher, catch up on all of his doings:

http://frequencyoffear.com/podcasts-only/rss2.aspx

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
By Max Brooks; Read by a full cast
5 CDs – 6 hours – [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0739340131 ;ISBN-13: 9780739340134
Themes: / Horror / Zombies / War / Politics / Apocalypse

For my birthday last year, my wife got me a subscription to The Believer, a magazine for bibliophiles put out by the good people at McSweeney’s Publishing (Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby, and Rick Moody have all been involved with McSweeney’s in one way or another; sci-fi fans would do well to check out both McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and their Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories I was pleasantly surprised to open up to the 2006 Believer Book Awards in the last issue and find at least two science fiction novels listed in the top 40 (two that I recognized as such, anyway). Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was number one; not too shocking given McCarthy’s extensive, “respectable” (read: non-sci-fi) bibliography. The other was more of a surprise; Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I’d listened to the audio version of the novel months ago, and enjoyed the hell out of it, but it was kind of shocker to see a book about zombies written by Mel Brooks’ kid rubbing elbows with the new ones from Pynchon, Munro, Roth, and Virgil. Chalk some of the success up to Brooks’ connections, chalk some of it up to the inexplicably universal appeal of zombies, but give credit where it’s due and realize that World War Z is a well-written novel, and remarkable, given the crudity of the titular characters, in its subtlety and nuance.

Brooks presents the novel as an actual historical document of the spread of the virus that results in “zombiism,” and the reaction of the various nations to the problem. The book is structured as a series of interviews with representatives from around the world with Brooks himself as interviewer, and the device works well. Brooks has obviously done his homework; it’s not much of a reach to imagine Chinese bureaucrats engaging in an elaborate coverup of the spread of the virus (poisoned dogfood anyone?), South Africa deciding on a cold-hearted but necessary policy of abandoning the portion of the populace exposed to the virus, or the U.S. entertainment industry attempting to make a reality show of the zombie attack. The only part of the political description that felt a little unrealistic was Brook’s characterization of Israel’s generosity in its offer of asylum to Palestinian refugees before completely closing its borders for the duration of the war.

The decision to paint something as visceral as a zombie attack in the broad strokes of policy and strategy is an interesting one. Zombies have heretofore been portrayed mostly in the more action-friendly medium of cinema, and mostly from an up-close, short-term perspective. Brooks avoids the trap of becoming too impersonal and detached from the war by grounding the novel in the first-person reminiscences of the folks who lived through it. It’s impossible not to develop some attachment to the Canadian girl who describes the effects of the northern winter on the ill-prepared refugees looking to escape the warm-weather-dependent zombies, and the blind Japanese gardener’s account of his daily battles with the walking dead is strangely tranquil and moving.

The first thing you’ll notice about the audio version of World War Z are the cast members listed on the cover. Alan Alda, John Tuturro, Henry Rollins and, wait for it, Mark Hamill all contribute their voices to the project. Not quite A-listers, maybe, but definitely in the B or B+ range. Give it a little more time and Hamill might start being known first as a solid voice actor and secondly as that guy from the Star Wars that didn’t suck. He’s particularly effective in this production, as an American soldier reminiscing about the ups and downs of the military’s encounter with the zombies. Turns out the U.S. military was operating on an obsolete wartime paradigm and was ill-equipped to deal with an enemy that doesn’t fit the old model of nation-on-nation warfare. Hm.

The rest of the cast fares as well as Hamill; it’s admirable that the producers of the audiobook went to the trouble of securing actors that actually hail from the area they represent in the book. The genuineness of the accents is apparent and is definitely preferable to having some Rich Little-type give his impersonation of a Cuban.

So, whether you’re a zombie-loving, George Romero-worshiping, Shaun Of The Dead-reciting, walking dead aficionado; a history-channel-watching, political science-junkie; or just an audiobook listener with a taste for the unique, you’ll be welcome among the growing ranks of the scholars of dubya-dubya Z.

posted by Cory Myer