Every Nebula-award-nominated story as a free podcast

Tony sez,

StarShipSofa has, in one day, done what no other SF podcast has done before. In another unprecedented move, StarShipSofa has put out all seven Nebula Short Story 2008 nominees, all available as free audio podcasts for your listening pleasure.

The Nebulas are a very special event in the SF world and I wanted the StarShipSofa to mark this occasion by doing something unique for this year's awards.

I wanted to put out all the stories nominated in one day so people can, straight away, have them downloaded back to back... sitting on their iPod and, for the next few hours, submerge themselves in SF stories of the very best calibre. All for free.

Things are changing rapidly in this medium and this is just one example of StarShipSofa pushing the boundaries of normal podcasting in both terms of quality and accessibility.

It's what the StarShipSofa was built for.

StarShipSofa podcasts all Nebula Short Story nominees for 2008 (Thanks, Tony!)

[#1 posted by weatherman, April 2, 2009 5:51 AM]

Starship Sofa is my favorite fiction podcast, hands down. I'm always amazed at the energy that Tony brings to the show, and his ability to cover such a range of topics and get top-quality fiction. Nice move putting all the nominees in one podcast.

[#2 posted by wynnstate, April 2, 2009 7:39 AM]

I'm definitely going to check this out. Great post!

[#3 posted by Anonymous, April 2, 2009 8:46 AM]

What's wrong with an mp3 for a podcast? Why use iTunes? Click link, it says to download iTunes.
Did that (25 minutes), installed it (10 minutes), had it scrounge through my drives for files (another 10 minutes) . Okay, click link for podcast again - "You need to download itunes"

So, re-read the Starship Sofa page, where it says:

"If you don’t use iTunes… check out each individual posting below."

But, but ... each of those individual links points to the same iTunes link.

This is getting to be too hard ...

[#4 posted by Church, April 2, 2009 9:15 AM]

Kudos to the authors as well for allowing them all to be podcast. And let's not forget the narrators.

[#5 posted by monstrinho_do_biscoito, April 2, 2009 9:25 AM]

a worthy project, but fuck me, that's an ugly bit of graphic design right there.

[#6 posted by nosehat, April 2, 2009 9:31 AM]

I tried downloading these, but all the links to the stories just brought me to an identical page asking me to download and install itunes software.

Since I don't want to install itunes software, I guess I'm out of the loop on this one. Too bad, since there are other ways of distributing audio over the web that don't require a software download.

[#7 posted by Anonymous, April 2, 2009 9:39 AM]

how come its not the HMSS Sofa?

[#8 posted by Anonymous, April 2, 2009 9:42 AM]

@ #5: Check the previous postings. Individual blogposts for each story with a link to the MP3.

[#9 posted by CarleySmiles, April 2, 2009 10:01 AM]

Stunning podcast.... thanks so much StarShipSofa. BTW if you read the post... it tells you all shows are there to download individually from the home page as well as iTunes! So... go get em!

[#10 posted by nosehat, April 2, 2009 10:20 AM]

@6 CarleySmiles:

I did read the post, and I did click the links to download them individually. However, each one of the links leads to the same identical page asking me to download and install itunes software. As I said in my first post.

[#11 posted by CarleySmiles, April 2, 2009 10:51 AM]

@NOSEHAT...

Sorry for confusion... there's a link to StarShipSofa in the post. I've followed it and there are individual shows listed in the blog with down-loadable links. It looks like iTunes was used for the super-fast downloads.

[#12 posted by Church, April 2, 2009 10:53 AM]

@7 Nosehat:

Go to starshipsofa.com and scroll down past the latest post. All the stories are available as MP3s, and streaming audio, in individual posts. The above link leads to the overview post (with iTunes links.)

[#13 posted by nosehat, April 2, 2009 11:03 AM]

Thanks Church and CarleySmiles! I'm getting them now.

Just to clarify for people who also don't have itunes:

Don't use the links on the content part of their page for the individual stories, and also don't use the link labeled: "If you don’t use iTunes… check out each individual postings at StarShipSofa" because it's a 404 broken link.

Instead, I found the individual stories to download by clicking on "Home" in their menu bar.

Thanks for the post, and the help. I look forward to hearing the stories!

[#14 posted by Hexatron, April 2, 2009 11:10 AM]

excited to put these on my ipod, but the graphic design hurts my eyes ;(

can i or someone else re-design that site for you, prease?

[#15 posted by StarShipSofa, April 2, 2009 11:48 AM]

Hey everyone... thanks for the kind words. I've fixed the link - I think... and I will be straight on the phone to my graphic artist to sort out that banner - promise.
Tony

[#16 posted by anticlutch, April 2, 2009 12:55 PM]

Eye-watering graphics, poor navigability, and a preference for iTunes are all disappointing qualities in an SF site.

[#17 posted by CarleySmiles, April 3, 2009 12:29 AM]

@ANTICLUTCH

WOW.... what does it take to please you? They are all free... Can you just not appreciate that without having to grip? Have you read the article? No! Well... try... they are listed like this ON THIS LINK for the SUPER-FAST download...it says so on the page. That's the whole point of the exercise....and this is the biggie.... go to StarShipSofa if you DON'T use iTunes and grab them there for... FREE!

Oh and while you're there... getting them for free... do have another grip about something else why don't you.

[#18 posted by Anonymous, April 3, 2009 3:48 PM]

For the sake of clarity and to be fair to Tony, who is doing a remarkable job. I've always been able to download StarShipSofa on Linux using the standard RSS feed I got from the homepage:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/rss

It will work in your podcatcher, or alternately if you use it in Firefox it will list all the links to the MP3s for the episodes.

Sorry about the anonymous post, but I can't remember my BoingBoing login.

Steve Bickle