fantasy – Page 43

Ray Bradbury’s The Flying Machine and The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl

Monday, December 3, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m not sure exactly how I came across this broadcast recording. But I’m very glad I did. It’s as part of a collection called The Golden Apples Of The Sun – a five part half hour of radio drama series adapting Ray Bradbury stories. This episode, episode 2, includes a pair of stories.

The first, The Flying Machine, is a short “fantasy” set in a mythical China. The story was familiar somehow so I looked it up and realized it was in an issue of Playboy that I have. I have appended the beautiful accompanying illustration (by Franz Altschuler).

In the same broadcast was an iconic tale of an obsessive compulsive murderer. Called, The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl, it was first published as Touch And Go! in a mag called Detective Book (November 1948). Unfortunately, I don’t have a beautiful scan of the first publication of that. Instead, I have a terrible scan (see below).

But, my new friend John Feaster, who I found through LibriVox, mentioned an adaptation of it in the EC Comics comic called Crime SuspenStories (#17). And that I do have a nice picture of.

The Golden Apples Of The Sun – The Flying Machine
Adapted from the story by Ray Bradbury; Adapted by Lawrence Gilbert; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 5
Broadcast: January 30, 1991
Source: Archive.org

Producer Peter Hutchings.

Cast:
Paul Maxwell
Don Fellows
Ed Bishop
Paul Downing

The Flying Machine from Playboy August, 1954 - illustration by Franz Altschuler

Touc And Go! by Ray Bradbury - from Detective Book, November 1948

Touch And Go! adapted from the story by Ray Bradbury - from Crime SuspenStories #17

And The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl was adapted to TV for The Ray Bradbury Theater. And it stars Michael Ironside and Robert Vaughn!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – AUDIO DRAMA: The Queen Of The Black Coast

Podcast

BrokenSea Audio Productions Conan The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – First podcast in 2008, in seven separate installments, here it is, the legendary, unconquerable epic that they didn’t want you to hear. It’s back, stronger, and wholly united into one massive adventure … the mighty BrokenSea Audio Productions adaptation of The Queen Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard!

Buscema, Look At Me

Buscema, It's Been A Good Life

Hugh Rankin illustration from Weird Tales

Buscema, My Heart Bleeds For You

Gerald Brom, And Their Memory Was A Bitter Tree

Buscema, Death On The Black Coast

Buscema, Shut Up Please

Ad for Queen Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard from Weird Tales, April 1934

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Grove Of Ashtaroth by John Buchan

Tuesday, November 13, 2012Sunday, November 11, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

“In a remarkable short story, ‘The Grove of Ashtaroth,’ the hero finds himself obliged to destroy the gorgeous little temple of a sensual cult, because he believes that by doing so he will salvage the health and sanity of a friend. But he simultaneously believes himself to be committing an unpardonable act of desecration, and the eerie voice that beseeches him to stay his hand is unmistakably feminine.”

-Christopher Hitchens (The Atlantic Monthly, March 2004)

The Grove Of Ashtaroth was written by the fifteenth Governor General of Canada, John Buchan. Despite that high position, he was the viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch for five years in the 1930s, Buchan is probably better known today as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Buchan’s novelette has been described as a “weird story” (by the makers of Escape) or as “high fantasy” (in The Fantastic Imagination) by editors Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, a 1977 anthology).

I’m not sure exactly what it is, except very interesting and certainly within the vague borders of the Fantasy genre. The Grove Of Ashtaroth reminds me of a short story by Philip K. Dick, Of Withered Apples.

You can judge for yourself what you think it is most like.

There’s a hurried, but unabridged, reading available |MP3|. It’s read by Libby Hill for the TV On The Internet podcast (beginning shortly after the twenty minute mark).

I myself have made a |PDF| from the original publication in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, June 1910.

But your best bet, in audio, for the moment at least, is to listen to the 1948 Escape radio dramatization!

Escape – The Grove Of Ashtaroth
Adapted from the novelette by John Buchan; Adapted by Les Crutchfield; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS
Broadcast: February 29, 1948
Provider: Archive.org

Cast:
Paul Frees as John Buchan
William Conrad as Lawson

And if you were wondering, the only major difference between the original story and the dramatization is that the unnamed narrator is named (after Buchan himself) in the dramatization.

[Thanks also to Escape-Suspense.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #186 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Lady, Or The Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #186 – An unabridged reading of The Lady, Or The Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton (17 minutes), read by David Federman – followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Tamahome, and Julie Hoverson (of 19 Nocturne Boulevard).

Talked about on today’s show:
Monty Hall, Let’s Make A Deal, a can of sardines, a donkey and a block of hay, the Dungeons & Dragons meaning of “Monty Hall”, use in schools, weighting the scales, what is the character of women?, equally loving and equally jealous, love vs. jealousy, how barbaric are women?, where are the female criminals, a fully barbaric king, trial by ordeal, a box with a viper, a box with a knife, the swift choice, a curious justice system, jaywalking into the people’s court, like father like daughter, women were so emotional, unmodernizable sexism, guilt, there are tigers behind both doors, The Price Is Right, imaginary morality in an imaginary land, fairness conflated with arbitrariness, “when he and himself agreed upon anything”, Julie’s problem with philosophy, game theory, a thought experiment, Ray Bradbury style stories convey Bradburian feelings vs. Rorschachian style stories which elicit only the reader’s feelings, The Discourager Of Hesitancy (a sequel to The Lady, Or The Tiger?), smile vs. frown, Batman, Two-Face’s decisions are not actually coin tosses, The Man in The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, I Ching, “the tiger does not eat the straw because the duck has flown away”, phone psychics should agree with their customers, “the cards are telling me…”, psychics as impartial observers, a Ponzi scheme, selection bias, is it a double bluff?, does the father know that the daughter knows?, what is the punishment for adultery?, obsolete pop-culture, zoot suit riots (not just a joke, seriously), “six of one, half a dozen of the other”, “as snug as a bug in a rug”, we have to invent rug technology, nitpicking, Bugs Bunny dialogue, Max Headroom (is still ahead of it’s time), “blipvert”, They Live, shantytowns in the Regan era, Shock Treatment, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.