science fiction – Page 109

Robert Sheckley’s Seventh Victim

Thursday, April 14, 2011Monday, March 20, 2017 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Seventh Victim by Robert Sheckley Going in, and liking Robert Sheckley, I was surprised how much I didn’t respond to his most famous short story Seventh Victim. Upon first reading it I didn’t think of it as terrific story. Nor did I think of it as having much in the way of intellectual heft. But, upon reflection, particularly after watching the film adaptation I am coming around a bit. Indeed, plenty of folks, it seems, think of Seventh Victim as an academic story. It’s been used in both introductory psychology and philosophy textbooks. It has been reprinted more than a dozen times in different anthologies or collections. The 1965 film adaptation, called The Tenth Victim (La Decima Vittima), prompted Sheckley to expand the short story into a novel under the same name (which spawned more novel sequels Victim Prime and Hunter / Victim.

Robert Sheckley’s short story Seventh Victim is the tale of a future earth in which men and women engage in a voluntary game of assassination. Upon its first publication Galaxy magazine’s editor, H.L. Gold, abstrusely compared it to Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. I see that. But I was more struck by its closer resemblance to the game played in the opening scenes of the 1985 film Gotcha!. That film was likely inspired by a 1982 movie, Tag: The Assassination Game – which itself certainly nodded towards The Most Dangerous Game (the name of the first victim in the film is Connally). And that movie, in turn, was likely inspired by a real game of fake murder played on university campuses at the time (it looks like it is still played today too). While the story itself isn’t available as an audiobook there are a couple of audio dramatizations (both use the same script):

Future Tense – The Seventh Victim
Adapted from a short story by Robert Sheckley; Adapted by Ernest Kinoy; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: WMUK Special Projects
Broadcast: May 20th, 1974
Provider: Rimworlds.com
“The most dangerous game, said one writer, is Man. But there is another still more deadly!” First published in the April 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

X-Minus One – The Seventh Victim
Adapted from a short story by Robert Sheckley; Adapted by Ernest Kinoy; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: March 6, 1957
Provider: Archive.org
“Tonight we go forward in time to the days when war has been outlawed – and in its place there is a system of carefully controlled legalized murder.” First published in the April 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

Cast:
Lawson Zerbe …. Freeline
Terri Keane …. Janet
Frank Maxwell … Emanuel Gale
Ian Martin ….
Arthur Hughes …. Jerry
Fred Collins …. Announcer

[via Archive.org and Rimworlds]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

Monday, April 11, 2011Saturday, April 30, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox Meanwhile … over on the Wikipedia talk page for the entry for Philip K. Dick’s Adjustment Team there is a wonderful argument going on. Part of it is over an issue called “copyfraud” (false claims of copyright designed to control works not under copyright). I suspect that it just such awesomeness that is behind so much of the awesomeness that is Wikipedia. Check this response out from a Wikipedia editor named “Refrigerator Heaven”:

Oh, to answer the section’s question. As a long-time fan of Philip K. Dick who is familiar with his main themes and not very interested in the movies based on his writings, I do think the copyright stuff is more interesting and more Dickian than the movie [The Adjustment Bureau]. Perhaps I’ll add a quote or two from him after dinner. For a parting thought I’ll leave this with a quote he used in his Hugo Award winning novel, The Man In The Hight Castle [sic]. “Things are seldom as they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Wikipedia is wonderful for its quotes alone. It was there, on the Wikipedia entry, for instance – that I learned that Adjustment Team was public domain. That’s what prompted me to tell my favourite LibriVox narrator that it was PD and that is, in part, why he recorded it for LibriVox. Thank you Gregg Margarite and thank you Wikipedia!

Soon to be collected in LibriVox’s Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #044:

Adjustment Team
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: NOT YET COLLECTED!
“Something went wrong and Ed Fletcher got mixed up in the biggest thing in his life.” First published in Orbit Science Fiction, Sept-Oct 1954, No.4.

Illustrations by Faragasso:

Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: The Adjustment Bureau by Philip K. Dick

Monday, April 11, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

I don’t think Philip K. Dick and Hollywood are writing for the same audience:

The Adjustment Bureau movie trailer: Powerful, handsome bachelor boy meets cute girl -> handsome boy loses beautiful girl -> handsome boy is chased by powerfully fedoraed men -> handsome gets beautiful back again.

The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team) audiobook: middle class schnook has quietly comfortable conversation with wife -> gets pushed around by insurance salesman -> weird shit happens -> freaks out -> runs home to his wife. PLUS: talking dog!

The Adjustment Bureau (aka Adjustment Team)
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Phil Gigante
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: March 4, 2011
ISBN: 9781441894694
Sample |MP3|
The Adjustment Bureau is a major motion picture based on Philip K. Dick’s classic paranoid story, The Adjustment Team. This is the short story, The Adjustment Team, which asks the question – Do we control our destiny, or do unseen forces manipulate us? Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent with a normal life, until one day he leaves the house for work a few minutes later than he should have. He arrives at a terrifying, grey, ash world. Ed rushes home and tells his wife, Ruth, who goes back to the office with him. When they return, everything is normal. But he soon realizes people and objects have subtly changed. Panic-stricken, he runs to a public phone to warn the police, only to have the phone booth ascend heavenward with Fletcher inside…

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

Thursday, April 7, 2011Thursday, April 7, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster
First published in the June 12, 1920 issue of Argosy, The Mad Planet was eventually to become one third of Murray Leinster’s fix-up novel The Forgotten Planet. But there were plenty of standalone republications too. It was, for instance, in the November 1926 issue of Amazing Stories – where it was published with this introduction by Hugo Gernsback:
The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

It ran with this art (by Frank R. Paul):

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

Super Science and Fantastic Stories, December 1944:

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

Fantastic Novels Magazine, November 1948:

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

And now available as a LibriVox audiobook:

The Mad Planet
By Murray Leinster; Read by Roger Melin
4 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 6, 2011
|ETEXT|
It is 30,000 years following dramatically changed climate conditions on earth which had let massive amounts of carbon dioxide belch from the interior of the planet into the atmosphere. Over the millenia this would have quite devastating effects on life as it had once been known. Much of the human and animal population would not survive the climate change, and indeed those few humans who did survive knew nothing of all which their predecessors had learned and built. Indeed, they knew not even of their existence. On the other hand insects and fungi would flourish over time. And so those few remaining humans were unknowingly at the very beginning of the building of a tribal society, which at the time of the story of Burl simply meant food and survival. And so it was Burl who chose to travel beyond his small tribal community in an effort to hunt for something new and different to hopefully impress Saya, the young female of his tribe to whom he felt a peculiar attraction. The Mad Planet is Burl’s adventure.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/rss/5338

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and Barry Eads]

Posted by Jesse Willis

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou: The Forgotten Enemy by Arthur C. Clarke

Thursday, March 31, 2011Thursday, March 31, 2011 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

It isn’t often I recycle an old posts. Why would I? They’re all still there! And if there’s something new about one I’ll typically just update the original rather than repost it. But, I’m confident that there are enough people out there, reading this blog now, that never saw our original 2008 coverage of the wonderful podcast/radio series called A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou. Because of that, and the fact that you’d be really missing out, this post can be one of the exceptions – a reminder that there’s a tonne of great old stuff in our archives, and out there on the internet.

First broadcast in 2008 on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London, U.K, The Forgotten Enemy is an excellent Arthur C. Clarke tale. Set in London, it tells of solitary man waiting for rescue. He can almost hear the helicopters. Yes, the helicopters. The slow, loud, helicopters coming inevitably from the north. But what of the terrible white menace that threatens his lonely existence? Can he survive?

One aspect of the tale may remind you of 28 Weeks Later, another may remind you of The Day After Tomorrow. But fear not, this story pays far greater dividends than either of those.

In the discussion that follows the story is described as a “cozy calamity” and it’s compared to Who Goes There? and A Pail Of Air. It is a wonderful podcast – all around!

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou – The Forgotten Enemy
By Arthur C. Clarke; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: A Bite Of Stars, A Slug Of Time, And Thou
Podcast: 2008
In a bleak snow and ice covered London, a lone survivor faces isolation, polar bears and loneliness. But even his one hope, the idea that a rescue team is crossing the Atlantic ice sheet isn’t enough to stave off The Forgotten Enemy. First published in December 1948, in an issue of King’s College Review, later republished in New Worlds.

Podcast feed: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime-podcast/feed/

Here’s the accompanying art from the new worlds publication:

The Forgotten Enemy by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted by Jesse Willis

Radio Drama Revival: Bradbury 13: A Sound Of Thunder

Wednesday, March 30, 2011Monday, July 2, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

If there is an exemplar of the excellence in modern American audio drama production it has to be the stunning centerpiece in the Bradbury 13 series: A Sound Of Thunder |READ OUR REVIEW|. And Radio Drama Revival has it! This podcast is an absolute must hear! It features the complete production as well as an excellent new interview with Bradbury 13 creator Michael McDonough. As host Fred Greenhalgh sez:

“[It’s] one of the most splendid productions ever to grace the annals of radio drama history. If you ever doubted how stereo sound changed the way we designed sound effects, let this production convince you.”

That’s no hyperbole. When you put on a pair of stereo headphones you’ll be absolutely be blown away by the greatness that is A Sound Of Thunder.

Bradbury 13 – A Sound Of Thunder
Adapted from the story by Ray Bradbury; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 58 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Radio Drama Revival
Podcast: March 11, 2011
“They were going back sixty million years to kill a dinosaur. And they mustn’t step on one single blade of grass, or all of future civilization might be destroyed.” First broadcast on NPR in 1984. Short story first published in Collier’s, June 28, 1952.