News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Did you know there’s a swift and peppy radio drama companion piece to the unabridged reading of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle Of The Sands? There is! Originally broadcast as a part of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Night Theatre, and lovingly preserved over on RadioArchive.cc, you’re sure to enjoy this fast paced nautical espionage tale that not only changed the course of history, but also practically invented a whole new genre of fiction!
Saturday Night Theatre – Erskine Childers’ The Riddle Of The Sands
Adapted by Roderick Graham; Performed by a full cast
1 MP3 File – Approx. 90 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 / Saturday Night Theatre
Broadcast: January 8, 1994
Provider: RadioArchive.cc Edwardian nautical adventure yarn in which a hobby sailor, Davies, and his pal, Carruthers, upset Germany’s preparations for WWI.” Technical Presentation by Ian Pratt. Directed by Jane Morgan. Cast:
Carruthers …… Laurence Kennedy
Davies …… Charles Simpson
Dolman …… Frederic Jaeger
Clara …… Joe Unwin
Von Brunning …… Wolf Kahler
Grimm …… Mikael Rolff
Barthols …… John Baddeley
Kiel Clerk …… Colin Pinney
Hawkins …… Simon Treves
There’s a new FREE audiobook version of Philip K. Dick’s 1953 novella The Variable Man available from LibriVox and superstar narrator Gregg Margarite!
Here’s the teaser:
“He fixed things—clocks, refrigerators, vidsenders and destinies. But he had no business in the future, where the calculators could not handle him. He was Earth’s only hope—and its sure failure!”
Here are four different covers from various paperbook incarnations of this time travel tale…
And here’s the audiobook…
The Variable Man
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite 3 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 49 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 3, 2010 Predictability has come a long way. The computers of the future can tell you if you’re going to win a war before you fire a shot. Unfortunately they’re predicting perpetual standoff between the Terran and Centaurian Empires. What they need is something unpredictable, what they get is Thomas Cole, a man from the past accidentally dragged forward in time. Will he fit their calculations, or is he the random variable that can break the stalemate? From Space Science Fiction September 1953.
Luke Burrage, in the first of two shows with me as a guest on Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, is reviewing and talking about The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Its a fun exercise, we run down the whole book and talk about other invisibility stories too. Have a listen…
SFBRP #078 – H.G. Wells – The Invisible Man
1 |MP3| – Approx. 58 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: SFBRP.com
Podcast: Monday, January 18, 2010
Here’s what we talked about: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, the public domain status of the writings of H.G. Wells, Luke and Jesse in conversation, The War Of The Worlds, The Island Of Dr. Moreau, The First Men In The Moon, Luke’s review of The Time Machine, Sussex, invasion literature, mad scientist, horror, thriller, the village of Iping, invisibility, scientific invisibility, What Was It?, haunted house, the 2000 film Hollow Man, Smoke by Donald E. Westlake, the development of the invisibility meme, creating tension in a scene with exposition, Luke’s review of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan Raiders Of The Lost Ark story conference |PDF|, a Nazi monkey, Griffin (the titular Invisible Man) as an anti-hero, The Ring Of Gyges (found within Plato’s The Republic), invisibility as a cipher for moral character, invisibility is good for nothing other than spying, if you’re an invisible person you’ll need a confederate, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Miss Pim’s Camouflage by Lady Stanley, WWI, Invisible Agent, WWII, isolation, moral isolation, anonymity, Eric Rabkin’s point about, refractive index, albinism, the sleight of hand that H.G. Wells uses in The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, The Crystal Egg by H.G. Wells, Mars, long distance communication, what is the serious problem with invisibility? [the answer is a DEFEATER for any truly HARD SF story], the background for The Time Machine is Charles Darwin, evolution and the class system, the background for The War Of The Worlds is invasion literature, war and colonialism, Eddie Izzard‘s colonialism through flags, the background for The Invisible Man is personal responsibility, isolation and moral character, Thomas Marvel (the tramp with an invisible friend), the parallels between The Invisible Man and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fawlty Towers, psychopathy, sociopathy, the one ring’s invisibility, invisibility for burglary is only half as useful as you’d expect, imagine the Sauron’s ring in the hands of Denethor, Boromir, or Gandalf!, the filmspotting podcast, visit Luke’s website!
Did you know there’s a swift and peppy radio drama companion piece to the unabridged reading of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle Of The Sands? There is! Originally broadcast as a part of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Night Theatre, and lovingly preserved over on RadioArchive.cc, you’re sure to enjoy this fast paced nautical espionage tale that not only changed the course of history, but also practically invented a whole new genre of fiction!
Saturday Night Theatre – Erskine Childers’ The Riddle Of The Sands
There’s a new FREE audiobook version of Philip K. Dick’s 1953 novella The Variable Man available from LibriVox and superstar narrator Gregg Margarite!
