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Just out from Blackstone Audio: How the Hippies Saved Physics, non-fiction narrated by Sean Runnette

Posted on 2011-06-27 at 16:36 by Sam

Link: Just out from Blackstone Audio: How the Hippies Saved Physics, non-fiction narrated by Sean Runnette

Not yet showing up at Audible, but this one takes a look at “The surprising story of eccentric young scientists who stood up to convention—and changed the face of modern physics.”

More from Blackstone: “In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs. Unlikely as it may seem, this quirky band of misfits altered the course of modern physics, forcing mainstream physicists to pay attention to the strange but exciting underpinnings of quantum theory. Their work on Bell’s theorem and quantum entanglement helped pave the way for today’s advances in quantum information science.”

Posted in link

Free YA Audiobook download every week this summer.

Posted on 2011-06-24 at 15:04 by Sam

Link: Free YA Audiobook download every week this summer.

harpermedia:

stayingsaneinlawschool:

This week’s audiobooks: Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare and Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater.

You need to download Overdrive media player, too.

 This is a fun program that HarperAudio is taking part in too. Spread the word!

Whoa! Next week’s titles are Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and The Trial by Franz Kafka! (Aside: I usually associate Overdrive with the kind of onerous DRM that Doctorow doesn’t like — even more restrictive than Audible’s, which prevents me getting to buy his audiobooks via Audible, or at least that’s how I understand it. I’m very curious to see what the licensing terms are here.) And looking further ahead I see a production of Francis B. Gummere’s translation of Beowulf!

UPDATE: The download ends up as a DRM-free MP3 fileset, not one of Overdrive’s DRM-laden WMA filesets. Recommendation for AAC/M4B audiobook devices: use Chapter and Verse to assemble a single audiobook file with chapters from the resulting files.

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BaffledBooks: My Most Recommended Audiobooks

Posted on 2011-06-23 at 17:35 by Sam

Link: BaffledBooks: My Most Recommended Audiobooks

harpermedia:

baffledbooks:

I posted this in today’s Audiobook Week post and figured it would be a good idea to stick it here as well. My full post is {here}.

  1. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White. Narrated by Emily Eiden.
  2. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. Narrated by Jim Dale. (Any Harry Potter book, I love them all).
  3. The…

 Nice list! And really interesting post on Baffled Books, I especially like the genre point.

Not a bad list at all! Though the Zafon audiobook is not available in the US. A pity.

Posted in link

Audible.com's "The Best of 2011 So Far"

Posted on 2011-06-23 at 17:34 by Sam

Link: Audible.com’s “The Best of 2011 So Far”

Audible.com has posted a mini-site feature for “The Best of 2011 So Far”, which includes Solaris: The Definitive Edition and The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive (non-fiction) in its “Editors Picks” while “Customer Favorites” includes Solaris as well as:

Sadly, the mini-site doesn’t come with any sales or special deals, but, hey: this list had quite a few I’d missed entirely along the way. However, their list misses a pretty good crop of excellent audiobooks I’ll put up there with this list:

Which are my own picks for “The Best of 2011 So Far”.

Posted in link | Tagged news-audible.com

iTunes sale on first audiobooks in a series includes Lev Grossman's The Magicians for $5.95 (ITMS link)

Posted on 2011-06-21 at 21:43 by Sam

Link: iTunes sale on first audiobooks in a series includes Lev Grossman’s The Magicians for $5.95 (ITMS link)

Lev Grossman’s 2009 novel The Magicians is one of my all-time favorite audiobooks. Mark Bramhall does a wonderful job on the narration, and there it is, in a “first book in a series” sale in the iTunes Music Store.

Other interesting titles at a glance: Eragon by Christopher Paolini (YA), Redwall (Book 1) by Brian Jacques (YR), The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan (YR), Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (non-genre alert!), Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (YR, non-genre alert!), Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (YR), Magyk: Septimus Heap by Angie Sage (YR), Legend of the Guardians by Kathryn Lasky (YR), Storm Front: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, New Spring: The Wheel of Time Prequel by Robert Jordan, and The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower by Stephen King.

While I was there, I saw that this month’s ITMS audiobook of the month (which means on sale for $5.95 as well) was Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad which, while being a non-genre alert!, is tempting.

I also browsed the $2.99 “limited-time offers” e-book section. At a glance: Before the Witches by Karina Cooper ($1.99, novella, May 2011); Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (SF, July 2010) which is timely as I was thinking of getting to that series before Vortex comes out next month; Glimmerglass by Jenna Black (YA, May 2010); Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (YR, August 2009); The Edge of the World by Kevin J. Anderson ($1.99); and Lord of the Isles by David Drake. I don’t think I’ll be reporting back on e-book things in the future here, I was at first confused by the ITMS presentation as to whether I was browsing audiobooks or e-books, and figured my wasted time didn’t have to go to complete waste.

Posted in link | Tagged aotm-itunes, news, news-itunes, sales, sales-itunes

Released today on Audible: The Tenth Anniversary Edition of American Gods by Neil Gaiman, with a new full cast production

Posted on 2011-06-21 at 17:57 by Sam

Link: Released today on Audible: The Tenth Anniversary Edition of American Gods by Neil Gaiman, with a new full cast production

This is one of my favorite books from one of my favorite authors, and while the existing audiobook is a very good one-narrator performance from George Guidall, for the 10th anniversary edition of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods there’s “updated and expanded” text and a 4-person cast production from Harper Audio.

Cover for American Gods 10th Anniversary Audiobook

Publisher’s Summary:

First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic, an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now, discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this 10th anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece by the one, the only, Neal Gaiman.

A storm is coming….

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.

Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined. It is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own.

Along the way, Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life, a storm is brewing - an epic war for the very soul of America - and that he is standing squarely in its path.

Relevant and prescient, American Gods has been lauded for its brilliant synthesis of “mystery, satire, sex, horror, and poetic prose” (Washington Post Book World) and as a modern phantasmagoria that “distills the essence of America” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). It is, quite simply, an outstanding work of literary imagination that will endure for generations.

I’m looking forward to checking this one out, and it’s exciting to see this book get such an audio facelift, reminiscent of the 20th anniversary production of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Rumors abound that, after signing a multiple-season TV deal with HBO, Gaiman is working on more books in the world of American Gods and Anansi Boys so there’s plenty to be excited about here.

UPDATE: HarperCollins Audio has a page full of extras including cast outtakes, an interview with Gaiman, the Bookperks contest winner (who got to record a bit part in studio in NYC), and more. And HarperCollins Audio is on Tumblr, too!

Posted in link | Tagged audible.com, news, news-audible.com, news-releases

Welcome to my guide to the audio world of science fiction and fantasy

Posted on 2011-06-20 at 18:05 by Sam

Hello, and welcome to yet another blog. This one sets out to cover, twice monthly or so with occasional additional updates, what’s out there to listen to in terms of speculative fiction, focusing on new releases of science fiction and fantasy audiobooks at Audible.com. One post to begin each month with a preview of what’s coming, and another post at the end of the month to recap what I enjoyed hearing. I hope you like it and that you’ll play along, either submitting your own picks and/or asking questions. I’m also trying to put together some sidebar pages (such as a guide for Young Readers, a guide to what’s free at Audible.com, a guide to SF/F podcasts, etc.) but these will take a while to fill out. Do feel free to suggest things as I go along — it should be pretty quickly apparent the kinds of stories I like, and if you like them too, I hope we can get along nicely and, just maybe, help each other discover new stories as well. And, hey, maybe by talking about them we can discover new things about the stories we already like! We’ll see where this goes.

First up I am working on some “backdated” features, having combed back through my listening history and the long, long wishlist I’ve accumulated over the years. That should get us caught up, so we can move forward. Still, it might be a bit confusing, as “new” backdated posts will appear before this “welcome” post, until I clean up and make sense of my notes.

Posted in regular | Tagged meta

Best of May 2011 in Audible.com SFF: China Mieville's Embassytown

Posted on 2011-05-31 at 09:00 by Sam

Link: Best of May 2011 in Audible.com SFF: China Mieville’s Embassytown

Narrated by Susan Duerden, whose previous titles include Android Karenina, China Mieville’s Embassytown is my pick for the best science fiction and fantasy title to be released at Audible.com in May.

Here’s the publisher’s summary:

China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer—and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field—with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

Duerden ably pilots us through the dense linguistic plot, and nice production touches give listeners a flavor of the Ariekei tongue of which readers can only be jealous, mashing words on top of each other to create a truly alien effect. (Here is a short, low-fi clip of me saying “Jeff” and “Chi” overtop each other in a similar way to give “JeffChi”.) Meanwhile the book never devolves into pointless and expansive background and detail, without leaving us truly in the dark. In short, Mieville creates an alien world and lets it breathe, with the sometimes horrific suffocation this can imply. That said, the book opens with an intimidating series of undefined terminology, and alternates chronology from “formerly” to the present, and is a challenging book to unravel — to the point of, at times, an exasperated “what is going on?” Sticking it out, however, is plenty rewarding.

HONORABLE MENTION:

  • The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, narrated by Scott Brick, a non-stop plot-driven semi-hard sf heist novel and plenty of fun

ALSO IN MAY:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD: Unfortunately some books released this month did not come out in audio:

Note: this post is back-dated from June 21, 2011, for sort order purposes.

Posted in link | Tagged audible.com, best-of-audible.com

Best of April 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Posted on 2011-04-30 at 09:00 by Sam

Link: Best of April 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Charles Yu’s short September 2010 novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon) finally arrived at Audible.com in April 2011, courtesy of a Recorded Brooks production of a James Yaegashi narration, and it’s my pick for Audible.com’s best Science Fiction and Fantasy release of April 2011.

On to the publisher summary:

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

Yaegashi nails it, where “it” is the voice of this strange, self-referential, trope-playing book-within-a-book-within-a-book of time travel, fathers and sons, virtual dogs, and choosing to choose.

ALSO IN APRIL:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

Note: this post is back-dated from June 21, 2011, for sort order purposes.

Posted in link | Tagged audible.com, best-of-audible.com

Best of March 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

Posted on 2011-03-31 at 09:00 by Sam

Link: Best of March 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Lewis Shiner’s Glimpses, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

Lewis Shiner’s 1993 novel Glimpses won the 1994 World Fantasy Award, and has been brought to wonderful life by Stefan Rudnicki. It’s a marvelous audiobook, and my pick for the best Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobook release at Audible.com in March 2011.

Onto the publisher’s summary and some glowing blurbs:

Ray Shackleford is trying to deal with the death of his father and the collapse of his marriage when the impossible happens. Music that no one has ever heard before begins to play from his stereo speakers. It is only the first step on a journey that will take him to Los Angeles, London, Cozumel, and points far beyond, and bring him face to face with Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix - and his own mortality.

“Shiner couldn’t have written this book without a deeply felt sense of the fragility of art, of how many great works have passed into the ages never to enlighten, inform, or entertain new generations. Though the masterworks he conjures up in such exquisite detail are lost to us, we now have a bit of compensation for their absence: a masterpiece of the imagination called Glimpses.” (Richard Foss, Los Angeles Reader)

“Glimpses has the raw power of a documentary, a nitty-gritty, minute-by-minute evocation of a highly personal journey. Glimpses captures the sixties perfectly—I was there, and it was the way Shiner writes it.” (Dr. Timothy Leary)

“Shiner writes with intense feeling about the music Ray loves and the turmoil he endures. The novel sparkles with painfully perfect evocations of the yearning, anomie and need that wrack Ray, yielding a story of uncommon sensitivity, insight and redemptive power.” (Publisher’s Weekly)

Onto my review: “Moving, Remembering, and Being: This is a wonderful book about a late 80s stereo repairman (Ray) who discovers that he can, through some kind of power of imagination and love of music, actually cause lost albums to come to be. A musical trip through the late 60s (The Beatles, The Doors, Brian Wilson) as Ray re-lives both his own youth and the time and character of the musicians who made the music which provided the soundtrack to a tumultuous era. In the present, Ray is dealing with the death of his distant father, the tenuous threads which hold his marriage together, and coming to terms and some form of understanding with both. Stefan Rudnicki’s narration is (as always) rich and resonant, capturing’s Ray’s voice and grounding the book in a dry, gravelly bass which suits it perfectly. This is an authentic book of a time that was and of timeless music that almost was, and true human characters moving between them. I enthusiastically recommend it.”

ALSO IN MARCH:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

Note: this post is back-dated from June 21, 2011, for sort order purposes.

Posted in link | Tagged audible.com, best-of-audible.com
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