Edgar Rice Burroughs {1975-1950] may be best known for creating Tarzan, King of the Apes, but his tales of John Carter on Mars [which he called Barsoom]  are, to my mind, more exciting. We meet John, a cowboy and Civil War vet, when he steps into a cave in Arizona and emerges on Mars. This is how the novel,  A Princess of Mars, the first John Carter story, begins and it packs a real wallop. [Spoiler alert: It was made into a pretty darned good 2012 movie, “John Carter,” starring Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins in the lead roles.] Here is a short, clever intro and the first five audio podcast chapters of “Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1915 novel,”A Princess of Mars,” from LibriVox, where you can download the entire audiobook for free. It’s read exceedingly well by several…

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We continue our Librivox recordings this month with a lovely reading of Jane Austen’s Emma, read by Sibelia Denton. This is the story of a “handsome, clever, and rich” young woman and her awakening and her struggles with love and relationships. Herewith the first three chapters of one of the most beloved Jane Austen novels, first published in 1815 but which has been adapted again and again on stage and screen. You can continue your listening here.

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Greetings, Podcast Fanatics! Here’s a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle you may have missed in your readings: “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist,” drawn from the book The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Published in 1903, this and other stories followed the fabled detective after he had purportedly been killed by the evil Professor Moriarty. It caught my attention because I’m an avid cyclist and wanted to see what the master [indeed, how often does one get English nobility for their writing?] dealt with the bicycle, which was a relatively new invention at the time he wrote. So here it is, and do let me know what you think of it! This is a LibriVox recording by Raynard. Please click on the arrows below to listen to “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”…

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Here you are, listeners, the fourth installment and final episodes of “Tiny Dreams.” We hope you’ve enjoyed listening to these audio tidbits and will take a bit more of your time to sample the longer audio dramas from ZBS Media. As I mentioned at the outset, the stories of Jack Flanders and Ruby, The Galactic Gumshoe, were important landmarks in my appreciation for the audio storytelling media. A great deal of new content has been developed at ZBS since my early days of discovery in the 1970s. While you can buy and download individual shows at zbs.org,  the serious listener [such as yours truly] will want to go to zbsmedia.com  for streaming media. Here you have access to everything we’ve ever done, for $5 a month, or $55 a year. Once again, Fictional Cafe hats off to…

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Dear FC audio aficionados: Return with us now to those thrilling episodes of “Tiny Dreams” we’ve posted here the past two weeks and partake of nine [count ’em, 9!] more. In case you missed Part 1 and Part 2, click. “Tiny Dreams” were commissioned from ZBS Media as a series of short pieces for a group of radio stations, what they call “Triple A,” — commercial rock & roll radio!  The challenge for the ZBS people was figuring out how to tell a story, take someone on a little adventure (or trip into dreamland), and bring them back again, and do it all in 90 seconds!  The stories were inspired by the strange movies that are projected inside our brains while we’re asleep.  They’re truly original in concept, and also good for a few smiles…

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Original art by Genevieve Shapiro, http://gentoons.com/ Welcome to Week 2 of “Tiny Dreams,” very short podcast stories which will appear here at the FC every Friday evening in July. I encourage you to visit the ZBS website, where you will find a treasure trove of fun listening. More about ZBS in coming weeks. A Short Introduction to “Tiny Dreams” by Tom Lopez, ZBS Earlier this year, we were commissioned to do a series of short pieces for a group of radio stations, what they call “Triple A,” commercial rock & roll radio!  And so our writer, M. Fulton, spent two days listening to one of their stations.  He woke up the next morning with an idea, a series of dreams that could be inserted between songs. The one restriction he was given – the pieces had to…

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We welcome a new podcast to Fictional Café which can hardly be called new. The folks at the  ZBS Foundation have been producing audio/radio stories since 1970, and I’ve been listening to them since those times as well. The brave, intellectual, spiritual adventurer Jack Flanders lives in my memories.  I’ve listened to many ZBS stories and turned many others onto them as well, perhaps notably my son Josh who shares my passion for audio drama. I hope you will too, beginning with a premiere taste of some new stories from ZBS: “Tiny Dreams,” very short pieces which will appear here at the FC every Friday evening in July. I encourage you to visit the ZBS website, where you will find a treasure trove of fun listening. More about ZBS in coming weeks. A Short Introduction to…

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Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, we were delighted to run the entire first season of “Mickie McKinney, Boy Detective,” a podcast written, produced and directed by Ruby Fink and delivered by her incredible Faux Fiction Audio actors. What Ruby and her people have done is extraordinary, creating a story of our times and producing it at the professional level of classic old-time radio dramas. Ruby writes scripts with a real twist: Mickie and his sidekick Sam [Samantha] are middle-schoolers, and their nemesis is the principal. They encounter and set out to solve various mysteries around their school. The Faux Fiction voice actors are terrific, and the sound effects discerning and clever. This is good stuff. We have the first two episodes from Season 2, which we’ll publish this week and next. We’ll publish subsequent episodes…

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