CBC: Day 6 – Ray Bradbury interview from 1985

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC - Day 6CBC’s Day 6 blog has a lengthy, November 1985, interview Ray Bradbury (conducted by Vicky Gabereau for her self titled Gabereau show). This is a terrific long-form and ramblingly awesome interview – as Bradbury himself puts it, it’s a “discussion about ideas.”

In it Bradbury talks about:
Moving out to California as a kid, how he gets around Los Angeles, his appearance on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life, movies, directing vs. writing, Fahrenheit 451, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, James M. Cain, Norman Mailer, a discussion about ideas, bad male drivers, Blackstone the magician, Paris, France, the American Revolutionary War, architecture, Federico Fellini, Amarcord (1973), horror movies, The Fog Horn, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, dinosaurs, Moby Dick, William Shakespeare, John Houston, The Carrot People, The Horror Of Dracula, Christopher Lee, The Omen, Diabolique, Jean Harlow, Burns and Allen, The Trojans and sporadically his then current novel Death Is A Lonely Business.

And here’s that appearance on You Bet Your Life (featuring Ray Bradbury in a crew cut):

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC: As It Happens – Ray Bradbury

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC - As It HappensCBC’s long-running interview show, As It Happens, just finished airing a segment on Ray Bradbury, which consisted of a brief obituary, a vintage interview (from May 1992, with Eleanor Wachtel), and a broadcast of Dimension X’s Zero Hour – the streaming audio edition omits Zero Hour, (we’ll find out about the podcast edition tommorow) – in the meantime the segment as it exists begins at 9 minutes 30 seconds:

Podcast feed: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/asithappens.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Set in either 2026 or 1985, this story – the tale of a lonely house in California is the first that sprung to mind after I heard about Ray Bradbury’s death this morning.

Part of The Martian Chronicles, but first published in the May 6th, 1950 issue of Collier’s Weekly, the entire text of Ray Badbury’s classic There Will Come Soft Rains is viewable at UNZ.org:

Colliers, May 6th 1950 - There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

Here’s a printable |PDF|.

Audiobooks:

Lively Arts - Burgess Meredith Reads Ray BradburyThere Will Come Soft Rains
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Burgess Meredith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Lively Arts
Published: 1962
Product #: LA 30004


CAEDMON There Will Come Soft Rains and Usher II by Ray BradburyThere Will Come Soft Rains
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Leonard Nimoy
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Caedmon
Published: 1975




Radio dramatizations:

Dimension XDimension X – There Will Come Soft Rains
Adapted by George Lefferts; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: June 17, 1950


X-Minus OneX-Minus One – There Will Come Soft Rains (and Zero Hour)
Adapted by George Lefferts; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: December 5, 1956

There’s only a snippet from the beginning of this one…

BBC Radio 4There Will Come Soft Rains
Adapted by Malcolm Clarke
1 |MP3| – Approx. 2 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: May 11, 1977

Wally Wood’s depiction of the house from the comic adaptation in Weird Fantasy #17:

Weird Fantasy #17 - There Will Come Soft Rains - adapted by Wally Wood
There Will Come Soft Rains...

Video adaptations:


There will fall soft rains by DublinBen

There Will Come Soft Rains from Peter Cotter on Vimeo.

Fallout 3 homage:

The original poem:
And finally, part of the inspiration for the story, here is the Sarah Teasdale poem as read by Ruth Golding for LibriVox: |MP3|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Thank You: AdSense $$ for March and April 2012

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Thank YouGood news!

An agent of a Canadian crown corporation came to my door with a official document this morning!

And it was all thanks to you.

As you can see by the evidence…

Google Adsense cheque for March and April 2012

… all the clicking you did during the months of March and April this year were worth it. And of course the funds will go to a good cause – more SFFaudio.

So thank you very much, and feel free to give yourself a pat on the back for all the patting on the back of us you did.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Transit Of Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a rather timely re-post, one based on a post prompted back in 2006 by an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. Professor Esther M. Hu, pointed me towards this reading of an Arthur C. Clarke classic, one read by Clarke himself!

Listening to it again today, and thinking about the significance of science and history of such an event, and the related event happening today, I found Clarke’s reading of The Transit Of Earth to be an incredibly moving experience.

CAEDMON - The Transit Of Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

Since then I’ve noticed that there was an introduction written for it too, which appeared in the May 1984 issue of Omni. It’s rather timely, considering that Clarke mentions today’s transit of Venus (which will be the last until 2117):

The Transit Of Earth - illustration by Ludek Pesek

Here is that issue of Omni in the |CBR| format.

And here are the scans: |Page 70|Pages 71 and 72|Page 108|Page 110|Page 112|Page 113|Page 116|

CAEDMON - The Transit Of Earth by Arthur C. ClarkeSFFaudio EssentialThe Transit Of Earth
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Arthur C. Clarke
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Caedmon
Published: 1975
Product #: TC-1566

[via the still awesome Record Brother blog and hugely resourceful Typnet.net]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I posted last about Philip K. Dick’s shortest short story back in 2010. I’m reposting it because I’ve made a three page |PDF| to go with it (made from it’s first publication, Science Fiction Stories).

The Eyes Have It, is just a simple story about a literal man and the ridiculous alien invasion he imagines. It’s a silly little piece of fluff. A mere lighthearted thought experiment. Just a fun little story of no real account or import. In fact it’s barely …. wait one second … could it … ? …. what if … ? … HEY! That’s that just what they want you to think!!!

LIBRIVOX - The Eyes Have It by Philip K. DickThe Eyes Have It
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 20, 2010
|ETEXT|
A little whimsy, now and then, makes for good balance. Theoretically, you could find this type of humor anywhere. But only a topflight science-fictionist, we thought, could have written this story, in just this way…. First published in 1953 in Science Fiction Stories #1.

Posted by Jesse Willis