Celebrating the Births . . . Paul Park, Donald A. Wollheim, and William Beckford

Paul Park (born 1 October 1954)
      A Nebula and World Fantasy award nominated fantasy and science fiction author. Park also taught writing at the Clarion West workshop. 











Fiction 
• At Lightspeed: "Get a Grip" 1997.
     "This kind of storytelling used to drive my ex-wife crazy. 'It’s so pointless. It’s not like you’re pretending you’re an astronaut or a circus clown. That I could see. But a Canadian?'"  Audio at same link.

• At Infinity Plus: "The Tourist" Science Fiction. 1994.
      "Everybody wants to see the future, but of course they can't. They get turned back at the border. 'Go away,' the customs people tell them. 'You can't come in. Go home.'"

 Donald Allen Wollheim (October 1, 1914 – November 2, 1990)
     A Nebula, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus Poll Award winner, Wollheim was a science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and a founding member of the Futurians.  He founded DAW Books in 1972.









 Fiction
•  At Project Gutenberg: The Secret of the Ninth Planet. Science Fiction. 1959.
      "The drop in channeling from Planet III that had occurred some time ago had thus far not caused too much concern. It was assumed by the other intelligent beings involved that the matter was possibly a weather condition, a volcanic discharge or quite simply that the planet was in unfavorable orbit. Not all the stations ever worked simultaneously. There were always some behind the Sun, or blocked in some other manner. But the main channels were at work, and the different lines and shifts continued to build up satisfactorily."

Old Time Radio 
At Internet Archive: (MP3 Direct Downloads)
• "The Embassy" Dimension X (1950) and X Minus One (1955) Science Fiction.
     "A detective agency is hired by a crackpot who wants them to investigate and expose a nest of Martians sent to prepare the way for an invasion of Earth." - OTR Plotspot.

William Thomas Beckford (1 October 1760 – 2 May 1844)
      An English author and art collector, Beckford is best known for the Gothic novel Vathek (1787).  Vathek, along with Horace Walpole's earlier The Castle of Otranto and  Mary Shelley's later Frankenstein, had a profound influence on later gothic and horror stories, and to some extent on the fantasy genre.









Fiction
At Project Gutenberg: Vathek.
     "The Caliph, in the mean while caused the palaces of the senses to be again set open, and as he found himself prompted to visit that of taste, in preference to the rest, immediately ordered a splendid entertainment, to which his great officers and favourite courtiers were all invited.  The Indian, who was placed near the prince, seemed to think that as a proper acknowledgment of so distinguished a privilege, he could neither eat, drink, nor talk too much.  The various dainties were no sooner served up than they vanished, to the great mortification of Vathek, who piqued himself on being the greatest eater alive, and at this time in particular had an excellent appetite."

Audio Fiction at LibriVox: Vathek, read by Morgan Scorpion.

Celebrating the Births . . . David Drake, John Brunner, John Kessel, Horatio Walpole, and Rhys Hughes

Rhys Henry Hughes (born 24 September 1966)
      Extremely prolific Welsh writer whose works often includes elements of the fantastic, often ironic or absurdist.  His website is here.

Celebrating the Births . . . Vonda N. McIntyre, Jack Vance, and J. Sheridan LeFanu

Vonda Neel McIntyre  (born August 28, 1948)
     McIntyre has won a combined total of four Hugo and Nebula awards and has been nominated for nine more! Rather impressive. She has written in the Star Trek and Star Wars universes as well as her own original creations.  An outstanding writer, who is certainly worth reading. Only a little of her fiction (all flash) is free online.  Her homepage is here.









At Nature:

• "Misprint" Science Fiction.
• "A Modest Proposal" Science Fiction.
• "LADeDeDa" with  Ursula K. Le Guin. Science Fiction.

• At StarShipSofa: "A Modest Proposal" by Vonda N McIntyre. Flash Audio.

John Holbrook "Jack" Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013)
     Vance was a successful Fantasy and Science Fiction (as well as mystery) writer whose fiction won two Hugo awards, a Nebula Award, a World Fantasy Award, and an Edgar (a mystery writing award). Among his great works, The Dying Earth stories are probably the works for which he is best known. His home page is here.








Fiction
• At Baen: "Liane the Wayfarer" Fantasy. Dying Earth. [via Free Speculative Fiction Online]
      "Through the dim forest came Liane the Wayfarer, passing along the shadowed glades with a prancing light-footed gait. He whistled, he caroled, he was plainly in high spirits. Around his finger he twirled a bit of wrought bronze—a circlet graved with angular crabbed characters, now stained black."

• At Infinity Plus: "Green Magic"
     "The existence of disciplines concentric to the elementary magics must now be admitted without further controversy," wrote McIntyre. "Guided by a set of analogies from the white and black magics (to be detailed in due course), I have delineated the basic extension of purple magic, as well as its corollary, Dynamic Nomism."

• At Project Gutenberg: "Sjambak" 1953.
     "Wilbur Murphy sought romance, excitement, and an impossible Horseman of Space. With polite smiles, the planet frustrated him at every turn—until he found them all the hard way!"

Audio Fiction

• At LibriVox: "Sjambak" in Short Science Fiction Collection 27.
• At StarShipSofa: "The Moon Moth" Part 1 and Part 2.

Old Time Radio
• At Internet Archive: "The Potters of Firsk" (direct MP3 download) - Dimension X.
     "A liaison officer from Earth is caught between a steely planetary administrator and a fanatical alien cult who kidnap and murder people to use as raw materials for their sacred pottery."- OTR Plot Spot.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (28 August 1814 – 7 February 1873) 
     Le Fanu was a leading nineteenth century writer of Gothic Horror and ghost stories.  He wrote many stories, but is best known for his novella "Carmilla" which was a popular vampire story 25 years before Dracula was written. Certainly worth a read for Vampire fans, as well as fans of Gothics and other nineteenth century stories.

Fiction
At Project Gutenberg:
• "Carmilla"
     "In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries."

• Other works by Le Fanu.

Audio Fiction

• At LibrVox: "Carmilla"
• At LibrVox:  Other works by Le Fanu.

Old Time Radio
At Internet Archive:

• "Carmilla" by Nightfall. (MP3 download )
• "Carmilla" by CBS Radio Mystery Theater. (warning huge file 47 episodes)

Celebrating the Birth . . . Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851)
      Sometimes lightning only needs to strike once and not only mere greatness, but immortality is achieved. Shelley is generally remember for one work only, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818 / 1831) and yet it is enough to mark her as one of the nineteenth century's greatest writers.  Everyone is familiar with the Frankenstein legend, although if you haven't read  the novel yet, you will likely be surprised at how much better it is than any of the loose film adaptations. Shelley wrote several other stories, but never recaptured the magic of her great novel.  Her only work of note for QuasarDragon is The Last Man (1826), an early apocalyptic novel, featuring a world ravished by an unstoppable plague. It is an important novel in the history of science fiction, but is rather lethargically paced and extremely tedious to read.


Fiction
At Project Gutenberg:
• Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Gothic Horror. [The better edition]
     "This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to your younger cousins. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world."

• Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1831) Gothic Horror. [The lesser edition, but with illustrations]
      "In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the titlepage of my book, and said, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.'"

• The Last Man (1826). Apocalyptic. Plague.
     "She paused. 'To my task,' she continued mentally, 'my guests must not perceive the reality, either as it regards him or me. I obey; they shall not, though I die the moment they are gone. They shall behold the antipodes of what is real—for I will appear to live—while I am—dead.' It required all her self-command, to suppress the gush of tears self-pity caused at this idea. After many struggles, she succeeded, and turned to join the company." 

Audio at LibriVox:

• "Frankenstein (1831)"
• "Frankenstein (dramatic reading)" 
• "Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus" 
• "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (version 3)" 
• "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)"
• "Last Man, The"  

Old Time Radio
• At Internet Archive: Frankenstein: Old Time Radio Classics
    Adaptations include the 1932 serial, The Witch's Tale, The Weird Circle, Favorite Story, Suspense, NBC Short Story, and others.

Video

• Frankenstein (1910) by Thomas Edison.
• Tales of Tomorrow #16: Frankenstein (1952).

Celebrating the Birth . . . Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was one of the most most best, and most influential American Gothic/Dark Fantasy writers of the 19th century, second, perhaps, only Poe.  Although he is best known for one of least fantastic works, The Scarlet Letter, many of his works were, fortunately, less restrained. So on his birthday, let us remember one of the greats and enjoy his fiction for free.







Fiction at Project Gutenberg:
     All, or virtually all, of Hawthorne's works are at Project Gutenberg.  There are too many entries to list individually so click on the link for over 150 entries by and about Hawthorne.

Audio at LibriVox:

•  "Ambitious Guest, The" (in "Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains, The")
•  "Blithedale Romance, The"
• "British Matron, The" (in "Local Color Collection Vol. 001")
• "British Matron, The" (in "Wit and Humor of America, The Vol 01")
• "Golden Touch, The" (in "Through Fairy Halls of My Bookhouse") 
• "Great Carbuncle, The" (in "Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains, The") 
• "Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains, The"
• "House of the Seven Gables, The"
• "House of the Seven Gables, The (Version 2)"
• "Marble Faun, The" 
• "Minister's Black Veil, The" (in "Short Ghost and Horror Collection 017") 
• "Mosses From An Old Manse"
• "Ocean, The" (in "Short Poetry Collection 027") 
• "Old Woman's Tale, An" (in "Ghost Story Collection 005") 
• "Our Old Home" 
• "Rappaccini's Daughter"
• "Scarlet Letter, The" 
• "Sketches From Memory" (in "Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains, The") 
• "Tanglewood Tales" 
• "Twice Told Tales"
• "Artist of the Beautiful, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 016")
• "Beneath An Umbrella" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 027") 
• "Birth Mark, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 004")
• "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 040")
• "Haunted Mind, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 053")
• "Hollow of the Three Hills, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 051")
• "Rappaccini’s Daughter" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 006") 
• "Rappacinni's Daughter" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 053") 
• "Snow Flakes" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 040") 
• "Snow Image, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 040") 
• "Village Uncle, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 020") 
• "Wedding Knell, The" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 048") 
• "Young Goodman Brown" (in "Short Story Collection Vol. 002")

Old Time Radio (right click on each to save MP3s)

• "The Birthmark" - CBS Radio Mystery Theater.1977.
• "Dr Heidegger's Experiment" - CBS Radio Mystery Theater. 1978.
• "Dr Heidegger's Experiment" - Favorite Story. 1948.
• "Ethan Brand" - Weird Circle. 1944. 
• "The Marble Faun" - NBC University Theater. 1949. 
• "Rappaccini's Daughter" -Favorite Story. 1948.
• "Rappaccini's Daughter" - Weird Circle. 1944.
• "Rappaccini's Daughter" - 19 Nocturne Boulevard. 2010. (as il Professoro's Daughter)
• "Young Goodman Brown" - Nightfall. 1982.

You can read "Rappaccini's Daughter" after the break.

E-Books and More

Another day of braving the internet to find great, free genre fiction for you.  Today there are many e-books, as well as some good fiction and audio fiction.

Today's QD Radio is "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe adapted on The Hall of Fantasy (1953).

[art from The Seed of Life at Smahwords, linked blow]

More tonight or tomorrow at latest.
Your Host,
Dave T.




Fiction
• At L5R: "Small Choices" by Yoon Ha Lee. Fantasy.
     "Today the matter wasn’t supernatural. Kanako, a geisha who sometimes stopped by to gossip about Scorpion musicians (fashionable, apparently) and sandalwood fans (less so), was here to see her."

Flash Fiction

• At Beware the Hairy Mango: "Barstool Softener"  by Matthew Sanborn Smith. Audio. Weird.
• At Enchanted Conversations: "Bratty Tessa" by Candace L. Barr. Fantasy. Holiday.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Red Jizo" by James McGrath. Science Fiction.

E-Books
At Free eBooks Daily:

• Hidden Power by Lisa Hart. Fantasy.
• Blood Will Tell by Samantha Young. Paranormal.
• Seventh Dimension - The Door by Lorilyn Roberts. YA Christian Fantasy.

At Smashwords:

• Diamond of Darkness by Paul Fergus. Fantasy. 143k.
• "A World's Toll: Trapped Between Time" by Kimberly Spark. YA Fantasy. 5k.
• "Conspiracy of Silence" by Marcus Pailing. Fantasy. 9k.
• "The Magician's Washing Machine" by Andrew Hinkinson. Fantasy. 6k.
• "The Deaths of Dr. Zhen" by Brian Osburn. Fantasy. 6k.
• "Tricks of the Trade" by Peony Black. Fantasy. 8k.
• "Magic of Thieves" by C. Greenwood. YA Fantasy. 45k.
• "The Ninth Age - Eventide - The Whispering Woods" by August Hellwig. Fantasy. 20k.
• "Under the Influence" by Thomas Biehl. Contemporary Fantasy. 2k.
• Seed of Life by D.E.P. Fantasy. 128k.
• Jesse James and the Dragon's Egg by William Woodward. Fantasy. 90k.
• "Cry of the Cicada" by Rebecca Brae. Horror. 9k.
• "Tempest Borne" by Alaina Stanford. Science Fiction. 11k.
• "Inheritance (From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross)" by Brent Meske. Science Fiction. 14k.
• "Listlessness In Early Automated Composition Devices" by Harley Byrne. . Science Fiction. 6k.

Audio Fiction • At Every Story Tells: "The Gauntlet" by Hugh J O’Donnell. Fantasy.
     "Magician or thief? Glory faces ‘The Gauntlet’ – a test of her magical abilities against the wiles of a disgruntled thief."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 14 - The Return of Tarzan" Adventure.
      "Tarzan, traveling as an official of the French War office, has run afoul of Nicholas Rokoff and Paulvich. At night on a deserted steamer deck at sea, the two villains creep up on Tarzan and throw him overboard into the Atlantic!"

Other Genres

• Audio at Forgotten Classics: "The Unforeseen, chapter 7" by Dorothy Macardle. Gothic.
• Audio at Craft Lit: "A Christmas Carrol" by Chales Dickens. Parts One, Two, and Three.
• Audio at Craft Lit: "Jane Eyre, Chapter 12" by Charlotte Brontë.
• Audio at The Way of The Buffalo: "Suburbia Hell 10K" by Steve Husk.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "The Stapler" by Frank Zubek.

Free Genre Audio Fiction and More Part One

Fire up your MP3 players, there's some quite good free audio fiction this morning with more to come later.  There are the usual Friday greats, Escape Pod and Pseudo Pod, as well as "Dagon" at SFFaudio, and there are some "new to QD" sites. And there's some quite good written fiction.

[Art from "The Ungreat Escape" linked below]




Fiction
• At Buzzy Mag: "Dance" by Laura Anne Gilman.
     "“It’s a beautiful tree.” Her brother came in from the garage, shaking the snow off his boots and dropping his overnight bag by the door."

• At Cosmos: "The Ungreat Escape" by Siobhan Gallagher. Science Fiction.
       "The most important part of a heist is getting away – and that’s where things go wrong."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Seashells" by Lavie Tidhar.
       "Then it happened. Shell remembers it only in confused snatches of recall. Turbulence rising out of the sea. A man rising high in the air, his face contorted in--what? Agony? Ecstasy?--he looked silly and pitiful hanging there in his Speedo, his hairy back still glistening with sea water. The man's head exploding, like a ripe watermelon like they sold, here, by the side of the road. Red rain falling down."

Audio Fiction
• At Celtic Myth Podshow: "Faerie Days and Faerie Knights" (Welsh Mythology Ep. 3). Fantasy. Myth.
     "In this tale, Pwyll finds his way around the Court of Arawn, seeing many strange marvels and meeting many mysterious people. As the time of the evening Feast approaches, he finally gets to meet the Great Queen herself..!" [ Episodes One and Two]

• At Desert Gems Audio "Fisherman and the Djinni: - Parts One and Two" compiled by Sir Richard Burton. Fantasy. Myth.
     "Sherazade begins the tale of "Fisherman and the Djinni." A poor humble fisherman unearths from the bottom of the ocean 1800 year old brass jar containing  a malicious and wicked Djinni. The evil spirit offers him choice of deaths, and the fisherman engages in tricks and tales to outwit him. The first is the story of "King Yunan and Sage Duban."

• At Earbud Theater: "Beneath The Basement" by Doug TenNapel. Horror.
      "There's no better debunker than Dr. Fullbright. You've probably seen his website where he offers anyone $100,000 for proof of a spiritual entity. He and his trusty cameraman Neville Dylan have never encountered a case that can't be promptly dismissed as a hoax, a delusion or utter malarky. But a visit to one Natalie Jessup just might put the real deal right in their cynical laps"

• At Escape Pod: "Oubliette" by J. Kelley Anderson. Science Fiction.
     "The half-buried thing hadn’t moved once, but I didn’t have to include that in the story when I got back to base. The great, gray mass of it rose at least ten feet out of the red earth, tucked close to the sheer wall of the plateau. That part I’d tell. If there had been anything like a head, I would have shot it, but it just looked like a giant, lumpy football, oozing a viscous yellowy liquid here and there."

• At Pseudopod: "Feeding The Machine" by Hunter James Martin. Horror.
       "The atmosphere doesn’t help things either, the horrid gloom we work within. Even in my apathy I can taste it: the darkness that nestles within the oily depths of the shadows, the dull throb that resonates through the caverns, and the dreadful machine, always rumbling like an empty stomach."

• At SFFaudio: "Dagon" by H.P. Lovecraft. Horror.
     "The testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in World War I when he was a merchant marine officer. First published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant (issue #11)."

Other Genres

• Audio at The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Chimes, Part 4 of 4" by Charles Dickens.
• Audio at Forgotten Classics: "The Sea Hag" by Charles Harry Whedbee. Folk Tale. 
• Audio at Forgotten Classics: "The Unforeseen Chapter 6" by Dorothy Macardle. Gothic (earlier chapters)
• Audio at LibriVox: Hans Christian Andersen: Fairytales and Short Stories Volume 3