Isaac Asimov – Page 25

Resonance FM’s: A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou

SFFaudio Online Audio

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou is a podcast radio show (on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London, U.K.) that you are absolutely going to love. The hosts, Elisha Sessions and Mark Sinker, along with various guests, talk about Science Fiction short stories from “SF’s Golden and Silver Ages.” Covering stories from 1927 to 1965, these are deep, articulate, and knowledgeable discussions, along with, in at least a couple of cases, complete, unabridged readings! Planet shaking stories, with intelligent commentary – I absolutely love it!

Episode 1 – Who Goes There?
By John W. Campbell; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [READINGS OF CHAPTERS 2 & 4]
Sarah Clarke joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There”, a 1938 science fiction novella about ice-bound scientists confronted with an alien who can become them. Elisha reads from the book in case you haven’t. As originally broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London on April 1, 2008.

Episode 2 – A Pail Of Air
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [ABRIDGED]
Tom Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss Fritz Leiber’s “A Pail of Air”, written in 1951. It’s a short story about a kid, some rugs, and an Earth so cold that helium crawls. Will it crawl onto YOU? Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Episode 3 – The Segregationist
By Isaac Asimov; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [???]
Alan Trewartha joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss “Segregationist”, one of Isaac Asimov’s famous robot stories from 1967. Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Episode 4 – Beyond the Reach of Storms
By Donald Malcolm; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [???]
Martin Skidmore joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss the first space-travel story of the series, and the first truly obscure find, “Beyond the Reach of Storms” by Donald Malcolm.

Episode 5 – The Red Brain
By Donald Wandrei; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Dave Queen joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about the outrageous 1927 short story “The Red Brain”, written by Donald Wandrei when he was supposedly 16 years old.

Episode 6 – A Sound of Thunder
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Al Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the famed 1952 story about a dinosaur safari gone wrong. Lots of other Bradbury and time travel tales get a look in.

Episode 7 – The Tactful Saboteur
By Frank Herbert; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Ken Hollings joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “The Tactful Saboteur” by Frank Herbert, a tale of civil servants and their multi-phase sexual life cycles from 1964.

Episode 8 – Build Up Logically
By Howard Schoenfeld; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Kat Stevens joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about Choose Your Own Adventure books, speaking with animals, and “Build Up Logically”, an unclassifiable short story written in 1950 by Howard Schoenfeld. It’s about two men who can summon the entire universe from thin air but spend most of their time at parties.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov

SFFaudio Review

The Caves of Steel
By Isaac Asimov; Read by William Dufris
6 CDs – 7.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781400104215
SAMPLE |MP3|
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mystery / Robots / Artificial Intelligence / Sociology / New York /

A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together.

Elijah Baley and his wife and son live in an overcrowded New York city (the titular Caves Of Steel) in our distant future. Outside the insular Earth, humans have colonized many planets with their robot servants to assist them. These “Spacer” worlds are rich, have small populations, and high standards of living. The Earthers all live in vast city complexes and never venture outside. The Spacers maintain an embassy, from which they seek to help their backward progenitors – but this help is both resented and rebuffed. The latest incident is revealed when Elijah Bailey, a New York detective, is called into his superior’s office and tasked with solving a murder in the “spacer” enclave. But his boss has one more demand of him. Elijah must partner up with a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw for the duration of the case.

Asimov’s vision of New York in The Caves Of Steel fits neatly somewhere in between the well envisioned arcologies like “Todos Santos” (Larry Niven and Steve Barnes’ Oath Of Fealty), future cities like “Mega-City One” (Judge Dredd) and that of “Diaspar” (found in Arthur C. Clarke’s The City And The Stars). As such it is an experience not to be missed. The mixture of politics, psychology and sociology that’s found in Asimov’s Foundation novels is also present. But central to the experience of The Caves Of Steel is Mystery. It is a Mystery in a Science Fiction setting and not the other-way round. The well realized economy, culture, and characters (this latter in a surprisingly good turn for Asimov) are all carefully explained so as to set up the mystery – even the red-herrings are important to the plot.

Isaac Asimov basically invented the small sub-genre of the Science Fiction Mystery, and this was the novel that started it all. I’ve read lots of other books of his, including one straight Mystery that was set at a Science Fiction convention (starring a detective modeled on Harlan Ellison). And like that novel, this one keeps you guessing right up until the very end. That’s a good thing too – Asimov doesn’t cheat. We’ve got a city full of suspects, but the motive – when it’s ultimately revealed – is as logical as the deduction is sound.

It isn’t an insult to say that William Dufris sounds like a robot. He sounds like a robot when it’s a robot speaking, and sounds like a man when it’s a man speaking. He can also inflect his voice to sound more feminine – which is handy for females (and female robots too). Suffice it to say William Dufris reads Asimov’s spare and unadorned prose with alacrity. I’m excited to say the sequel, The Naked Sun is also available from Tantor!

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7 re-airing: Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC 7 is re-aring their specially commissioned readings of Arthur C. Clarke stories (and one Isaac Asimov one) in their 7th Dimension time-slot next week. Check these out when they air, or tune in via the “listen again” service after they air…

Before Eden
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Tim Pigott-Smith
Radio Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday at 6pm and midnight (UK time)
This space adventure set on Venus highlights the weight of responsibility which rests on explorers entering uncharted territories.

Summertime On Icarus
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Tim Pigott-Smith
Radio Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Tuesday at 6pm and midnight (UK time)
When an astronaut wakes up after an accident he finds himself on the asteroid, Icarus, which orbits close to the sun. Dawn is only moments away and it is about to get very hot. There is nowhere to hide and his communication is down – will he escape before the first rays of the sun find him?

All The Time In The World
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Nicholas Boulton
Radio Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Wednesday at 6pm and midnight (UK time)
“A clever tale about some alien art thieves who arrive to plunder Earth.”

The Parasite
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Nicholas Boulton
Radio Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Thursday at 6pm and midnight (UK time)
“A chilling tale about a man who starts having dreams of a monstrous creature from the future.”

And finally, Friday sees the re-broadcast of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story…

The Last Question
By Isaac Asimov; Read by Henry Goodman
Radio Broadcast – Approx 25 minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC 7 / 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Friday at 6pm and midnight (UK time)
Asimov’s classic “man versus machine” short story. In the not too distant future, technology has advanced to the point where global affairs are managed by a huge computer called Multivac which supposedly can provide the answers to all questions… such as… “Can entropy be reversed?”

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4 Documentary on Arthur C. Clarke

SFFaudio Online Audio

In October 2005 BBC Radio 4 visited Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka to celebrate the 60th anniversary of an article’s publication in a magazine called Wireless World. “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World Wide Radio Coverage?” was the first place artifical geostationary satellites were described. The entire documentary, featuring such Clarke knowledgeables as Stephen Baxter, Isaac Asimov and even Clarke’s younger brother, is thankfully still archived on the BBC Radio 4 website and is available for listening in the RealAudio format! I thought this was a very refreshing take documenting his “futurology” vs. his Science Fiction. This documentary doesn’t dwell on Clarke’s futurology as much as most documentaries on the man do.

Arthur C. Clarke: The Science And The Fiction
Heather Couper meets the man behind the ideas
1 Broadcast |REALAUDIO| – 28 Minutes 59 Seconds [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Wendesday 5 October 2005 11.00-11.30am
In this programme, Heather Couper hears Sir Arthur’s own story and meets with family, fans and fiction writers he has influenced. His younger brother Fred remembers their childhood on a Somerset farm: Arthur was building telescopes and launching home-made rockets. Did the other children join in their brother’s activities? “No!”, recalls Fred with a shudder. “We kept away from the dangerous blighter”.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals – Jay Lake, John Scalzi, Isaac Asimov

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Ya, it is strange to call them it with digital copies, but here’s a batch of “recent arrivals” from Audible.com (all are Audible exclusive titles)…

Mainspring
By Jay Lake; Read by William Dufris
Audible Download – Approx. 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: macmillan audio / audible.com
Published: December 2007
The mainspring of the Earth is running down, and disaster to the planet will ensue if it’s not rewound. To do the job the Archangel Gabriel approaches a young clockmaker’s apprentice and explains the problem. He can’t be that surprised, in a clockwork solar system, where the planets move in a vast system of gears around the lamp of the Sun – how could he be. This is a universe where the hand of the Creator is visible to anyone who simply looks up into the sky and sees the track of the heavens, the wheels of the Moon, and the great Equitorial gears of the Earth itself.

The Ghost Brigades
By John Scalzi; Read by William Dufris
Audible Download – 10 Hours 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio / Audible.com
Published: March 2008
The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF’s toughest operations. They’re young, they’re fast and strong, and they’re totally without normal human qualms. For the universe is a dangerous place for humanity – and it’s about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF’s biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF most find out why Boutin did what he did.

‘I, Robot’ for Learners of English
By Isaac Asimov; Read by Tricia Reilly
Audible Format -2 Hours 31 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com / Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Published: March 2008
Isaac Asimov’s classic collection of stories about a society where humans and robots live and work together on Earth and in outer space is both disturbing and prophetic. –The Macmillan Readers series is one of the most popular and respected series of readers for learners of English. Macmillan Readers are simplified retellings of an original work. They are created by highly experienced ELT writers.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC7 – Asimov, Lovecraft, Follet, Chesterton

SFFaudio Online Audio

Re-runs don not suck at all when they are this good! Today and for the week coming there starts a new batch of terrific old shows on BBC7. And remember there is a promise of ahead of some Arthur C. Clarke too…

“Gimmicks Three” and “Light Verse”
By Isaac Asimov; Read by William Roberts
1 Part – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Saturday at 6pm and midnight
A mild mannered elderly lady behaves completely out of character when her house-guest goes behind her back and fixes Max – her malfunctioning robotic manservant.

An oldie but a goodie (if goodie means Eldritch)…

The Tomb
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Ryan McCluskey
1 Part – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
First published in 1917, this is a disturbing and Gothic tale by the influential horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Jervas Dudley narrates his story from an asylum, describing the sinister events leading up to his incarceration.

A 1978 BBC Radio 4 production…

The Destruction Factor
By James Follett; Performed by a full cast
5 Parts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 6pm and midnight
This ecological sci-fi tale, very much ahead of its time, is written by the man behind Earthsearch, novelist James Follet. Ralph Exon has created a new strain of plant for an international fertiliser corporation. It’s hoped that this “mutation” will bring relief to the famine ridden countries of the world. In itself, the plant looks quite innocent, but within it, there lurks…. the Destruction Factor.

And a complete novel, in its entirety…

The Man Who Was Thursday
By G.K. Chesterton; Read by Geoffrey Palmer
5 Parts – [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
Written in 1908, is an extravaganza presuming the existence in Edwardian London of a secret society of anarchists sworn to destroy the world. There are seven members of the Central Anarchists Council who, for reasons of security, call themselves after the days of the week. Events soon cast a doubt upon their real identities, however, for Thursday is not the passionate young poet he appears to be, but a Scotland Yard detective. Who, and what, are the others then? The author unravels this surreal part-fantasy, part-thriller in his own inventive and exuberant way, using the nightmare of paradox and surprise to probe the mysteries of human behaviour and belief.

Posted by Jesse Willis