In 2005, fiction author Scott Sigler announced the release of EarthCore as “the world’s first Podcast-only novel.” He released an hour of audio each week, creating a format similar to weekly drama TV shows with continuing storylines. The free Podcast feed ran for 24 episodes and one might even credit him with the boom in podiocast’ing of novels today (go to podiobooks.com and marvel at what’s available for free or with a small paypal donation).

In his press release at the time, Sigler said:

EarthCore is the first Podcast novel because it is not available in any other format. Listeners can’t buy the book and peek at the last page, they have to wait each week for a new episode. You can listen to them on your iPod or MP3 player, letting you enjoy the story while driving, at the gym, walking — anywhere you want to listen. Listeners don’t have to be in a specific place at a specific time. You listen whenever you want.

I’m just sorry I missed out on it 3 years ago, in the past week and a half I’ve been addicted to it. If you read Geeknews via a feed then you didn’t see the update to my sidebar this weekend calling attention to Earthcore, I like it that much. If you enjoy sci-fi/suspense/blood ‘n guts, you owe it to yourself to listen, give it 4 or 5 episodes and you’ll be hooked.

Reviewers say:

- “This audio book has everything: cutting-edge science; a perfectly-realized setting; terror both plausible and profoundly unsettling.”

- “EarthCore is in-your-face, steel-tipped boot on your throat, speed-metal fiction!”

Here’s the synopsis:

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lays the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world’s record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company’s driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But Kirkland and EarthCore are not the first to find this treasure. The mountain’s history reveals two centuries of disappearances, murder, and insanity.

The discovery of ancient platinum knives, razor-sharp despite lying untouched for 1,000 years, reveals evidence of an ancient culture. If the artifacts are genuine, they show a pre-historic empire that once spanned from the Southern tip of South America all the way up through the American Southwest.
Wealth and fame lie under that Utah mountain, but at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting … and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

Highly recommended!

If you’re not familiar with ‘Section 31′, it’s the black ops group in Star Trek that is seldom heard of or referenced in the ST series. They are tasked with the missions that Starfleet doesn’t want you to know about, frequently it means their agents having to cross the moral line that Starfleet would have you believe they walk. Wikipedia has a couple pages on this organization. Missions include assassination, sabotage, retrieving new technology from other races…you get the drift. It’s not that they are bad, but they’re willing to sell their souls to the devil for the betterment of the human race.

I became a big fan of this organization when I stumbled on 3 seasons of audio theater portraying the various missions of this group over at Darker Projects.

Darker Projects puts together audio theater, somewhat similar to the old radio theater you may have heard as a kid, but this is classy stuff. It’s sort of like fanfic on a big scale, quality editing, great sound effects used from the original ST series all delivered via podcasts.

Darker Projects has a lot of dark theater (as in gritty, horror, sci-fi, not touchy feely) like Alive Inside which is an end of the world story with zombies and much more.

But by far my favorite of their shows has to be Section 31. It’s tagline is:

Space is dark. Let’s face it.

The universe of shiny, well-groomed Starfleet officers and the pristine starships of the United Federation of Planets where the Prime Directive rules and hopes for galactic unity of all species is an ongoing quest is reinterpreted in our vision of the reality of the Star Trek Universe. It’s not all “let’s be friends with our alien brethren”. Here the Federation has a dark underbelly and the daring crew of the Nosferatu boldly goes where Starfleet fears to tread.

I highly recommend this series if you’re a sci-fi geek.Try out a few minutes of this sample episode between the Captain named Delonna and the Klingon named Korg.

Name: Section 31 by Darker Projects
Website
Podcast subscription Link
Speaking ability: High quality, great sound effects.
Length: 20-30 min
Sample desc/link
BONUS: They have a new ST series called Lost Frontiers, it takes place soon after fall of Star Fleet, not too many years after ST:TNG.

Want to learn and not have to attend school or sit in front of the PC and study or open a book and have to dredge through hundreds of pages of text?

Then I have an answer for you! Let the universities and learned experts in your field of interest come to you for free, via podcasts. Learn while you drive to work or while you’re working out.

One example is the UC Berkeley series they’ve made available for regular Joes like you and me to learn about Foreign Policy post-911. This series has 11 podcasts from the professor of the course as well as his guest speaker.

Topics range from “What terrorists want” to “War clouds over the Persian gulf”. But the most interesting download is #10 near the end of the course called “Day of Empire” by guest speaker Amy Chua discussing one of topics of her book of the same name (link to her book on Amazon).

Day of Empire is in-depth analysis of how hyperpowers rise to global dominance and how they fall, from the Mongols to the British Empire to the United States. I’ve been interested in the military and political powers throughout history since I was in high school and thought I had a good handle on the similarities between the previous powers and the USA today, But after listening to the sample link to this particular discussion posted below I came aware with new insight, some of which scares me even more about our future than I was before.

Name: UC Berkeley Course: Foreign Policy After 9/11
RSS: Podcast subscription Link
Web: Home Website
Speaking ability: Varies, depends on the speaker of the day.
Length: Long, roughly 50-60 minutes per session
Sample desc/link: Day of Empire by guest speaker Amy Chua (mp3)
Bonus: Download in either MP3 or RM format

I found a great Podcast the other day called Grammar Girl, created and hosted by Mignon Fogarty.

She provides short, friendly tips to help improve your writing skills covering everything from grammar rules, word choice guidelines, punctuation and everything in between.

Give her a quick listen for yourself, here’s an example podcast (may pop a separate media player) she recently posted on Apostrophes.

Grammar Girl also has an interesting flickr pool of photos displaying the common errors seen in the real world of adverts, traffic signs, etc…

Here’s the details of her podcast -

Name: Grammar Girl
Website: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/default.aspx
Podcast subscription Link: http://www.qdnow.com/grammar.xml
Speaking ability: Clear, concise, not condescending
Length of pods: Short, 3-5 minutes
BONUS: She also has the transcript of the shows, here’s the text for her Apostrophes show: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-apostrophes.aspx