Tag: mars

BBC7: The Last Days Of Shandakor by Leigh Brackett

Jesse Willis

Online Audio

BBC Radio 7 - BBC7BBC7’s the 7th Dimension is re-broadcasting their action-packed reading of a novelette by Leigh Brackett. The Last Days of Shandakor was originally published in April 1952 issue of Startling Stories magazine and was first broadcast on BBC7 back in March 2007.

NOTE: This is being broadcast in 2 parts on successive Sunday evenings with repeat broadcasts at 12:30am (Monday).

The Last Days Of ShandakorThe Last Days Of Shandakor
By Leigh Brackett; Read by Nathan Osgood
Broadcast in 2 parts – Approx. 50 minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC 7 / 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday January 28th and Sunday February 3rd 2008
This is another new commission for the 7th Dimension.
An epic space adventure written in which Mars is portrayed as a dying planet where desperate Earthmen compete with the last Martians and other alien races for lost knowledge and hidden power.

And remember BBC7 provides the Listen Again service to catch it for 6 days following the broadcast!

posted by Jesse Willis

Challenger begins podcasting: Rebels of the Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Rebels Of The Red Planet by Charles L. FontenayLooking for old-fashioned pulpy goodness? Have a look, and a listen to the first chapter |MP3| of the newest SFFaudio Challenger’s podcast:

Rebels Of The Red Planet
By Charles L. Fontenay

The reader is Paul W. Campbell (of the “Cossmass” audio drama series Estalvin’s Legacy).

Rebels Of The Red Planet was first published in 1961 by Ace books. Fontenay was a WWII vet, who was “born in Brazil of a father who was by birth English and by parentage German and French, and of a mother who was by birth American and by parentage American and Scottish.” This mixed background caused him difficulty as he went from enlisted soldier to officer during the war. It seems that the security clearances for his secret work required clear citizenship. When not fighting wars or writing SF Fontenay was a newspaper man.

Here’s the blurb on Rebels Of The Red Planet:

Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.


You can subscribe to the feed via this URL:

http://cossmass.co.uk/series/rebelsredplanet/feed

Posted by Jesse Willis

SSS presents: Lost Sorceress Of The Silent Citadel by Michael Moorcock

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Star Ship SofaThe latest podcast from Star Ship Sofa is supposed to be pure Space Opera – and it is, if you don’t count my good friend Tony recounting the frightening brush with mortality that precedes Moorcock’s tale (that story is pure Horror). I hope we can all take a lesson from Tony’s incident and get our workplace helmets on before we get too excited about podcasting.

The reading that follows is just what we need after Tony’s tale, an unabridged reading of a 2002 Moorcock novelette called Lost Sorceress Of The Silent Citadel. Its an escapist, fannish, fun on Mars! A Space Opera, a “Planetary Romance”, an ode to Leigh Brackett, read by Mr. Fun himself Steve Eley! Enjoy…

Lost Sorceress Of The Silent Citadel by Michael MoorcockLost Sorceress Of The Silent Citadel
By Michael Moorcock; Read by Steve Eley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 90 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: StarShipSofa.com
Podcast: December 5th 2007
They came on the Earthling naked, somewhere in the Shifting Desert when Mars’s harsh sunlight beat through thinning atmosphere and the sand was raw glass cutting into bare feet. His skin hung like filthy rags from his bloody flesh. He was starved, filthy, making noises like an animal. He was raving — empty of identity and will. What had the ghosts of those ancient Martians done to him?

Good healing to you Tony!

Posted by Jesse Willis

H.G. Wells Month: Exclusive reading of The Crystal Egg by H.G. Wells

Jesse Willis

H.G. Wells Month

Podcast - Beam Me UpPaul Cole of the Beam Me Up radio show/podcast, has recorded a special H.G. Wells month short story, just for us (and all his podcast subscribers). This special reading won’t be going on the air at WRFR but it’s already in the feed for the show’s podcast right now. Here’s how Paul describes the story:

Here is a classic treat for listeners who enjoy the classic Science Fiction of the masters. In this podcast only version of Beam Me Up – we have on tap, The Crystal Egg written by Herbert George Wells. The story tells of a shop owner, named Mr. Cave, who finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into the planet Mars. The story was written the same year in which Wells was serializing The War of the Worlds in Pearson’s Magazine, a year before it was published as a novel. Because of the vaguely similar descriptions of the Martians and their machines, “The Crystal Egg” is often considered a prequel to The War of the Worlds, though there is no clear foreshadowing of the events that transpire in the novel.

The Crystal Egg by H.G. WellsThe Crystal Egg
By H.G. Wells; Read by Paul Cole
1 MP3 – 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Beam Me Up
Podcast: April 19th 2007

Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:

http://beameup.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

posted by Jesse Willis

Prisoners Of Gravity, the best damn TV show ever: Have a listen

admin

Online Audio

Online AudioIf you like Science Fiction and you haven’t managed to catch a single episode of Prisoners Of Gravity, I pity you. I really do. The show was awesome. It was produced between 1989 and 1994 for TV Ontario (and syndicated sporadically across North America) – each episode was like an extended blog entry (before there was such a thing). The topics, each episode only had one, focused on a particular theme found in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and comic books.

The bulk of an individual show would be just ‘talking heads’ – it was an interview format show with multiple celebrity guests of the best kind, mostly SF&F authors. Each guest would talk about the subject at hand with the interviews having been done at conventions, bookstores and the like – but I can’t stress enough just how each show was so narrowly focused on a specific theme in Speculative Fiction. Here’s just a few of the episodes subjects:

Alternate Histories, Religion, War, Dreams, Watchmen (yup a whole show on the Alan Moore comic series), Cyberpunk, World-Building, Death, Vampires, Dinosaurs, Metamorphosis, Mars and many more.

What made the show so endearing, besides the absolutely stunningly cool content, was the unrelentingly geek-o-serious production. The show’s host, played by comedian Rick Green, was supposed to be a frustrated über-geek named Commander Rick, who had, prior to the show starting, fled the earth in his homemade rocket (packed ful of books and comics). Unforunately for the Commander, he crashed into a television satellite, from which he now broadcasts his show. His only companion there is Nan-Cy, the sardonic artificial intelligent computer system that keeps Rick alive and relatively sane.

If this shows sounds interesting, or you’re feeling nostalgic, click on over to my good friend Rachelle Shelkey’s fansite, Signal Loss, and have a peek around. No official DVDs are available, but there’s a message board and episode trading might be doable now with the promulgation of cheap DVD-Rs. I myself am sending Rachelle my entire collection of VHS tape, in the hopes I will be getting some episodes I’ve never seen before. If you have some episodes contact Rachelle! If we can get enough people interested maybe we can get a complete series run!

Now for the audio|MP3|. It is the first 5 minutes from an episode of Prisoners Of Gravity on the subject of Science Fiction Fandom. Enjoy!

posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time Podcast tackles Life On Mars

Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4 Podcast In Our TimeIn Our Time is a BBC Radio 4 podcast that covers the “big ideas” of our age. Each week the host, Melvyn Bragg, and three guests investigate the history of the ideas on a topic and debate their application to modern life. On offer this week is the history of Life on Mars |MP3| here’s the description

“For centuries there has been fierce debate about whether there is life on Mars and from the 19th century it was even thought there might be a system of canals on the planet. This insatiable curiosity has been fuelled by writers like H.G. Wells and C.S. Lewis and countless Sci-Fi films about little green men. So what do we know about Mars – its conditions, now and in the past? What is the evidence that there might be water and thus life on Mars? And when might we expect man to walk on its surface?”

Subscribe to the podcast:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/inourtime/rss.xml

posted by Jesse Willis