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PW's ListenUp points us to William Dufris's AudioComics Company

Posted on 2012-07-30 at 14:58 by Sam

Link: PW’s ListenUp points us to William Dufris’s AudioComics Company

The samples sound a bit like GraphicAudio in terms of full cast, sound effects, etc. The Batsons title seems oriented for kids, which is a nice change of pace and a more unique direction. I wasn’t overly thrilled with the packed-to-the-earwalls sample for Titanium Rain, but as it was a battle scene, it’s hard to get an overall feel for a more typical section of the narrative. Something to keep an eye on.

Posted in link | Tagged audiocomics, publishing news

It's Iambik Audiobooks day!

Posted on 2012-07-27 at 17:06 by Sam

It’s been a while since I saw any Iambik titles showing up at Audible.com, but today has seen a long list arrive, including the absolutely fantastic, you should not miss, Last Dragon By J. M. McDermott, Narrated by Cori Samuel:

I bought this direct from Iambik earlier this year, and it immediately became one of my all-time favorites. As I said in my May listening report, “The book is a disjointed experience, with several timelines bringing out exquisite foreshadowing and a beautiful sense of melancholy, purpose, and atmosphere. At first, the switches between timelines was a bit jarring, but before long I found the rhythm and began to recognize the cues that setting, characters, and events quickly provided. I do not want to say too much about this book other than: listen to it or read it. Zhan is a girl coming of age, leaning to be a hunter in a secondary world of snow, ash, war, and power. What magic there once might have been is largely gone. What gods there are do not seem to listen. Once, dragons lived. But they have all been hunted and killed. So, into this, in a tribal culture, the girl Zhan. Her family is murdered, apparently by her grandfather, and so off on a quest of vengeance into the wider world goes Zhan with her uncle Seth, a fire-breathing shaman. Who can make golems. They meet and hire a mercenary bodyguard; a paladin; a gypsy. They travel through and ahead of the drums of war. It’s just beautiful. Go read it.”

I’ve only just started on another title, A Book of Tongues: Hexslinger, Book 1 By Gemma Files, Narrated by Gordon Mackenzie, and book two is already here as well: A Rope of Thorns: Hexslinger, Book 2:

And here’s some more just-added (to Audible, they’ve been available direct from Iambik for a bit) titles:

And, speaking of Iambik, as I mentioned in this week’s release week post, they have recently published another pair of sf/f titles, so far only available directly from Iambik: The Land at the End of the Working Day by Peter Crowther, Narrated by Robert Keiper (Published in print by PS Publishing) and Outer Diverse by Nina Munteanu, Narrated by Dawn Harvey (Published in print by Starfire World Syndicate) — for Outer Diverse use code diverse-launch for 10% off.

Posted in regular | Tagged audible, iambik

Audiobook Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker | The Guilded Earlobe

Posted on 2012-07-27 at 12:19 by Sam

Link: Audiobook Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker | The Guilded Earlobe

Absolutely fascinating review of one of this year’s most anticipated “genre in the mainstream” titles.

Posted in link

Release Week: Vlad; Neil Gaiman Presents Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword; Charles Yu; and Charles Stross's The Apocalypse Codex

Posted on 2012-07-25 at 16:27 by Sam

The release week for Tuesday, July 24 brings quite a few titles I’m very interested in. Luckily, two of the audiobooks I’ve most got my eyes on are on the shorter side.

Vlad By Carlos Fuentes, translated by Alejandro Branger and Ethan Shaskan Bumas, narrated by Robert Fass for Dreamscape Media (Dalkey Archive Press, 112 pages) — Length: 2 hrs and 41 mins — “Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern-day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won’t mind a few disappearances? ‘Vlad’ is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead. More than a postmodern riff on “the vampire craze”, Vlad is also an anatomy of the Mexican bourgeoisie, as well as our culture’s ways of dealing with death. For - as in Dracula - Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asuncion fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?”

 

The Privilege of the Sword By Ellen Kushner, Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Joe Hurley, Katherine Kellgren, Nick Sullivan, and Neil Gaiman for Neil Gaiman Presents — Length:15 hrs and 40 mins — won the 2007 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel — “A few words from Neil on Privilege of the Sword: Life hands us so many moments when we hover between who we were raised to be, who the people around us are trying to make us, and who we are trying to become. In Katherine’s case, that means encountering a range of people and behaviors her mother never prepared her for - including some shocking acts of violence, both physical and emotional. As one of Kushner’s most charming characters, an actress known as “The Black Rose”, sighs, “It’s all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.”” Here The Privilege of the Sword is another “illuminated” production, with Kushner’s narration accompanied by a full cast, as was the case for fellow World of Riverside novel Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners.

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories By Charles Yu, Narrated by James Yaegashi, Johnathon Ross, Mark Nelson, Ramon De Ocampo, Richard Poe, and Johnny Heller for Recorded Books — Length:4 hrs and 50 mins — “New York Times Notable Book author Charles Yu wrote the best-selling novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. In his stunning, often humorous, collection Sorry Please Thank You, Yu draws on pop culture and science to make incisive observations about society - and to offer touching insight into the human condition. In two of Yu’s remarkable stories, he focuses on a big-box-store night-shift employee with girl trouble and a company that outsources grief for profit.”

 

And just out today (Wednesday July 25) is The Apocalypse Codex By Charles Stross, Narrated by Gideon Emery for Recorded Books — Length:11 hrs and 55 mins — “The winner of multiple Hugo Awards, Charles Stross is one of the most highly regarded science fiction writers of his time. In The Apocalypse Codex, occasionally hapless British agent Bob Howard tackles a case involving an American televangelist and a supernatural threat of global proportions.”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

Read more...
Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged ari marmell, bv larson, Carlos Fuentes, charles stross, charles yu, darksiders, ellen kushner, felicia day, katherine kellgren, neil gaiman, neil gaiman presents, release week, sorry please thank you, technomancer, the apocalypse codex, vlad

Another Audible sale: 3 for 2

Posted on 2012-07-22 at 02:19 by Sam

Audible is already in the midst of its Paperback Sale and has announced as well a new 3 for 2 sale, ending August 1, with “each book a part of a popular series”.

The sale includes among others:

  • Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars)
  • Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion)
  • Charles Stross’s Laundry Files (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum)
  • William Gibson’s Sprawl (Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero)
  • Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (books 2-7, 9-13)
  • Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan Saga (many books) Stephen King’s The Dark Tower (1-4)
  • Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth
  • Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century (Dreadnought and Ganymede)
Posted in regular | Tagged audible, sales

Release week: Earth Unaware, Energized, Shine Shine Shine, and 21st Century Dead

Posted on 2012-07-18 at 15:41 by Sam

The release week for Tuesday July 17 sports a pair of anticipated sf audiobooks, along with a “genre in the mainstream” title and all-star cast zombie anthology.

The first of the sf titles is a the first in a planned prequel series to Ender’s Game, telling the story of first contact and the First Formic War, introducing (but only just) a young Mazer Rackham, and exploring both the powerful reach of interstellar corporations and the tightly-knit lives of independent mining families. The book is Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, and is narrated for Macmillan Audio by a full cast including Stefan Rudnicki, Stephen Hoye, Arthur Morey, Vikas Adam, Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, and Roxanne Hernandez. “The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems…not important. They’re wrong. It’s the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.”

 

The second sf title is Energized by Edward M. Lerner, narrated by Grover Gardner for Blackstone Audio. “No one expected the oil to last forever. How right they were…. A geopolitical miscalculation tainted the world’s major oil fields with radioactivity and plunged the Middle East into chaos. Any oil that remains usable is more prized than ever. No one can build solar farms, wind farms, and electric cars quickly enough to cope. The few countries still able to export petroleum and natural gas - Russia chief among them - have a stranglehold on the world economy. Then, from the darkness of space, came Phoebe. Rather than deflect the onrushing asteroid, America coaxed it into Earth’s orbit. Solar power satellites - cheaply mass-produced in orbit with resources mined from the new moon to beam vast amounts of power to the ground - offer America its last, best hope of avoiding servitude and economic ruin.”

The “genre in the mainstream” title is Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer, narrated by Joshilyn Jackson for Macmillan Audio concurrent with the print and e-book release from St. Martin’s Press. “When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and 18 days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the Earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together. Now, 20 years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal”. She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?”

 

And the zombie anthology is 21st Century Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Christopher Golden (editor), Amber Benson, S. G. Browne, Chelsea Cain, Orson Scott Card, Dan Chaon, Simon R. Greene, Brian Keene, Caitlin Kittredge, and Jonathan Maberry, narrated by Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Bernadette Dunne, Paul Michael Garcia, Kirby Heyborne, Malcolm Hillgartner, Chris Patton, John Pruden, Renée Raudman, and Stefan Rudnicki. “The Stoker Award-winning editor of the acclaimed, eclectic anthology The New Dead returns with 21st Century Dead and an all-new lineup of authors from every corner of the fiction world, shining a dark light on our fascination with tales of death and resurrection—and with zombies!”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

Read more...
Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged earth unaware, edward m lerner, energized, orson scott card, release week, shine shine shine, stefan rudnicki

Audible.com "Paperback Sale" through July 28

Posted on 2012-07-16 at 14:06 by Sam

Billed as “100 audiobooks for as low as $5.95 each”, Audible.com is having a Paperback Sale through July 28, with a pretty good haul of interesting sf/f titles. Here’s the ones which most caught my eye, $5.95 unless otherwise noted:

Posted in regular | Tagged audible.com, sales

The Guilded Earlobe reviews The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Posted on 2012-07-12 at 18:33 by Sam

Link: The Guilded Earlobe reviews The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

“The Long Earth is a wonderful tale of exploration and discovery by two authors that blend their styles so seamlessly that it becomes something unexpected.”

Posted in link | Tagged guilded earlobe, reviews, stephen baxter, terry pratchett, the long earth

Audiobook review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Posted on 2012-07-12 at 15:08 by Sam

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Narrated by David Colacci for Brilliance Audio

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Release Date: 06-12-12 

Review by Dave Thompson: “Why don’t you figure out where we’re going to put all your goddamn comic books!”

This is going to be something of a departure from the other reviews I’ve done here, and I hope you all will indulge me. 

Memory is a funny thing. I first read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay when it came out in hardback. I was studying English in college, and for whatever reason, despite my love of comic books and science fiction and fantasy, I had started to feel like escapism was a dirty word. But I was at a local Borders Bookstore, and I saw the cover of a masked hero punching Hitler in the jaw, and I was in love before I even read the description on the dust-jacket: With Hitler in power in Germany, a Jewish immigrant and his American cousin begin creating WWII propaganda in the form of their comic book hero The Escapist.

I knew right then this book was going to be an incredible. And it was. I bought it, read it, loved it. Characters, scenes, and events have stayed with me ever since.

When I saw it was coming out in audio – finally, fully unabridged from Audible, I was filled with a sense of nostalgia. I wanted to revisit Sammy, Joe, Rosa, Kornblum, George Deasey, Tracy Bacon, and Thomas. I expected it to be like revisiting revisiting friends. I expected to appreciate it, and be moved by it. It’d be a good time. 

But listening to this book stunned me. I think it’s maybe one of the best books I’ve ever read. The story and the characters themselves are such a perfect and pure meditation on escapism. Chabon’s prose is delightful – perfectly setting the scenes better than any number of splash pages could. And the story and the characters themselves are a perfect and pure meditation on escapism. I don’t want to take anything away from Chabon, but David Colacci’s narration has to be singled out. It’s nothing short of fantastic. He does accents and dialects from Prague to Brooklyn and so much in between, perfectly voicing each character. From Joe’s self-destructive need for violence and revenge (that section in Antartica is as bleak as anything in Carpenter’s The Thing) to Sammy’s love and desire for someone the world won’t allow him - all of it is expertly captured by Colacci’s reading. I’d also forgotten how funny it was. I was laughing aloud at quips like, “Why don’t you figure out where we’re going to put all your goddamn comic books!” I haven’t listened to anything else Colacci’s read, but I’ll keep an ear out for him from now on. The way he read Tracy Bacon and Rosa, and their relationships with Sammy and Joe was incredibly impacting.

One of the scene’s that’s stayed with me so vividly is relatively early on: Sammy and Joe get their first big break, and shut themselves in with for a week to create comic books. That scene was like crack for creative people. I remember reading it 10+ years ago and falling madly in love with it. Wanting to create things like that – the way they did. And hearing that section again was like getting another fix of the really good stuff.

But the funny thing is the stuff that I didn’t remember: the whole rest of the book? It’s kind of like that too. This book is an ode to art and creativity and escapism unlike anything else. Here, escapism is no less important or necessary than love, and Chabon sketches it out like an artist, showing us all the shades of excitement and sexiness, hurt and heartbreak, and the pure need we, as humans, have for it.

Because if you can’t escape, you’re trapped. Maybe not in chains over a glass aquarium with a shark swimming below with some strangely dressed supervillain cackling, but in our bodies, in our lives, and in our world.

Near the end of the book, Sammy’s examining another character’s art work, and you can feel him just swept up in awe of what he’s looking at. And he says, “It makes me want to make something again. Something I can be just a little bit proud of.”

That about sums it all up for me. Listening to this book made me laugh, got me all choked up, sure. But most of all, it left me wanting to create art for as long as possible.

——

Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr. This fall, look for his narration of Tim Pratt’s Briarpatch.

Posted in regular | Tagged dave thompson, kavalier and clay, michael chabon, reviews

Release week: Shadow Show, Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Drowning Girl, The Last Policeman, and Year Zero

Posted on 2012-07-11 at 13:52 by Sam

July really gets rolling here in its second week, with a long list of big new releases, including Rob Reid’s Year Zero and Deborah Harkness’s Shadow of Night. Still, it’s another four books which most catch my eye this week, starting with the anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, narrated by George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, F. Murray Abraham, Neil Gaiman, Peter Appel, and James Urbaniak for Harper Audio, concurrent with its print release from William Morrow. “The recent passing of literary legend Ray Bradbury was a blow to field of fiction. This tribute collection, started before his passing, features the talents of just a small portion of writers whose lives he affected: Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, Alice Hoffman, Audrey Niffenegger, Kelly Link, Harlan Ellison and 18 more. This must-have anthology also features an essay, “Second Homecoming,” written by Bradbury specifically for this publication.” (via Kirkus Reviews):

 

Also new in audio today is The Drowning Girl By Caitlin R. Kiernan, Narrated by Suzy Jackson for Neil Gaiman Presents — Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins — Published in print just earlier this year, this is certainly a triumphant return for Neil Gaiman Presents after a more than four month absence. Kiernan’s previous novel, The Red Tree, was a World Fantasy Award finalist,  and publishing a current year release is by far the most recent release for the 9-month-old imprint. “India Morgan Phelps - Imp to her friends - is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth - or from something far, far stranger…” A few words from Neil on The Drowning Girl: “As with all “Neil Gaiman Presents” titles, it’s very important to me to find the voice that comes closest to the voice in the author’s head; for Caitlin, for this book, that was Suzy Jackson. It was not until the second round of auditions that we found someone who sounded young but not naïve, someone who could catalogue the sharp detail of Imp’s carefully observed daily life but also convey the blurred edges of her reality. Caitlin and Suzy kept in touch during the recording, and the result is a reading that is precise but not “stagey”, a literary but accessible reading of the novel.”

Nearly lastly (well, above the fold, there’s a long list of good-looking titles below the “read more”) is one I don’t remember having heard of before seeing it today: The Last Policeman By Ben H. Winters, Narrated by Peter Berkrot for Brilliance Audio, concurrent with its print publication from Quirk Books. A more moderate length of just under 8.5 hours: “What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares. The first in a trilogy.”

And coming from the comedic side of sf: Year Zero: A Novel By Rob Reid Narrated by John Hodgman for Random House Audio (the PC in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, among other places) — Length:9 hrs and 53 mins — (Del Rey, July 10) — “a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe—and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry.”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

Read more...
Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged caitlin r kiernan, graham joyce, neil gaiman, neil gaiman presents, ray bradbury, release week, the drowning girl, the last policeman, year zero
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