Showing results by narrator "MIke Vendetti" in All Categories

An unnamed narrator describes the final fate of his good friend, Denys Barry, an Irish American who reclaims an ancestral estate in Kilderry, a fictional town in Ireland. Barry ignores pleas from the local peasantry not to drain the nearby bog, with unfortunate supernatural consequences. Narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti.

Eons after the last nuclear war, humans have become the inferior race. Cities have become segregated, and robots rule the world. The robots did have a sense of justice, though. If a human could score high enough on an annual test, he could move up in society. There was a catch, though. The test was so slanted toward robot mentality and knowledge, a human didn't have a chance. Then James P. Crow (Not his real name.) arrives on the scene with his window that sees into the past and the future.

Clarence Rimbro owns the entire planet Earth. This is no great accomplishment as, thousands of years in our future, anyone can do it. There are an infinite number of possible Earths, each existing in its own parallel universe. If the chance of life arising on any one of them is about 50 percent, then half the time a random choice of a parallel universe will lead to a dead Earth.

What if there were a product that taken daily and barring an untimely accident or murder allowed one to live indefinitely? In Kurt Vonnegut Jr's fanciful tale, that is just what happens. At first the miracle product Anti-gerasone seems like a blessing. But what if the population keeps breeding? How to make room for the new ones. And then there is the problem of the curmudgeon who doesn't get the stuff until he's in his late 70s becomes head of the family and is still going strong 104 years later.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti narrates "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, a scathing indictment of war and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

Part of Lovecraft's dream series, Celephaïs was created in a dream by Kuranes (which is his name in dreams - his real name is not given) as a child of the English landed gentry. As a man in his 40s, alone and dispossessed in contemporary London, he dreams it again and then, seeking it, slowly slips away to the dreamworld. Finally knights guide him through medieval England to his ancestral estate, where he spent his boyhood, and then to Celephaïs.

They were married, but they hated and couldn't stand each other. Why not a divorce? Not that easy when there is a lot of money involved. Perhaps they could work things out on a trip to the Swiss Alps.

If, after a great struggle, the East were to prevail over the world, what sort of civilization would be imposed by the victors? Would it be an oriental version of the societies we know - or might the great old culture be superimposed upon what was left of Western technology? The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future where global civilization is governed by a hierarchical, religious society centered around belief in karmic-based reincarnation metaphorically viewed as moving forward or backward on a turning wheel.

A terrifying short from the Hugo-winning author of The Man in the High Castle, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, in which paranoid Verne Haskel suddenly gains almost godlike power over two towns named Woodland - one of them just outside of San Francisco, the other lovingly constructed in the basement of his home.

A group of pilgrims venture to a new planet, leaving Earth to escape the persecution they endured there only to find naked heathens inhabiting their new planet. The heathens worship a spaceship embedded in the hillside. The heathens speak English, but the pilgrims cannot abide their ways, so they decide to destroy them tomorrow because today is the Sabbath. A big surprise awaits them.

"The Easter Egg", a short story by H. H. Munro ("Saki"), is not a happy Easter story but a tale of a proud and brave mother who loves her son even though the son is timid and perhaps cowardly. The story takes place prior to World War I, and the son, in his one act of bravery, prevents an international incident that possibly would have started the war sooner.

As curator of the Twentieth Century Exhibit, George Miller felt that to do a good job, he had to live his work. Then, one day, somebody got into his exhibit, and he went to investigate.

The Trial by Franz Kafka, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, begins like a nightmare - only K is awake, and he is being arrested and indicted on charges he never learns. He is caught up in a legal system that will destroy his life. This is a text that often is used in English classes because it is so deep. Kafka attacks the norms of society, religion, and the legal system.

A man approaches a great door seeking the law, and there he finds a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper tells him he can't be allowed to enter at the moment, so the man waits. Narrated by award winning narrator Mike Vendetti, this Franz Kafka short story will leave you thinking and analyzing.

It begins innocently enough, until a beautiful lady passes his table and then returns and drops a card on the table. The message is written in French, and he does not understand what is written there; and it seems that anyone who can read what is written on the card become so aghast that they refused to tell the gentleman what it says.

What a coincidence. The mummies wake up once a millennium, and who should stumble into the pyramid but our hero? This is a fun little story about a British ne'er-do-well who has found possible wealth and prosperity by becoming engaged to the rather plain - and plain is a nice word for it - daughter of a new English nobleman. But wait. He wanders into the pyramid when the mummies have their 24 hours of life once a millennium, and he falls madly in love with the Pharaoh's daughter, who is some 6,000 years old.

The gems in this piece are as relevant today as they were 200, 1000 or 2000 years ago. Sit back and absorb as award winning narrator Mike Vendetti shares Ben's wisdom.

The Mysterious Card Unveiled by Cleveland Moffett narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti is the sequel to The Mysterious Card, which left the mystery unsolved. This sequel is far more evil than the original.

Metempsychosis, the supposed transmigration and death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species is the key to this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. "Metzegerstein", the title of this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, is the name family name of a family that has carried on a long standing feud with the Berlifitzing family bitter rivals somewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Ghosts begins as straightforward haunted house story, one coming out of the Gothic tradition. Our hero, a skeptic, is staying with his brother at an ancient baronial estate. There, he argues with his brother about the existence of ghosts, and what sorts of evidence for their existence would be acceptable. Then, in order to make his point, he proceeds to induce in himself a ghostly experience by means darkness, drugs, and deprivation.