The SFFaudio Podcast #196 – READALONG: A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven
The SFFaudio Podcast #196 – Scott, Jesse, and Tamahome discuss the Blackstone Audio audiobook of A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven.
Talked about on today’s show:
Tamahome is a third, Ender’s Game, 1976, Rammer by Larry Niven (1971), a fix-up novel, Infinivox, Pat Bottino, “his most perfect short story”, the novel ruins the short story (sort of), the anticipation is more interesting than the resolution, chapters 2 and 3 nullify the power of chapter 1, Corbell, Peerssa, the Clouds of Magellan, “a fuck you ending”, interesting social systems, a sciencey vocab, cryonics, Bussard Ram Jets, ergosphere, Protector, Beowulf Shaeffer, The Soft Weapon, the Technovelgy website, biological package probes, the bubble car, the empty man, gravity assisted subway, poster TV, RNA shots “don’t read Cliff Notes, eat Cliff”, planaria (flatworms) experiments, humans are wired for language, birds are wired for flight, young forever, Star Trek, null field, consciousness transferal, continuation of consciousness, Robert J. Sawyer, Rollback, Identity Theft (or Shed Skin), your robot body, we care about will, Four Worlds Of The Diamond by Jack Chalker, “there’s a mystery that needs to be solved, cloning, Lilith: A Snake In The Grass, Audible.com, The River Of The Dancing Gods, The Identity Matrix, Demons Of The Dancing Gods, G.O.D., Inc., Dancers In The Afterglow, Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley, “who are you when you’re just some ground up hamburger?”, he’s treated like a criminal, why don’t the citizens want to make this trip?, a certain kind of person, Louis Wu, “a special sort of breed”, the two CBC Ideas shows on James Cameron, manned spaceflight, Playgrounds Of The Mind, “my favourite characters are all tourists”, “I demand to be a tourist”, The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, a whole world in zero gravity, “this guy is Mr. Physics”, Arthur C. Clarke, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, Robert A. Heinlein, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, David Brin, passing a planet, “something on the order of that”, moving planets, Uranus, mathematically logical (but with non-existent materials), the air is full of the oceans, the null-rooms, a null-box, zero-entropy space, better sandwich storage, transporting the garbage out, Doctor McCoy, quantum communication and quantum teleportation, Think Like A Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly, Seeing Ear Theatre, Dream Park, Oath Of Fealty, The Mote In God’s Eye, Inferno, Lucifer’s Hammer, Luke Burrage, Escape From Hell, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien invasion story, Scott has a signed copy!, elephantine aliens with twin trunks, the audiobook of Footfall is available, a book written by people who care about science!, a septic tank full of books, Robert A. Heinlein, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, David Brin, the DHS vs. the U.S. military, what would Larry Niven do as the head of the EPA?, a Death Star, Obama’s unemployed geekishness, Newt Gingrich, moonbase!, he loves himself because he’s surrounded by idiots, the idea of an idea man is fantastic, Douglas Adams, a thousand or ten thousand year project, focused on the current and the recent past, the deep time issue, time capsules, the Long Now Foundation, cathedral building, pyramid building, “on the cosmic scale”, the space race was motivated by military competition, Space X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX , a private moonbase?, the ultra rich, science isn’t for profit, human existence isn’t for profit, space probes, hydro-electric dams, where is the Moonbase Kickstarter?, maybe we could have just one guy and his clone up there, Moon, real Science Fiction, Crashlander, Neutron Star, Peter F. Hamilton is an ideas man, Great North Road, five pages describing a weather change, another fix-up novel, Neutron Star, the animated Star Trek, Kzin, Alan Dean Foster, World Of Ptavvs, Algis Budrys, telepathy, Charles Stross, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Community, The Big Bang Theory, Dan Harmon’s keynote.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #196 - READALONG: A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #189 – Tim Prasil’s MARVELLOUS BOXES
The SFFaudio Podcast #189 – Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, and Tim Prasil talk about the six episode anthology series Marvellous Boxes, recorded and podcast by Decoder Ring Theatre. But first we play an episode, Facing Cydonia.
Talked about on today’s show:
The Magic Of The Movies, The Crasher, horror, stage play (post Meridian Radio Players), Thinking In Trinary, Decoder Ring Theatre, Gregg Taylor, the Cobol Club, OTR, radio commercials, flash fiction, CBC, The Age Of Persuasion, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”, Plotting For Perfection (the short story), stage play, the Vera Van Slyke stories, occult detectives, Fitz-James O’Brien, audio dramatizations of the Vera Van Slyke stories, Black Jack Justice, The Red Panda Adventures, why be locked into the 1/2 hour audio drama format?, A Demon Once Removed, a one set one act play, Nicole (the peripheral character with a personality), Chekhov’s Gun, an alternate history, “Gregg Taylor need not be played by Gregg Taylor”, Orson Welles, history, Frozen Words Thawed, Remembering The Martians, an all black cast of MacBeth, The War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells, The Tempest (as an alien contact story), William Shakespeare, a controversy over the character names in Facing Cydonia, Jenny will sing us a song, the boxes, “are there more boxes in you?”, ghosts, the button, the wax cylinder recorder, the Piltdown Man hoax, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an authentic hoax, Conan Doyle is the most gullible, the Cottingley Fairies, FairyTale: A True Story, Harry Houdini, Terry Jones, Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, the EULA on wax cylinders, Thomas Edison, the most science-fictiony story, Plotting For Perfection, a femme fatale story without the femme fatale, “talk about your retro-causality”, “a box with a hole in it”, Andrea Lyons?, Scene Of The Crime, Remembering The Martians, racism, difference, tolerance, Doctor Who – The Power Of Three, fish people, are the Martians really dead?, binary fission, fruitful names, Jacob, Jason, Easter eggs, Finbar, The Silver Tongued Devil, The Sonic Society, Roger Gregg, it’s a pseudo-documentary, a joke/haiku, “conclusions should be drawn with a pencil not a pen”, Aliens Are Like Mirages, “it’s an indictment I’m just not sure what it’s an indictment of”, “if we had this power would we use it?”, the curiousness of the chaplaincy, prequels are for readers not writers, the miracle, the yup, human history in a nutshell, To Serve Man, narrative structure, why is X-Minus One a good name?, Marvellous Boxes as a name doesn’t have a super-punch, steampunky, “steamy contraptions”, Murdoch Mysteries (CBC TV), “a little less steam and a little more electricity”, Netflix in Canada sucks, Weeds, Walk Off The Earth.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #189 - Tim Prasil's MARVELLOUS BOXES [ 1:34:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadCBC: As It Happens: Moonlight by Guy de Maupassant (as read by Alan Maitland)
Here’s a sweet find from the CBC Digital Archives! It’s Alan Maitland, perhaps you know him as “Front Porch Al”, reading Moonlight (aka In The Moonlight) by Guy de Maupassant.
It was first broadcast on CBC Radio’s As It Happens on August 2, 1993.
The tale of a misogynist priest, the Abbé Marignan, who is ruled purely by reason, but whose view of life and love is influenced by the magic and splendour of moonlight.
And, I’m pleased to offer a different translation of the same story in |PDF| form.
Posted by Jesse Willis
CBC: Ideas: Iceberg Ship Habbakuk
The 47 year old radio show, Ideas, is consistently the best evening education program on the radio. Prior to the web its ephemeral broadcasts could only be recaptured by sending away for expensive audio cassette copies. That made it appointment listening. Actually, Ideas, at least in part, is how I came to love evening classes.
After an evening seminar, I’d drive along Highway 101 with the sun’s last crepuscular rays shining rosily into the darkening sky, listening to Lister Sinclair introduce a new lecture series, a two part documentary, or some other aural exploration of condensed wisdom.
Since the dawning of the Ideas podcast I’ve not listened to the radio broadcast very often. And there’s a mawkish loss in that, perhaps. But ideas and Ideas should be accessible, and they have become so.
Here’s the latest.
Iceberg Ship Habbakuk:
1942: Hitler’s U-Boats are ravaging merchant ships that Britain depends on for its survival. Enter a plan, for a gigantic warship, to help the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic. It will be built in Canada and made from … ice! Richard Longley tells the story of iceberg ship Habbakuk, in all its icy eccentricity.
|MP3|
Podcast feed: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/ideas.xml
Incidentally a few years ago BBC radio broadcast a play, penned by Steve Walker, on the same subject.
Posted by Jesse Willis
CBC: Ideas: Wired For Culture
CBC Radio’s Ideas programme from August 19th, 2012 is entitled “Wired For Culture” and is a conversation with Professor Mark Pagel, the author of Wired For Culture: Origins Of The Human Social Mind. With host Paul Kennnedy the talk starts off discussing the differences between humans and apes (with non-human animals there is no accumulation of cultural technology or ideas). It’s an absolutely fascinating discussion. And it goes towards the relationship between ideas and copying of ideas – and hence copyright. Here’s the official description:
Human beings have a unique evolutionary history. We are at the mercy of neither biology nor luck. We survive by learning from each other. Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tells us humans are successful because we are “wired for culture.”
|MP3|
Podcast feed: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/ideas.xml
Posted by Jesse Willis
REPS Podcast: CBC Stage: Fahrenheit 451 adapted from the novel by Ray Bradbury
The REPS Podcast (Radio Enthusiasts Of Puget Sound) has recently podcast a 41 year old CBC radio drama that I’d never even heard had existed:
It’s Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451!
Apparently produced by CBC Radio in Vancouver, as a part of the long running “Stage” program, the drama is light on sound effects and high on fidelity to the original text.
In fact, the production is an amazingly faithful adaptation considering it’s only an hour long. Thanks REPS!
CBC Stage – Fahrenheit 451.
Adapted from the novel by Ray Bradbury; Adapted by Otto Lowy; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 52 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBC Radio
Broadcast: March 4, 1971
Cast:*
Neal Denard … Montag
Alan Scarfe … The Fire Captain
Linda Sorenson
Sharon Kurt
Peter Hobwerth
Dorothy Davies
Merv Componi
Eric Walston
Anni Scarfe
Sound by Lars Eastholm
Technical by Bob Spence
Produced by Don Mowatt
Podcast feed: http://feeds.repspodcast.com/repsrss
Check out these terrific illustrations from the first ever serialization of a novel in Playboy (March, April, and May 1954):
And while were at it here’s a letter from Playboy’s May 1954 issue written by William F. Nolan:
*These are mostly guesses on the spelling of these names.
Posted by Jesse Willis
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