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Untitled
Posted on 2012-02-25 at 05:56 by Sam
Received: Three MP3-CD review copies from Blackstone Audio, including:
- EXOGENE by T. C. McCarthy, read by Bahni Turpin — to be published in CD, MP3-CD, and digital audio March 1, 2012 — sequel to last year’s excellent debut GERMLINE
- TO MARRY MEDUSA by Theodore Sturgeon, read by Stefan Rudnicki and directed by Emily Janice Card — published in CD and MP3-CD 2/1/2012, in digital audio 2/24/2009 — A work of classic sf from 1958: “Up until one minute ago, Gurlick was merely a specimen of homo sapiens, and a substandard specimen at that. But now this craven, seething, barely literate drunk has ingested a spore that traveled light-years before touching down on our planet, a spore that has in turn ingested Gurlick, turning him into a host for the Medusa, a hive mind so vast that it encompasses the life forms of a billion planets—a hive mind that is determined to ingest Earth as well.”
- A DOOR INTO OCEAN by Joan Slonczewski, read by Rosalyn Landor, produced by Stefan Rudnicki, and directed by Gabrielle de Cuir — published in CD and MP3-CD Jan 1, 2012 and in digital audio 7/31/2008, this 1986 novel won the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel — “A groundbreaking work both of feminist science fiction and of world-building, hard science fiction.”
Posted in photo | Tagged blackstone audio, received
Feature Friday: Open Letter to Audible: a DRM-free option.
Posted on 2012-02-24 at 15:50 by Sam
Dear Audible,
I love you guys. You’ve brought nearly 700 science fiction and fantasy books to audio, 43 so far this year, and we’re not even done with February yet. (And that’s just Audible Frontiers alone, not counting Audible, Inc. or Neil Gaiman Presents, or Brilliance Audio, or even just the beginnings of what you’re doing with ACX.) I love the narrator features and interviews, and I am really liking the ability to follow reviewers which was added last year, and the addition of individual ratings for overall, story, and narration.
No, really, I love you guys. The Audible app for my phone is nearly perfect. (And I understand why there’s no shop or buy buttons in-app. That’s on Apple’s money slice grab, which is one of the reasons I’m glad that you’ve also built an Android app.) I can download, manage, and play on the go. It’s got 1.5x speed which I sometimes miss when listening to a particularly slow audiobook elsewhere.
But. But, I want something from you. I want you to give publishers the option of selling DRM-free files at Audible. I want you to do this so that when the next Cory Doctorow audiobook comes out, I can buy it, download it, and listen to it, all on my phone, without having to involve my computer, compact discs, converting, etc. So I can rate it and discover new reviewers at Audible through their reviews of it.
It’s really a pretty small thing I’m asking for, isn’t it? Just the option?
(While I’m at it, my non-content-related wishlist continues with: 1. offer Audible/Brilliance/etc. titles DRM-free to help lead the way, and open up to users of Linux a wider world of excellent audiobooks; 2. pie-in-the-sky: figure out some way of partnering with libraries to do e-lending, all in the Audible app; …)
Posted in regular | Tagged feature-friday
Arcfinity: Arc 1.1: The Future Always Wins. Out now.
Posted on 2012-02-22 at 15:13 by Sam
Link: Arcfinity: Arc 1.1: The Future Always Wins. Out now.
OUT NOW
For iPads and iPhones
For Kindle
For Android devices, Windows and Mac computers
As a collectible print editionCONTENTS
EDITORIAL: Welcome to the future
Simon Ings and Sumit Paul-Choudhury
FORWARD: The object of posterity’s scorn (+)
Bruce Sterling
SHORT STORY:…
I’ve been anticipating this a long while, but… am very sad to see the price for the print edition ($30). There’s a pile of more cost-effective ways to print this, folks. Worst case, a DRM-free PDF version, or at least DRM-free “enough” so that I can print it so that I can read it.
Posted in link
Release Week: Eric Flint's 1632, Elizabeth Moon's Echoes of Betrayal, Larry Niven, and The Technologists
Posted on 2012-02-21 at 18:43 by Sam
Published in print by Baen in 2000, 1632 became a bestseller and spawned a bestselling series of alternate history and its own fanfiction magazine, its own track at Dragon*Con, and who knows what else. Synopsis: A small bit of modern (well…) Grantville, West Virginia is thrown back to northern Germany in 1632: “When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what’s going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville’s asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don’t have to ask who to shoot. At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.”
In terms of new releases, it’s Echoes of Betrayal: Paladin’s Legacy, Book 3 By Narrated by
The action continues fast and furious in this third installment of Elizabeth Moon’s celebrated return to the fantasy world of the paladin Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter. This award-winning author has firsthand military experience and an imagination that knows no bounds. Combine those qualities with an ability to craft flesh-and-blood characters, and the result is the kind of speculative fiction that engages both heart and mind.”
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged 1632, echoes-of-betrayal, elizabeth-moon, eric-flint, release week
The 2012 Audies finalists have been announced, with Neil Gaiman getting nods as author, publisher, and performer, and 3 nods for Wil Wheaton
Posted on 2012-02-20 at 21:40 by Sam
Via Audiobooker, a Booklist blog, the 2012 Audies Finalists have been announced. Here are some of the titles I thought my readers here would find the most interesting, with links:
Read more...Posted in regular
Untitled
Posted on 2012-02-19 at 18:08 by Sam
How to Write a Novel.
And you know, this is pretty much everything you need to know. The rest is detail, most of which is irrelevant…
(Stolen from http://www.nicalderton.com/blog/HowToWriteANovel/)
Posted in photo
Feature Friday: The regional digital divide cuts both ways (or: WHERE IS MY IRON COUNCIL AUDIOBOOK, WORLD!)
Posted on 2012-02-17 at 17:48 by Sam
Most times, as a reader and listener in the US, I don’t have to worry much about regional rights when it comes to the books I want to read, the films I want to watch, and so on. But as I find myself following the field more and more closely, those exceptions, generally UK and Australia (and sometimes Canadian!) titles which haven’t (yet?) made it to the US begin to gnaw at me.
Last year, it was (among other books, but most notably) Christopher Priest’s The Islanders which came out in the UK …
Read more...Posted in regular
The Guilded Earlobe reviews John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar
Posted on 2012-02-17 at 15:32 by Sam
Link: The Guilded Earlobe reviews John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar
“Quick Thoughts: Despite my struggles and the fact that it took me nearly half the audiobook to get a grip on the overall narrative, I am glad that I finally fully experienced Brunner’s strange, troubling but beautiful novel. This is a book that is hard for me to recommend, because it takes a lot of investment by the reader/listener, but if you’re game, I’ll definitely cheer you on.”
Posted in link
Audiobook release day: John Carter in 'A Princess of Mars', read by Scott Brick
Posted on 2012-02-17 at 01:54 by Sam
Although I swear I saw Tanith Lee’s Delusion’s Master, read by Susan Duerden no less, show up momentarily today, another title hit Audible’s shelves this evening and seems to have stuck: John Carter in ‘A Princess of Mars’: Barsoom Series, Book 1 By Narrated by
Kristen Britain books in her Green Rider fantasy series, both read by Ellen Archer for Penguin Audio: Green Rider and First Rider’s Call: Book Two of Green Rider.
Posted in regular
Audiobook review: Viriconium by M. John Harrison, read by Simon Vance
Posted on 2012-02-16 at 14:02 by Sam
Last month the blog welcomed contributor Dave Thompson with his review of Tim Powers’s The Stress of Her Regard, read by Simon Vance. Today he returns with another review, setting his ears on Viriconium by M. John Harrison, read by Vance for Neil Gaiman Presents:
Review by Dave Thompson: “A Not As Young Man’s Return Journey to Viriconium”
I have been to Viriconium once before – and appropriately – I find that the landscape of the city seems to have shifted since the last time I was here. Sometimes, it’s a bit difficult to find your way around, because as author M. John Harrison once stated, Viriconium is a place that cannot be mapped. It is its own mythology.
Viriconium is three novels and a collection of short stories. The first book – The Pastel City was my favorite last time, and might still be. It’s a tale of technological wastelands millennia in the future, filled with heroes, villains, princesses, and magic. It had lightsabers – baans, or energy swords, years before Star Wars came out. It has teagus-Cromis, the finest swordsman in the land, who was an even better poet. It’s a straightforward epic fantasy that isn’t a doorstop, and it’s the epitome of cool.
A Storm of Wings is the second novel, and Harrison makes some incredibly interesting choices, working very hard to do something radically different than he did the last time he brought us here. It’s a difficult listen at times because instead of fighting monsters, the heroes of the story are fighting something that ends up being much more abstract. It’s the longest of the stories, and it feels the longest. That said, it might also be the one I’m most eager to revisit.
The third novel is In Viriconium. Again, very different from the two that went before it, but this time the experiment is a glorious one – like watching the Coen Brothers make an urban fantasy farce riffing on epic fantasy tropes. It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious at one moment, then deeply disturbing in the next.
Then we get to Viriconium Nights, the short story collection, which is really interesting. Occasionally, characters from the previous books appear, but not always, and almost never quite how we remember them. Here is where Viriconium truly becomes an unmapped city – where all the contradictions of what’s come before in its history and characters are put on display.
Simon Vance is our tour guide through all this, showing off the different existences of a world, and tying them all together. He does a fantastic job reading Harrison’s stories.
It’s challenging, yes. It might even be frustrating. But I’ll be damned if I’m not already fantasizing about a return trip.
—-
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.
Posted in regular | Tagged dave thompson, m john harrison, neil gaiman presents, review, simon vance, viriconium
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