The SFFaudio Podcast #245 – It’s our -The Best of 2013! episode. For it we invited SFFaudio fans, SFFaudio reviewers, and SFFaudio participants to share their listening highlights of 2013. We asked folks to tell us about their favourite audiobook or podcast episode.
If you don’t see your favourites listed below, feel free to add them as a comment. And remember, it needn’t be a podcast or audiobook from 2013, only one you heard in 2013.
And if you leave a comment in the first week (and a way to contact you) you’ll also be eligible for a a FREE PRIZE audiobook mailed to your home (anywhere in the whole universe*)!
Participants:
- The Stand by Stephen King, Read by Grover Gardner (Random House Audio)
- The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman, Narrated by Mark Bramhall (Penguin Audio)
- Hard Magic by Larry Correira, read by Bronson Pinchot (Brilliance Audio)
- Boy and Going Solo by Roald Dahl; Read by Dan Stevens (Penguin Audio)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, Read by Neil Gaiman (Harper Audio)
- The SFF Audio Podcast #222 – Jesse, Jenny, Paul Weimer and Bryan Alexander discuss Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, Read by George Guidall (Harper Audio)
- Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, Read by Mary Robinette Kowal (Macmillan)
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Read by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne (Random House Audio)
- The SFFaudio Podcast #232 – Scott, Jesse, Jenny, and Tamahome talk about The Prestige by Christopher Priest
- The SFFaudio Podcast #233 – Scott, Luke Burrage, and Jenny talk about Oryx And Crake by Margaret Atwood
Scott D.
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, dramatized by Dirk Maggs, BBC Radio 4
- World War Z by Max Brooks, multiple readers (Random House Audio)
- The Prestige by Christopher Priest, Read by Simon Vance (Blackstone Audio)
Posted by Jenny Colvin
*Mirror universe inhabitants need not apply
I really liked the SFF audio podcast #207 on PKDick’s GALACTIC POT-HEALER, which is a novel I read and loved 40 years ago. So I listened to it as an audio and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I regret not having posted in the comments, but the question was raised as to the meaning of “mare nostrum”. This is an alchemical expression that Carl Jung identified with the unconscious into which we plunge to be transformed.
I also listened to Heinlein’s TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET as I had read much Heinlein in the 60s and then stopped reading science fiction for a long time. So I wanted to get an idea of his later evolution. Unfortunately it is not a book that I can recommend, as his vision of sexuality in the book and his depiction of incest are rather unpleasant, a sort of hygienic transgressive fantasy.
I thought Alastair Reynold’s novella “Beyond the Aquila Rift” was brilliant, and “Merlin’s Gun” was very good too. I also listened to Robert Sheckley’s DIMENSION OF MIRACLES, which was great. I have always found him far funnier and more inventive than Douglas Adams, but even if you disagree on the relative merits, none of Sheckley’s books are to be missed.
Also SINNER by Mark Teppo is a very enjoyable listen. I found buying it as a kindle book and then on audible a good buy, and there is a considerable reduction in buying both ebook and audiobook for the longer books of the MONGOLIAD series.
Besides some of the titles listed here, I also enjoyed Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, narrated by Michael Page. It’s the third in the Gentleman Bastard series (of which The Lies of Locke Lamora is the first).
Early 2013 noticed Gregg Margarite’s performance of Dick’s “The Variable Man” had a play number on my iTunes that rivaled some pop music standards.
Googled Gregg and discovered SFF Audio. Cherry picked his participation and discovered, eventually, I was a year late for the wake.
Time for a quiet emotional pause.
Now for the living.
Been listening through the whole SFF Audio ‘catalog’, the regulars are now first name aural personas, star status, and the guests are always worth Googling their back trail.
Two examples, Wayne June reciting Poe’s “The City In The Sea”, and Jim Moon reading Well’s “The Sea Raiders”, some how remain in my transient memories of 2013.
In spite of all the typical / atypical *lost in the moment* calendar change clutter, these performances stand clearly in my 6 ? 8 ? short term save spaces.
It occurs to me that I did not give contact details in view of receiving the promised free audiobook: [email protected]