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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5 minutes, 19 seconds
Unabridged Narrative Poem
1816
In which our hero, the most Romantic of all the Romantic poets, takes on the end of the world.
Written in Geneva, Switzerland in the summer of 1816, when Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori spent their evenings telling each other ghost stories. The resulting tales included Shelley's Frankenstein, Polidori's creation of the vampire/vampyre genre (based on a novel fragment of Byron's), and this gloomy, speculative verse.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Posted by alex at 11:02 AM
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30 minutes, 18 seconds
Unabridged Science Fiction Story
1897
One hundred and one years before the films Armegeddon and Deep Impact entered U.S. theaters, the father of modern science fiction scared the crap out of Victorian London with this, the first of such death-from-above science fiction tales. Read by Alex Wilson. Not for sale in the EU.
Posted by alex at 2:33 PM
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2 hours, 15 minutes
Unabridged Novella
1915
"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin." So begins the classic existential tale about the traveling salesman who too late realizes what he's become.
Translation by David Wyllie. Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Metamorphosis"
Posted by alex at 4:59 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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48 minutes, 4 seconds
Unabridged SF-related podcast
2006
Telltale founder Alex Wilson, preparing to attend the famous Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop, gives an introduction and "before" picture. Featuring Michael A. Burstein and Jason Erik Lundberg.
Follow along with the adventures in Alex's Clarion Journal. The theme song "Untitled Pretention Pontificated by a Passive Voice" is available separately here. Photo by Jamie Bishop.
Expect the second and final Clarion podcast in the first half of 2007.
Continue reading "Clarion My Wayward Son 1 of 2"
Posted by alex at 10:13 AM
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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, 17 minutes
Unabridged SF-Related Essays on Writing
2003
Science fiction and fantasy author Tobias S. Buckell talks about a much-ignored period in the working writer's career: after one makes that first major professional story sale, but before he or she has turned that exception into the rule. Buckell discusses "the benefits, the experience, and the dangers of being a Joe Blow Neopro," along with "some strategies to move out of this stage in of our careers."
These six columns originally appeared in Speculations in 2003, when Buckell was still a neopro. His advice is likely worth reading because his first novel, Crystal Rain, comes out this month from Tor Books. Columns included:
- An Introduction
- Putting in the Time
- Original Source Creativity
- Professionalism
- Taking it Up a Notch
- Plan Your Career Now
Continue reading "Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro"
Posted by alex at 1:25 AM
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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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2 hours, 47 minutes
Unabridged Classic Novel
1843
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the classic tale of curmudgeon Ebeneezer Scrooge and the visitation of three ghosts (four if you include Marley) in the run up to Christmas. Read by James Spencer.
Continue reading "A Christmas Carol"
Posted by alex at 9:55 AM
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6 minutes, 58 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poetry
1816
Two poems by one of the founders of the Romantic Movement.
Coleridge claimed that "Kubla Khan," one of his most famous works, came to him in an opium-inspired dream. Coleridge's symbolic pleasure-dome of Xanadu in this poem is referenced and even built in Orson Well's classic film, Citizen Kane. The full title of the poem is "Kubla Khan Or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment."
"The Pains of Sleep" by contrast is a more conversational and emotional piece, dealing with nightmares instead of utopian fantasies, but it is very likely that this poem, too, was inspired by Coleridge's continued opium use.
Though both poems were first published at the same time in 1816, Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan" a good 6 years before 1803's "The Pains of Sleep," revealing very different mental reactions to his continued drug use. 1816 was also the year when Coleridge finally sought help for his addiction.
Read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "Kubla Khan & The Pains of Sleep"
Posted by alex at 11:46 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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43 minutes, 21 seconds
Unabridged Formal Poem
1820
Shelley at his most playful (starting with the dedication to his wife, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley: "On her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its containing no human interest."), combining Greek and Egyptian myths into a fanciful meditation on creativity. A longform poem of the fantastic, read by Alex Wilson.
Continue reading "The Witch of Atlas"
Posted by alex at 6:24 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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1 hour, 15 minutes
Unabridged Interview
2005
Publisher and writer Jason Erik Lundberg of Two Cranes Press talks to multimedia artist Jamie Bishop about the ups and downs of launching a small press startup, collaborating with fantasy artist Janet Chui, publishing science
fiction and fantasy work by Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, Bruce Boston, Mike Jasper, and others, and releasing a short story collection by Big Fish author Daniel Wallace. Candid, informative listen for anyone interested in starting up her or his own publishing venture.Continue reading "Jason Erik Lundberg (Small Press Startup) Interview"
Posted by alex at 5:41 PM
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