First Spaceship on Venus, Mortal Kombat, and Cool Comics.

Mooooviieee! Today, Lt. Bob plays for you First Spaceship on Venus (1960) "When an alien artifact discovered on Earth is found to have come from Venus, an international team of astronauts embarks to investigate its origins." -IMdB. And also some cool comics, including Atomic War. I love seeing humans blow each other up.



First Spaceship on Venus (1960)


Or Download it HERE.






@YouTube: Mortal Kombat: Legacy now is now up to episiode 8 "Scorpion and Sub Zero (Part 2)"

"With the Shirai Ryu clan murdered by the hands of Sub-Zero and the Lin Kuei, Hanzo Hasashi has failed to protect his village. With his eternal soul destined to rot in the depths of hell, he is visited by a mysterious sorcerer. Will vengeance be enough to get Scorpion to enter the Mortal Kombat Tournament?"

@War: Past, Present, and Future: "Sneak Attack Pt. 1" and "Pt 2." (1952). Spec. Fiction from Atomic War!





@Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine: "Land of the Living Dead" Horror. Fantasy. (1952.)
@The Comic Book Catacombs: Zago, Jungle Prince in "Circus of Cruelty" Adventure. (1949.)
@The Digital Comics Museum: The "Star Pirates Archive" Pt. 2. Sci-Fi.
@Fantasy Ink: "Trapped in the Human Aquarium" (1962). Sci-Fi.
@Parishi's Vision: "The Sea Monster" Adventure.
@Atomic Kommie Comics: "Barbarella 3.2"
@Hero (& Heroine) Histories: "The Secret Captain Marvel" Sci-Fi/Superhero/Weird.
@True Love Comics Tales: "Reunion" Parts One and Two. Gothic.

QuasarDragon Presents "Potential Zero" by John Bloodstone

A classic SF novella from the pages of Science Stories. This is the first novella ever for the QuasarDragon Presents series. So it is by far the longest story yet. It is also, in my opinion, the best story so far.

"The Vanyans came from outer space bringing Earthmen invaluable gifts, and Earth received them—and their gifts —with open arms. But what was behind it all? What would the Vanyans ask in payment? With these questions came fear . . . and distrust . . . and hatred."

Full story HERE.

QuasarDragon Presents "Children of Zeus"

This week’s QuasarDragon presents is another story from the “golden age” of science fiction, “Children of Zeus” by E. A. Grosser, from Astonishing Stories Vol. 1 No. 3 (June 1940).

The story of the madness of an invisible Student, the watchfulness of his invisible Scribe, and the twin wives of Kels Norton.

Full Story HERE.

A Brief Review of Kevin Anderson's The Saga of Seven Suns

"One of the more entertaining SF series that I've read in years."

Summary: In the distant future, humanity accidentally sets off a war with an ancient, and technologically superior, alien race that dwells within gas giants. Over the course of these seven books, three human governments and six alien races (seven if you count robots) come into conflict and form alliances in an ever-shifting struggle for survival and for dominion.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

Good: A very entertaining epic sf story. Good characters, heroes and villains.

Bad: Little especially new. Stretched a bit.

Overall: Definitely worth reading.

This is an epic, space opera tour-de-force that will keep readers up late into the night as they try to put it down after "just one more chapter." Anderson manage to keep multiple storylines equal engrossing by shifting characters at just the right time often at a cliffhanger moment (either a character is in trouble or they have just discovered something potentially important.)

The series has far too much happen to effectively summarize in a short review. Humanity faces internal dangers (wars between interstellar human governments, the growing megalomania of the most powerful human leader, and a civil war of sorts) and external dangers (the aforementioned war with the hydrogues, uncertain allies, and enemies that appear later). The other central race, the Ildarans face a similar set of problems. To avoid spoilers, I won't add anything more about the plot. That information is available at wikipedia.

There are two minor flaws in the series that some critics have noted, and generally overblown. First the series is stretched a bit to make it seven books long (It probably should been condensed into six or perhaps even five books). This does lead to sections that are less interesting than the rest, but overall the books do hold the reader's attention. The second, and even more minor flaw, is that there is no exceptionally original idea that sticks with you after the series is over. True, but of course this can be said about virtually every other book written in our lifetimes.

If you want an entertaining plot-driven story this series is probably for you. This series rocked.

Quasar Dragon Presents "Delirium on Deneb"

"Delirium on Deneb" by Rolf Martell, from Thrilling Wonder Stories (April 1953). The latest classic genre public domain to premiere here.

"JON HORGA, big, bulky and space-tanned, sat alone in the spaceport bar, nursing the last drink he could buy. He savagely ground out his blue Venusian cigar and felt the single orange credit note in his jacket pocket. Tomorrow, he knew, a space patrol blacklist would be thrown at him for suspected wrecking, and he'd be grounded for good. Horga, though he burned with anger, was not badly worried. Flush with credits or broke, he'd always landed on his feet, because he'd always been a little harder and more ruthless than his enemies. And everyone —man or humanoid—he considered his potential enemy."

Continue reading here.

Wednesday Freebies

A quiet day, but still a few gems. A bit of fiction, including classic SF, flash fiction, and a short Sheena story, some good audio fiction (all serial), good SF music, gaming items (including several new monsters), and a rather bad movie. Today's illustration is for "The Buttoned Sky."












Classic SF/Adventure
@Project Gutenberg and Munseys: "The Buttoned Sky" by Geoff St. Reynard, from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy (Aug. 1953.)
"Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness. But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazed fearfully at—"


And a mid-week QuasarDragon presents. Two short fiction stories:
"Lost Comet" from Fantastic Comics #11 (Jan-Feb. 1955).
"This is my first, and I am very much afraid, my last dispatch from the rocket ship METEOR. There is small chance of this message ever reaching Earth, much less the copy desk of my paper, but I am writing it with an eye cocked for a miracle."

and "Sheena and The Crawling Death" by Morgan W. Thomas, from Jumbo Comics #87 (May 1946).
"The village gates were open and through them poured the people who for so long had dwelt in peace in that placid spot. There was nothing peaceful about the scene, however, as the men, women, and children pushed and jostled one another, each carrying his meager possessions as best he could."







@ScottSigler.com: Tuesday Terror Episode #05: "Loyalty" Part 2 of 2 by Renee Jordan, edited and performed by Arioch Morningstar.

@StarShipSofa:"Grail-Diving in Shangrilla with the World’s Last Mime" Part 2 by Ken Scholes.

Fan Audio
@Misfits Audio Productions: Green Lantern: Man without Fear Ep 1: "The Capture"






@ScottSigler.com: Tuesday Terror Episode #05: "Loyalty" Part 2 of 2 by Renee Jordan, edited and performed by Arioch Morningstar.

@StarShipSofa:"Grail-Diving in Shangrilla with the World’s Last Mime" Part 2 by Ken Scholes.

Fan Audio
@Misfits Audio Productions: Green Lantern: Man without Fear Ep 1: "The Capture"






@Every Day Fiction: "Dr. Xiang and the Mouth in His Stomach" by Adam Lucas.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Time to Speak of Many Things" by Lori Titus.
@365 tomorrows: "Clyde" by Clint Wilson.
@Daily Science Fiction: "O is for Obfuscation" by Tim Pratt, Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout.







@Zalchis: A trio of well illustrated new monsters. "Octoscholar" a race that is "cold and calculating, unforgiving and given to sorcerous feuds amongst themselves," "Ordrang, opportunistic scavengers that consume stray ectoplasm," and seen in the illustration to the left "Phorain" "grim, brooding, taciturn beings from the hot plains of some distant world, the Phorain are powerful warriors possessed of exceptional strength and resolve."



@The Land of NOD: [Encounter] "Mu-Pan - Encounter XXIV"
@Daddy Grognard: [Adventure] "An Adventure for Every Monster - Beholder"
@Trollish Delver: [Monsters] "Creatures of the tundra for T&T"
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Spell] "Irritating Breeze"
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Magic Items] "Glamour Apparel of Mulka" and "Mind Gems of Athra-Kla"
@A Character for Every Game: [Map] "Return to Erdea Manor – Part 2"
@DriveThruRPG: [Map] "Map of Berem Town"
@Sea of Stars: [New Magic Items] "Orcus’ Bowl" and "Paidia’s Dice"
@Underworld Kingdom: [New Monsters] "Pale Giants" and "Quartz Fungi"
@Netherwerks: [Table] "Fantasy Rooftop Environment/Encounters Table"
@Big Ball of No Fun: [New Monsters] "Obayifo," "Phi," and "Quinotaur"

Video
@The Internet Archive: Kong Island (1968).
"A beautiful woman raised by the apes, a mad scientist bent on controlling the minds of the apes and a handsome explorer." Not really worth the effort of watching it.

Other Coolness - Music
John Anealio (of the "Angry Robot" song fame) has released a new E.P. Books, Bytes & Bots E.P. now available as a pay what you want album (even free!) on Bandcamp. All are fantasy/SF related.

Five, Yes Five Free Magazines. But Wait, There's More,

More awesome finds from various cool sites. Please excuse the irregular formating, due to another Solar Guard emergency (rescuing some tourists on Vulcan), I have to go to work early again and resorted to cheating today. Still great reading in multiple categories. Hmm? Wonder is that Judge Dredd would be interested in a starship security job.



Magazines
Clarksworld Magazine issue 54, March 2011 is out with,

The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book)
by Nnedi Okorafor

Perfect Lies
by Gwendolyn Clare

Cinema 2.0: The Future of Movie Making?
by Mark Cole

Drama Hobbits, Mosquitoes, and Other Negotiations: A Conversation with Cory Doctorow
by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Audio Fiction: The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book)
by Nnedi Okorafor, read by Kate Baker

"Connie and Donnie"
by Patryk Olejniczak


Online HERE.


Redstone Science Fiction #10, March 2011 is out with.

Editor’s Note
Michael Ray

Fiction
The Hubbard Continuum
by Lavie Tidhar

First Light
by Patrick Lundrigan

(Nonfiction and Interviews are forthcoming)

Online HERE.

Ideomancer Speculative Fiction Vol. 10 Issue 1 is out with,

Editor’s Note
Fiction
“Just Be” – Sandra Odell
“Apology for Fish-Dude” – Emily C. Skaftun
“Ascension” – Su-Yee Lin
Poetry
“Grandma and the Puka” – Mari Ness
“Nile Song” – Mari Ness
“Soul Street” – Mari Ness
Interview: Mari Ness, Featured Poet
Reviews
Connie Willis’s Blackout and All Clear – Maya Chhabra
Lauren Beuke’s Zoo City – Maya Chhabra
Daniel Fox’s Hidden Cities – Liz Bourke

Or all HERE.


Serial Fiction
At Paizo, "The Walkers from the Crypt" chapter one by Howard Andrew Jones.
"Elyana rose in time to see Arcil acknowledge Stelan's plan with a regal nod. The wizard's traveling clothes were as rumpled and stained as the rest of theirs, but they had begun life as expensive garments tailored for his frame, and they still suited him. With his gray-flecked hair and proud nose he looked more like a wandering aristocrat than an accomplished mage."

Online HERE.



"Marcus Marcus & the Hurting Heart" chapter eleven by Rab Swannock Fulton.
"I swallowed down nausea, tried to control my breathing, sickeningly conscious of my limbs drifting up and down, like pond weed attached to a stone. I looked at the two small lights on the console but they shrank and span away from me as music slipped soft and sly into the vast blackness."

Online HERE.


Gaming
AtDriveThruRPG, the Judge Dredd Minatures Game. "Judge Dredd is a 28mm skirmish game designed to be quick, easy to learn, and capable of handling the madness that is Mega-City One, from the powerful judges to the lowliest punk or mutant."



In PDF download HERE. (free membership required)





At Mongoose Publishing, Signs & Portents #90 featuring supplements for Judge Dredd, Traveller, Rune Quest, Paranoia, Lone Wolf, and other games. (You're not seeing double, it is the same cover art).




In a free PDF download HERE.




At DriveThruRPG, Pathways #1, "a collection of Pathfinder haunts and templates, high-level foes and minor constructs, feats and domains, and all of it bundled together with a collected view of upcoming third-party products for the Pathfinder RPG."



In PDF Download HERE. (free membership required)





At Roleplay-geek, "Monday Motivations," a series of "ideas for character backgrounds by class." Good role playing ideas for players and DMs.

Online HERE.


Comics
At Diversions of the Groovy Kind, "Heartfelt Thanks" a B&W sf story as well as a cover gallery by the illustrator, Ken Barr.



Online HERE.




At Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures, "Dragonella" a humerous PG-13 fantasy by Wally Wood.



Online HERE (R rated Site).



At Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine, a pair of stories featuring eye monsters, "The Eyes" from Astonishing #30 (1954) and the sci-fi "Greed" from Astonishing Tales #36.

Both online HERE.




At The Warrior's Comic Book Den, Adventures Into The Unknown #27: featuring "The Lost Lives of Laura Hastings" (Al Williamson art) and other stories.


Online HERE.

Various Cool Free Fiction

Some varied goodies today, so there is likely something for most tastes.

E-Fiction

John DeNardo at SF Signal listed quite a bit of free fiction yesterday and rather than reinvent the wheel and post several links with a "via SF Signal," the SF Signal post is HERE.






Inner City by Scott Norton is a free online Sci/Fi/Adventure/Romance novel.
"The cities have gated their walls to lock all else out. Those in rural areas have been reduced to savages eeking out a primitive existence. When a seven year old Callen Carrus, a boy from the city, faces a personal crises and runs away, he's chased outside the city walls. What happens to him there will set him on a quest that will lead to him risking his life in search of answers."

Online HERE.




And DargonZine has its latest issue, Volume 23 Number 4, online with, "Hubris" by D'Artagnon Wells and "The Far Patrol" by Liam Donahue.

Online HERE.




Audio Fiction

At Escape Pod, "Endosymbiont" by Blake Charlton, read by Mur Lafferty.
"Stephanie started to protest but then stopped. A terrifying memory flashed through her mind. “Mom said they might take me to a hospital for the dead.” She didn’t know what that meant but the memory was clear. 'She said you’d keep me here to fool me into thinking I’m still alive.'"

A very interesting story, but one that will tear your heart out.

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE.


At Beam Me Up, part two of Nancy Fulda’s “Knowing Neither Kith….”
"The tension begins to really build as a mysterious evil preys on kith and kin alike. It looks as though evil will once again be freed to destroy the people. The obligation to save everyone falls on a reluctant outcast with little interest in saving the very people who have rejected her in the past."

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE. (Part one is here)


And a couple of free professional, mystery podcasts. Mystery isn't really a focus of QuasarDragon, but it is a kindred genre with a tiny bit of overlap. And the odds are at least a few QD readers like this genre.


Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has several free audio fiction stories available online.

For streaming and MP3 downloads HERE.




And Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine also has a free podcast of mystery audio fiction.



Streaming and in MP3 download HERE. (Found via SFFAudio)





Comics

At The Horrors of it All, "The Halls of Horror" from Adventures into the Unknown #18 (April 1951).

Classic pre-code horror


Online HERE.





At Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures, "The Magic Hammer" a 1957 Jack Kirby story of Thor well before the Marvel character of the same name.



Online HERE. (warning, although this comic is G rated, there are R rated posts there.)



At The Comic Book Catacombs, a pure 1950's skiffy story "Mission to Malooka" from Amazing Adventures (Oct 1951).


Online HERE.





At Steve Ditko Comics Weblog, a three-page short sf story called "Automata Ultima"


Online HERE.




At Diversions of the Groovy Kind a cool adaptation of John W. Campbell's classic short story "Who Goes There?" on which The Thing From Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982) are based. Great SF/Horror.

Online HERE.



Other

At DanMeth.Com "The Fantasy World Map #12 In A Series of Pop-Cultural Charts" an interesting, "accurate map of the entire fantasy world." Unusual choices make it more interesting than I would have expected. Lidsville?



Online HERE (via Tor.com)

iPod and MP3 player fillers

Some very good stuff to fill your MP3 players with today. Go ahead delete those Black Eyed Peas singles that have been embarrassing you since the Superbowl and fill it up with these. You won't regret it! Download everything, especially the two audio dramas.


Audio Books
At Librivox, Short Science Fiction Collection 031 featuring stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Randall Garrett, Robert Silverberg, Frank Herbert, Frederik Pohl, Mack Reynolds, and others.

Rather than directly linking to this one I'll send you to SFFaudio's very thorough post with direct downloads and images for each story HERE.



At Librivox, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-1794). Read by multiple readers. The tall-tale, fantastic adventures of a much larger than life character.


In MP3 downloads HERE.








Audio Dramas
The Witch Hunter Chronicles is a real gem. "The Witch Hunter Chronicles is a dark fantasy tale about a fictional renaissance world where doom is fast approaching and the end of all things may be nigh. In the midst of this turmoil, we find a lonely man with a thirst for revenge, an innocent girl with great unknown power and a dark presence slowly moving the great city of Sevenpeaks to the brink of total collapse…"

After listening to the first two episodes I was extremely impressed. It's a a very well performed, slightly Warhammer-esque, fantasy drama.

Available in MP3 downloads HERE.


Another outstanding audio drama is The Leviathan Chronicles. "The story is centered around a hidden city called Leviathan that lies deep within the dark trenches of the Pacific Ocean. The city is home to a community of immortals that sought to create a utopia over 1,000 years ago. For millennia, they lived in peace and secrecy, gently influencing world events to aid the advancement of mankind. But a terrible secret has been kept deep within the catacombs of Leviathan that threatens the existence of the immortals, and quite possibly the entire world."

I'm hooked after the first episode.

Available in zipped MP3 downloads HERE. (SFFaudio beat me by a LONG time on this one)



OTR
At the Internet Archive a pair of audio dramas from the 1970s. First is the six-part radio drama Aliens in the Mind staring Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.

This story "centers around the discovery, on a remote Scottish island, of a community of 'human mutants' capable of telepathy. A plan is in place to use them to control the British Government, and friends Curtis Lark (Vincent Price) and Hugh Baxter (Peter Cushing) join forces to combat them."

Available HERE.

Also at the Internet Archive, Alien Worlds, a 1979 radio series that deals with the interplanetary peacekeepers on Star Lab. "Slowly rotating, at the edge of deep space, one thousand kilometers beyond the atmosphere of 21st century Earth, is the Arthur C. Clark astronomical observatory Star Lab. Here, Star Lab research director Mora Cassiday, along withscientists and technicians of the International Space Authority, watch over the countless suns, planets and star systems that fill the universe."

A little, OK a lot, cheesy but quite enjoyable series available in MP3 and ogg HERE.