Tag: Douglas Adams

BBC4 & RA.cc: Stephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 4RadioArchive.ccI’ve been enjoying quite a lot of Stephen Fry on television lately. He’s been following in the footsteps of Douglas Adams in the recent series Last Chance To See, doing an autobiographical examination of a fascinating disorder in Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and criss-crossing the USA in Stephen Fry in America. But the programme that I’ll draw your attention to is a very nice hour long documentary that aired on BBC Radio 4 a couple weeks back. I picked it up through RadioArchive.cc, and I recommend you do the same.

Fry brings quite a bit to the show, delving back into computer history, talking about Alan Turing (and how that connects to where the Apple company’s logo came from), sliding tangentially into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and plenty more besides. The “Y2K disaster” seems more and more relevant these days, not because of the disaster itsel (which didn’t happen) but rather because the fixity of poorly informed media opinion is more and more likely despite our increasing ability to digitally record and rehash our poor predictions. We just don’t do it – except with programmes like this!

Stephen FryStephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd
By Stephen Fry
1 Broadcast – Approx. 56 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: October 5, 2009
The Western world, with a few notable exceptions, poured billions of dollars into electronic pesticides to defeat the Y2K bug. Only to find that for the most part it could have been defeated by turning the systems off then on again. So, why the silence when the bug didn’t bite? The answer’s in the programme. Politicians, experts and businessmen all profited in status or cash from the threat. In the media – to paraphrase the crime reporters – it bled so it led. In the USA, government brazenly claimed victory for its defeat. In reality, the enemy was almost totally imaginary. But it’s useless blaming the great and the good. It was inevitable. We’d been told repeatedly that this brilliant new technology would change the world. Then we were told it could all stop on the stroke of one spookily special midnight. We were the newly addicted, suddenly faced with the prospect that our supply was fatally endangered. There was only one thing we could do. Panic. Then spend millions fixing it. Sorry, that’s two things.

Here’s a 15 minute selection from the doc:

You can pick up the rest, via torrent, from RadioArchive.cc.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #039

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #039 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Fred Greenhalgh of Final Rune Productions (and the Radio Drama Revival podcast) to talk about the twin arts of radio drama and audio drama.

Talked about on today’s show:
Modern radio drama, The Sonic Society podcast, Roger Gregg, William Dufris, H.P. Lovecraft, Halloween, horror, The Grist Mill, Dark Passenger by Fred Greenhalgh, Willamette Radio Workshop, zombies, The Drabblecast podcast, Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, WMPG, Maine, equipment for recording, Zoom Q3, Zoom H2, software for editing audio, Audacity, Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro), Pro Tools, The Most Dangerous Game, Three Skeleton Key, Infidel by Roger Gregg, “field recording” audio drama, Marantz PMD660, the growth of amateur audio drama, AudioDramaTalk.com, Mad Horse Theatre Company, Waiting For A Window by Fred Greenhalgh, 2008 Ogle Awards, Wireless Theatre Company, The Grimm Of Stoddesden Hall, folklore, mythology, Medusa On The Beach, New Orleans, fantasy, Day Of The Dead by Fred Greenhalgh, the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Robert Jordan, Final Fantasy, German audio drama (“Hörspiel”), the freakonomics of audio drama (dubbing drives interest in audio drama), the Torchwood radio dramas, Lux Radio Theatre, Academy Award Theatre, will radio drama revive?, what’s wrong with terrestrial radio?, what’s wrong with satellite radio?, Sirius Channel #163, radio drama in decline?, CBC mothballing radio drama, Colonial Radio Theatre, turning radio drama into cartoons, The Anne Manx series, Anne Manx animated (on YouTube), Radio Repertory Company of America, Decoder Ring Theatre’s The Red Panda Adventures, machinima, Creepshow, Wormwood, is the month of October for radio drama?, or is it just Halloween?, The War Of The Worlds, Simon Jones, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (radio drama), The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Adventures Of Sexton Blake, Dirk Maggs, stream of consciousness, post modern audio drama, Yuri Rasovsky‘s The Cabinet Of Dr. Calagari, Tom Lopez (aka Meatball Fulton), The Cabinet Of Dr. Fritz, Cellphone Theatre, ZBS.org, Audible.com’s new stereo format, Bradbury 13, 90 Second Cellphone Chillin’ Theatre, Blackstone Audio’s The Maltese Falcon, narration in audio drama, Rogue Male, storytelling and medium, First Blood, RadioArchive.cc.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4: And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Radio Times - Today's Pick - And Another Thing... (William Gallagher)BBC Radio 4Here’s an interesting situation, the Radio Times reviewer has not been given a chance to hear the upcoming HHGTTG sequel, entitled And Another Thing…. This is despite the fact that the reading begins Monday on BBC Radio 4.

So what should we to read into this?

My opinion, is it probably doesn not mean a lot. The book, and the abridged reading of it, for BBC Radio 4, have both been embargoed. That means nobody not involved with the production gets to read it before it comes out.

This isn’t new, it’s been done for quite a while on big books. Most famously with the later Harry Potter books.

The idea is for the publisher to control the thrust of reviews (and such) so as to give one all-mighty-push-through into the public consciousness. So really it says a lot more about the publisher’s policies than the strength of any particular book that is being embargoed. And history shows that both well and badly written books have been embargoed.

Myself, I’ve not read any Eoin Colfer, and I stopped reading Douglas Adams books shortly before he died.

What do you think about this?

BBC Radio 4 - And Another Thing... by Eoin ColferAnd Another Thing… (book #6 in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series)
By Eoin Colfer; Read by Stephen Mangan and Peter Serafinowicz
10 Broadcasts – Approx. 2 Hours 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 / Book At Bedtime
Broadcast: October 12 – October 23 2009 @ 22:45
Eoin Colfer’s sequel to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

They’ve also roped Arthur Dent (as portrayed by Simon Jones) to do a little audio promotion for the book HERE.

Jones, by the way, is also the narrator for Hyperion’s UNABRIDGED audiobook of And Another Thing….

Here’s Eoin Cofler explaining how the sixth book in a three book series came to be written by someone other than DNA…

[Thanks Roy!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Audiobooks America: New stock in from the UK

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

BBC Audiobooks America has just brought in a bunch of previously U.K. only BBC audiobooks. For North American customers this means a big savings on that crazy overseas shipping price. Among the available titles is the first in the series of radio dramatizations of Lindsey Davis books (Shadows In Bronze)! This is the “FALCO” series that I’m always telling everyone to try. Here’s the big list:

Posted by Jesse Willis

James Dean Palmer: The Scarifyers, Undone and Hordes Of The Things

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

James Dean Palmer's BlogJames Dean Palmer’s blog is about Ginger (a programming language), TiVo surgery, funny comp-sci final exam answers, and anything else popping into JDP’s life (mostly babies). But in between all that he also finds time to talk about the stuff he’s listening to. That brings me to a nice mini-reviewlet of three BBC Radio 7 programs that have aired over the past year or so. Writes James:

“My favorite station is BBC Radio 7 whose charter is to be an outlet for the BBC’s vast archives of audio content but they also serve a fair bit of original content as well.

One bit of original work, The Scarifyers, is particularly entertaining. Imagine The X-Files set in the 30s in the heart of London and Sculley and Mulder are replaced with an eccentric English professor and a past-his-prime police officer. Maybe it’s more Ghostbusters than X-Files. Regardless, it’s witty writing with clever acting.

I started listening to one drama on 7 called ‘Hordes of the Things‘ and have to admit I didn’t get too far before I got bored of it. It’s from many of the same people that brought Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTG) to life and there was much hope it would be the next HHGTG. That it is not but let me be bold and say that a new drama on 7 called ‘Undone‘ might just be. There’s very little similarity between Undone and Douglas Adams’ HHGTG but for some reason Undone just reminds me of the fun and imagination of HHGTG.”

All three of these shows are available over on RadioArchive.cc. The Scarifyers is also available on CD |HERE|. Hordes Of The Things is due for release on CD by BBC Audiobooks on October 8, 2009 (ISBN 9781408426234).

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

TITLEThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams; Read by Stephen Fry
6 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 9780739322208
Themes: / Science Fiction / Comedy / Planetary Destruction / Depressed Robots / Books /

Humor is arguably the most difficult genre of writing to pull off. Hampered by the limitations of the print medium, humor writers must ply their craft without the benefit of a number of tools commonly used in live comedy and in film—visual gags, voice inflections, and so on. This inherent difficultly is why good comedy writers like Dave Barry are a scarce commodity, and worth reading when you can find them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of those rare examples of written comedy that actually works. When I last read this book back in middle school (it seemed like every dorky, D&D and Atari-playing kid like me was toting it around at the time), I enjoyed it very much. But I was in for an even more pleasant surprise when I recently returned to this book via the audio format. This was actually the first comedy I’ve listened to on CD, and I now believe that this genre might benefit the most from audio treatment. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a first-rate example of what a talented narrator/actor can do with funny, well-written material. English actor/comedian Stephen Fry takes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to new comedic heights, and on a few occasions I found myself laughing out loud during my commute to work. Fry literally turns the text into a running Monty Python skit.

The plot of the book is as follows: Arthur Dent, a nondescript Englishman, is about to lose his house to a construction crew in the name of progress (an overpass is scheduled to run through Dent’s property). Simultaneously, an alien race called the Vogons has scheduled the vaporization of earth to clear the way for a hyperspatial express route. Dent is saved from destruction at the last second by his friend Ford Prefect, a roving alien researcher on the earth to complete an entry for a galactic encyclopedia called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Prefect and Dent later hook up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, Galactic President and rogue ship-thief, and his two crewmates (an annoying robot stricken with depression and ennui named Marvin, and Trillian, a female and earth’s only other survivor). Beeblebrox has stolen a cutting-edge spaceship called the Heart of Gold and is on a mission to find the lost planet of Magrathea, rumored to hold riches beyond imagining, as well as the answers to the mystery of life, the universe, and everything.

To appreciate The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you must like Monty Python (author Douglas Adams has writing credits in an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and appeared in two others, and his British comedy influences are plain). Here’s an example of the type of humor you’ll find:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

Although The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is ostensibly mere over-the-top comedy, part of the reason (I believe) for its enduring appeal are its pithy insights about the nature of humanity and the universe and mankind’s raison d’etre. Overall it’s well worth reading and/or listening to.

Posted by Brian Murphy