Mr. Jim Moon reads Shadow Bride by J.R.R. Tolkien!
The title character finds a mate in a man who casts no shadow. There’s something of sexuality here, and there’s something of Persephone and Hades, but also something of Sleeping Beauty, but with a gender switch.
Posted by Jesse Willis
La Chasse-Galerie (aka “The Bewitched Canoe” aka “The Flying Canoe“)
I mentioned this story on a recent podcast, then I tracked down a very early English translation |PDF|, and now narrator Mark Turetsky has recorded it for us all! Thanks Mark!
Honoré Beaugrand’s La Chasse-Galerie is the story of some Quebecois voyageurs, actually Gatineau loggers, who make a pact with the devil in order visit their women. Satan grants them the power to paddle though the sky. But they are warned that if the blashpheme, by touching any church steeples along they way, or if they do not return before six o’clock the next morning, they will lose their souls!
This version of the story was first published in The Century Magazine, August 1892.
Posted by Jesse Willis
I probably should have told you about this podcast earlier, the thing is, I forgot just how stupid BBC policy can be. So, hurry up and subscribe to this great podcast before what remains of the earlier files drop out of the feed!
Tales from Ancient Greece, a production of BBC Learning, is a dramatized retelling of the Greek mythology. Officially the show is “particularly suitable for children aged 9 to 11,” but I like it quite a bit too. The premise is that Hermes, the winged messenger god, was a witness to practicality every famous Greek myth and in each 15 minute show he’ll take us on one such adventure. Here’s a snippet of the official description:
“[Hermes’] stories are full of laughter and sorrow and unusual people, places and creatures. The series includes such favourites as the story of Persephone, King Midas, the Minotaur and Medusa.”
Unfortunately you’ve already missed Orpheus and Eurydice (episode 2) and Persephone (episode 1)!
The show is weekly and began with Episode 0, beginning on May 1, 2013 (it was just an introductory 9 second podcast announcing that the show would be weekly).
Podcast feed: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio/greekmyths/rss.xml
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
My favourite episode so far was that of Perseus And The Gorgon (episode 4) |MP3|. I’ve even LEGOized it!
Posted by Jesse Willis
Dangerous Visions “A season of dramas that explore contemporary takes on future dystopias” is the title for new BBC Radio 4 programming that airs from Saturday June 15 to Friday June 21, 2013.
Here’s the official description:
Alternative worlds dominate radio drama this week. To complement productions of The Drowned World and Concrete Island (next week) by the master of the near future J.G. Ballard, writers imagine their own dystopias in our season Dangerous Visions. As well as the maternal death syndrome threatening the survival of the human race in The Testament Of Jessie Lamb, dramatised from her own novel by Jane Rogers, the original plays ask what happens if sleep is outlawed? If cloning becomes a matter of course, and your loved ones are indistinguishable from their cloned replicants? If North London declares UDI against the wasteland of South London? If human sacrifice becomes an accepted necessity? If one man becomes immortal? Along with other related programmes on Radio 4, 4 Extra completes the season with a chilling new four-part serialisation of William Golding’s classic fable, Lord of the Flies, exploring the very essence of good and evil.
Here are the programs, and related goodness:
Saturday 15th June:
Dangerous Visions: The Sleeper
Radio 4, 1430: A fable for our times. In The Sleeper by Michael Symmons Roberts we see our own society as it is today but with one familiar element removed. This is a Britain in which, decades ago, human beings gradually lost the gift of sleep. With Maxine Peake and Jason Done.
Archive on 4: Very British Dystopias
Radio 4, 2000: Beneath the calm surface of British politics, lurking in the imaginations of some of our leading writers, terrible things have happened. Professor Steven Fielding examines these dystopian visions which have gripped creative and public imaginations.
Lord of the Flies: Fire on the Mountain (part 1 of 4)
Radio 4 Extra, 2300: William Golding’s classic story about a group of boys plane-wrecked on a deserted island. New dramatisation by Judith Adams, with Ruth Wilson narrating.
Sunday 16th June:
Dangerous Visionaries
Radio 4, 1445: As Radio 4 begins its new season of Dystopic Dramas, Dangerous Visions, the playwright and poet Michael Symmons Roberts wonders how close the gap between imagining and living in dystopia actually is.
Dangerous Visions: The Drowned World
Radio 4, 1500: JG Ballard’s story of a scientific mission surveying drowned cities. This is a future where the earth’s atmosphere, and human consciousness, has eroded. Adapted by Graham White.
Dangerous Visions: Face to Face with JG Ballard
Radio 4 Extra, 1800: The late author of Empire of the Sun and many works of speculative fiction reveals his perspective on the world and the media.
Monday 17th June:
Dangerous Visions: The Testament Of Jessie Lamb
Radio 4, 1045/1945, Monday to Friday: Jane Rogers dramatises her award winning dystopian novel about a teenage girl who decides to save humanity. Starring Holliday Grainger as Jessie Lamb.
Dangerous Visions: Billions
Radio 4, 1415: Blake Ritson and Raquel Cassidy star in Ed Harris’s wicked tale of love and deception, in which Mark comes home to find a replacement wife provided by her insurance company.
Tuesday 18th June:
Dangerous Visions: Invasion
Radio 4, 1415: On his return from Mars, Astronaut Kadian Giametti wakes up in quarantine. Slowly he discovers that the world outside his cell has changed beyond recognition.
Wednesday 19th June:
Dangerous Visions: London Bridge
Radio 4, 1415: In Nick Perry’s dark vision of the future, the River Thames has become a border separating the crime-free police state of North London from the lawless slumland of the South.
Thursday 20th June:
Dangerous Visions: Death Duty
Radio 4, 1415: In Michael Butt’s dark vision of the future, a city-state plagued by drought has instituted a system of sacrifice in a desperate measure to bring about rain. With Nicholas Jones.
[Thanks to David and Roy!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Having sampled a fair amount of steampunk fiction I’d pretty much concluded it was a genre best relegated to photography or film, not text. But there may be another place steampunkery may be successful – computer games. The BioShock series looks promising, but perhaps even more promising is the 2012 game Dishonored. Here is the trailer:
And here is the soundtrack to it, based upon an early 19th century sea chanty:
|MP3| (right click to download (it doesn’t HuffDuff properly)
[via Bethesda’s Blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Alethia Phrikodes is a long poem by H.P. Lovecraft. The title, by the way, is from Greek, and means “Frightful Truth.”
Following the title there is a short line, in Latin, reading:
“Omnia risus et omnis pulvis et omna nihil.”
Omni = all
risus = laughter
pulvis = dust
nihil = nothing
That could be translated to:
“Everything is a laugh and everything is nothing.” or maybe “All is a laugh and all is dust.” or “All laughter is all dust is all nothing.” or “All the laughter and all the dust and all the nothing.”
I found Alethia Phrikodes in the pages of the July 1952 issue of Weird Tales. But, subsequent research shows that it’s actually a segment extracted from an even longer, and much earlier, poem, entitled The Poe-et’s Nightmare (first published in The Vagrant, No. 8, July 1918).
Beyond being really cool Alethia Phrikodes is also, apparently, Lovecraft’s “first enunciation of cosmicism.”*
And so here’s Mr. Jim Moon’s beautiful narration of it |MP3| (12 minutes). To go with it check out this |PDF| which includes the text and the gorgeous art by Jon Arfstrom (from it’s publication in Weird Tales).
Posted by Jesse Willis
*Notes on a manuscript version are available HERE.