When the World Was Young
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38 minutes, 6 seconds
Unabridged Horror Short Story
1910
"And then the thing happened — the thing unthinkable and unexpected." London's speculative story about the frightening, dual nature of man.
Read by William Coon.
Continue reading "When the World Was Young"
Posted by alex at 12:39 PM
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16 minutes, 27 seconds
Unabridged Horror Story
1842
What's a Prince to do when his people are dying of plague? Why, wall himself off with a thousand other nobles and throw a masquerade ball, of course!
Silly prince. Doesn't he know he's in an Edgar Allan Poe story?
Continue reading "The Masque of the Red Death"
Posted by alex at 3:31 PM
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27 minutes, 01 seconds
Unabridged Horror / Science Fiction
1835
What happens when you hypnotize a person in the moments before he dies? The story that began as a hoax (it was first published without the "fiction" label) is one of the first modern science fiction tales.
Continue reading "The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar"
Posted by alex at 7:26 PM
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38 minutes, 54 seconds
Unabridged Short Fiction
1835
A puritan confronts witches, the devil, and his own morality in the spooky, Salem woods in this classic American short story.
Continue reading "Young Goodman Brown"
Posted by alex at 6:04 PM
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46 minutes, 45 seconds
Unabridged Short SF Story
1999
"Think of the underworld as the back of your closet, behind all those racks of clothes that you don't wear anymore. Things are always getting pushed back there and forgotten about. The underworld is full of things that you've forgotten about."
First published in Event Horizon in 1999. Later reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection and Link's short story collection Stranger Things Happen, a Salon Book of the Year and one of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books of 2001.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Girl Detective"
Posted by alex at 9:21 PM
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13 minutes, 19 seconds
Unabridged Short SF Story
2000
When the fuel went, Mara's town turned to windpower. They struggled on as the lights left, as the cities fell fallow, and plastic became a memory. Their only link to the outside world is the Zephyr, and now it too has not shown up. Originally published in Jackhammer. Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal of the Willamette Radio Workshop.
Continue reading "Waiting for the Zephyr"
Posted by alex at 10:19 AM
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29 minutes, 11 seconds
Unabridged SF/Fantasy Pulp Adventure Story
1903
H G Wells was such a science fiction pioneer that he took all the great, archetypal titles (Think about it: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Magic Shop, etc.. You'd think he would have at least been generous enough to call it, say, "A Magic Shop," allowing that Asimov or Heinlein might decades later want to write about another one.) So it goes with "The Valley of the Spiders."
Three adventurers face danger, death, and giant spiders, all for the
Continue reading "The Valley of the Spiders"
Posted by alex at 3:32 PM
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54 minutes, 13 seconds
Unabridged Horror / Mystery Fiction
1839
"I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all..."
Disease (vampirism?) and decay of both man and stone (do they share a soul?) in the master of the macabre's famous tale. Includes Poe's poem "The Haunted Palace" with musical accompaniment.
Continue reading "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Posted by alex at 9:34 PM
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1 hour, 18 minutes
Unabridged Science Fiction and Horror Stories
2000-2002
Four science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories.
The Fish Merchant: (science fiction) Li Hao-Chang struggles to stay one step ahead of starvation or stabbing, selling fish on the brutal docks of Macau. He's too busy to read the headlines in the newspapers that wrap his wares--rumors of non-random signals from deep space. When a gangster named Pepper is gunned down in front of Li's stand, the fish seller finds a computer disk stolen from the Chinese government. Maybe, just maybe, the biggest news in history is enough to make Li's dearest dream a reality: escape to safety in America. First published in Science Fiction Age, 2000. Read by Jonathon "Sullydog" Sullivan.
"The story is interesting for its non-western setting, and its realization that many people in the world would have no care for news about aliens..." -- Locus
A Green Thumb: (fantasy/science fiction) It's a very different USA, where necessity has provoked a very profound change in technology. And yet many things are still the same. Being a teenager is always tough, and there are many choices ahead. One of which is "how and where do you grow your very first car?" First published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, 2002. Read by Alex Wilson.
"Amusing and heart-warming at the same time, and read with feeling and emotion by Wilson." --Locus
All Her Children Fought: (science fiction) When you fire something into space the cost of that launch is per pound. When you go to war with someone in space, you need to keep the cost down. So you use the smallest available pilot you can. A child. Originally published in Speculon, 2001. Read by Mary Robinette Kowal of the Willamette Radio Workshop.
Trinkets: (horror) New England, early 1800s: At the harbor near his jewelry shop, George Petros receives a package from the Haitian merchant ship Toussaint--a sinister link that follows him from a brief stay on the Caribbean island of dark magic. Originally published in The Book of All Flesh, 2001. A Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Honorable Mention. Read by the author.
Continue reading "The Fish Merchant and Other Stories"
Posted by alex at 12:02 AM
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33 minutes, 22 seconds
Unabridged Horror / Mystery Fiction
1843
"Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?"
Poe's classic horror tale about intoxication, murder, and a most mysterious cat. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Black Cat"
Posted by alex at 12:07 AM
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46 minutes, 51 minutes
Unabridged Science Fiction Story
2002
To live forever, you can copy your mind and transfer it to an immortal robotic body. But what happens to your Shed Skin?
This Hugo Award Nominated short story has appeared in the January 2004 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, as well as the Bakka 30th Anniversary Anthology. Sawyer's 2005 novel Mindscan is a longer treatment of the themes explored here. Narrated by Stephen Hoye.
Posted by alex at 12:26 AM
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27 minutes, 20 seconds
Unabridged Short SF Story
2001
"Sexy blond aliens invade New York City?" A short story from Link's short story collection Stranger Things Happen, a Salon Book of the Year and one of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books of 2001.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water"
Posted by alex at 12:01 AM
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1 hour, 14 minutes
Unabridged Story Collection
1891, 1894, 1909
Susie Berneis and Robert Bethune narrate five stories by Bierce, full of vivid characters, precise and evocative language, surprises and suspense.
An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge
A life, flashing before the eyes, and a miraculous escape from certain death, suddenly becomes--something else entirely. Bierce's strangest and most famous fantasy. A French film adaptation of "Owl Creek Bridge" won the Academy Award for short film in 1963, and also became the hightest-rated episode of The Twilight Zone.
Staley Fleming's Hallucination
The ghost of a Newfoundland dog with a white forefoot--and hungry for revenge!
The Damned Thing
A wild, ferocious animal determined to drive a man off his land-or or drive him insane, once he realizes the strange truth about the danger he faces.
Diagnosis of Death
A doctor whose incredibly accurate diagnoses are not at all conducive to a long and healthy life.
The Boarded Window
A window forever boarded up; a love forever gone.
Written a century ago, these stories still capture the imagination with vivid, precise language that bites--and may even draw blood. This Freshwater Seas production presents these five classics performed by Susie Berneis and Robert Bethune, with subtle musical underscoring to enhance and enrich Bierce's words.
Continue reading "A Bite of Bierce: Owl Creek Bridge and Other Stories"
Posted by alex at 3:45 PM
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25 minutes, 49 seconds
Unabridged Fairy Tale
1899
Oscar Wilde's fable about the true meaning of happiness.
Continue reading "The Happy Prince"
Posted by alex at 1:32 PM
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2 hours, 1 minute
Unabridged Science Fiction Novella
2000
Retrieval Artists find people who have Disappeared. But people Disappear for a reason--they don't want to be found. When Anetka Sobol shows up at Miles Flint's office on the Moon, he immediately knows that this case is going to be complicated.
A hard-boiled science fiction mystery. A Hugo Award Nominee, Locus Poll Award Nominee, and AnLab Award Nominee first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Read by Stefan Rudnicki.
Continue reading "The Retrieval Artist"
Posted by alex at 11:52 AM
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8 minutes, 25 seconds
Two Unabridged Short Ghost Stories
1910
Two short, Civil War era ghost stories by one of the most mysterious authors in American history.
Continue reading "Present at a Hanging & An Arrest"
Posted by alex at 1:59 PM
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54 minutes, 33 seconds
Unabridged SF Story Collection
1999-2002
"Brilliant. 'Primordial Chili' is as delightful a debut story as I can recall."
--Mike Resnick
"All four are delightfully bizarre, and are read nicely by Gerencer. His comic timing is spot-on, and his authorial voice is so distinct that when I later read a story by him in hardcopy, I could almost hear his voice in my head."
--John Joseph Adams, Locus
Four short science fiction and fantasy stories, read by the author.
Primordial Chili
Have you ever had one of those days when everything just seems to go ? right? Even when it's wrong? "Primordial Chili" is a laugh-out-loud thrill-ride of culinary perfection, taken to cosmic proportions. The planets align, the gods speak, and supper turns out pretty good, too. First published in Science Fiction Age Magazine.
A Taste of Damsel
Anyone can slay a dragon. Well, provided they are dragonslayers, which Colson isn't. But even clerks from copy shops can have heroic qualities and even the very, very old can learn new tricks. First published in Realms of Fantasy Magazine.
Demo Mode
In the future, schools will be outdated and we'll all have knowledge grafted straight into our heads. Just make sure they configure the innoculotron correctly, or you might wind up contracting Esperanto by mistake! First published in Science Fiction Age Magazine.
Trailer Trash Savior
So the millennia have passed, and the time of the reckoning is once more nigh ... not to mention that you've got a busted velvet-Elvis and the oil heat isn't working. Find out what happens when the owner of a mullet and a used AMC Gremlin becomes "the chosen one," and has to battle demons, various and sundry. First published in Brutarian Magazine.
Continue reading "Primordial Chili and Other Impossible Treats"
Posted by alex at 12:47 PM
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1 hour, 26 minutes
Unabridged Horror Story
1819
Irving's most famous story about Ichabod Crane--a timid schoolmaster and superstitious outsider in the the haunted Dutch community of Tarry Town--and his fateful encounter with the ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier: the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Posted by alex at 12:01 AM
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18 minutes, 39 seconds
Unabridged Horror Fiction
1843
"You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me."
The Master of the Macabre's most famous horror story. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Posted by alex at 12:01 AM
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18 minutes, 34 seconds
Unabridged Fairy Tale
1901
"You haven't a penny in the world, but you have a kingdom. There are many rich women who would be glad to give their wealth in exchange for a queen's coronet--even if the king is but a child. So we have decided to advertise that the one who bids the highest shall become the queen of Quok."
This humourous story by the author of the Wizard of Oz series involves a young, broke king and the quest by his advisors to replenish the treasury. It was published in 1901 with eleven other fantastical stories in a volume entitled American Fairy Tales. In his introduction to the second publication of these stories in 1908, Baum wrote:
My friends, the children, will find these stories quite as astonishing as if they had been written hundreds of years ago, for ours is the age of astonishing things. They are not too serious in purpose, but aim to amuse and entertain, yet I trust the more thoughtful of my readers will find a wholesome lesson hidden beneath each extravagant notion and humorous incident.This is the unabridged short story, read by J. Winter Collins.
Continue reading "The Queen of Quok"
Posted by alex at 9:54 PM
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15 minutes
Unabridged Fairy Tale
1901
"An accomplished wizard once lived on the top floor of a tenement house and passed his time in thoughtful study and studious thought. What he didn't know about wizardry was hardly worth knowing, for he possessed all the books and recipes of all the wizards who had lived before him; and, moreover, he had invented several wizardments himself. "
This humourous story by the author of the Wizard of Oz series, involves a wizard, a glass-blower and a lady of high-society. It was published in 1901 with eleven other fantastical stories in a volume entitled American Fairy Tales. In his introduction to the second publication of these stories in 1908, Baum wrote:
My friends, the children, will find these stories quite as astonishing as if they had been written hundreds of years ago, for ours is the age of astonishing things. They are not too serious in purpose, but aim to amuse and entertain, yet I trust the more thoughtful of my readers will find a wholesome lesson hidden beneath each extravagant notion and humorous incident.This is the unabridged short story, read by J. Winter Collins.
Continue reading "The Glass Dog"