Roger Zelazny discussion

I've discovered that a new Santa Fe company is releasing the unabridged recordings of Zelazny reading the Amber series, plus A Night in the Lonesome October, and Eye of Cat. These will all be on CDs. They've already released Nine Princes in Amber and A Night in the Lonesome October and plan to release the rest of the Amber books one-by-one approximately every two months. I emailed them and learned that they have the unabridged recordings by Zelazny of Amber books 1-9, so if this is true it will be the first time that Zelazny's unabridged readings of Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows are released. Zelazny did not record Prince of Chaos and so that one will be the unabridged recording by Bruce Watson. Until now all of these unabridged recordings have been available only on tape, and long out of print except for Eye of Cat.

Their website shows the cover images for the first nine Amber books as well as Eye of Cat and A Night in the Lonesome October.

This is the link to the page showing Zelazny's audiobooks:
http://www.speakingvolumes.us/authors...

The history of the recordings is this: The first nine Amber books were recorded unabridged by Zelazny and he died before book 10 could be recorded. The original company Sunset Productions first released them on tape as abridged to half the length and with added sound effects. They later released books 1-6 and 8 as unabridged recordings on tape and without sound effects. For some strange reason they skipped over book 7 (Blood of Amber) and also never released book 9 (Knight of Shadows) or 10 (Prince of Chaos) in unabridged format. A second company (Americana) bought them out and reissued all 10 abridged books with sound effects on CD, but declined to release the unabridged books.

You can find unabridged recordings on the internet of books 7, 9 and 10 read by other people; these were made for the visually impaired and not for retail sale. The quality of those particular readings and recordings is not the best.

I've listened to Zelazny's unabridged recordings before and quite enjoyed them, but the audio quality was not always good after transferring the sound from tapes to mp3 format. I'm hoping the sound quality on these new CDs will be as good as the original tapes. I'm also very much looking forward to listening to the unabridged Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows in Zelazny's own voice.

Chris

Thank you for sharing this! :)

Super! Thanks, Chris!!!

An update to mention that the company has since released unabridged books 1-5 on CD and mp3 and they tell me book 6 (Trumps of Doom) will be released soon. They also will get someone to record book 10 in unabridged form since Zelazny died before doing any reading of it. I've got the first five and can say that the quality is certainly better than the tapes were.

Chris

www.Speaking-Volumes.us has been releasing Zelazny's unabridged readings of the first nine Amber books on CD and mp3. They're up to Trumps of Doom (released earlier this month) and they're supposed to have a seventh release in August. For some reason they seem to have delayed Blood of Amber to October, and are going to release Sign of Chaos in August and Knight of Shadows in September. I previously asked them what they will do about the last book, Prince of Chaos, because Zelazny never recorded it. They replied that it will be released with someone else doing the reading. No info has been posted about it yet.

But today I discovered that www.Audible.com has released all 10 books at once in new readings. The first five books are read by Alessandro Juliani ("Gaeta" from Battlestar Galactica) and the last five books are read by Will Wheaton ("Wesley Crusher" from ST:TNG).

I welcome these releases but I hope that the Audible versions don't interfere with the planned release of the remaining three books read by Zelazny. Blood of Amber and Knight of Shadows have only previously been released in an abridged version of Zelazny's reading, while the unabridged reading of Sign of Chaos was released on cassette. I'm looking forward to hearing the full versions as read by him.

Chris

Thanks for the update, Chris.

Yes, I just got an email from audible about the Amber series being released. Will Wheaton did a great job narrating Ready Player One, so I'm looking forward to seeing how he does on the the last 5 books.

Just to follow up, I listened to the Nine Princes and Alessandro Juliani did an OK job of narrating it but Zelazny's excellent story really shines through and I fell in love all over again. Another thing that warms my heard are all the 5 star rating people are leaving. Reading some of the reviews it seems like some longtime fans are liking it but also we might have a new generation of Z fans coming soon :)

That sounds great. I wish I could afford them all or the library had them.

I love the Amber books. I wish I could find Kindle versions of them so I could carry them everywhere with me.

At this point in time the Zelazny Estate is not allowing any ebook versions of Zelazny's works, whether on Kindle or any other format. I know it because that's the official response given to NESFA Press. So the only things you'll find on the Internet are error-filled junk versions that someone put together by scanning a book and using OCR software to convert it into a text document. I don't know what it will take to get the Estate to change its policy.

Some common sense.

I agree. Not only that, but they would be able to have another source of sales. Even though I own all the books in the Amber series I would pay for them again if I could get Kindle versions.

Very well and succinctly put, Jim!

I posted your #11 to the Beyond Reality group where we are now reading 'Lonesome October', Chris. I think quite a few people there found an ebook version of it online since the paper copies are pretty scarce & dear.

This is one of things that encourages piracy. These people plain want to read with the group, but can't see shelling out the incredible amounts people want for a used book - $15 to $75. That's just too expensive.

Ebook versions at $3 each would earn the estate some money. Used books & pirated editions don't earn them a penny, hence my remark.

Oh so cool. I am going to have to find these on audio. I read them a year or so ago, but I'd love to listen to them.