BBC Radio 4 has re-aired the half-hour documentary we told you about back in January on the transcendant experience near the end of Philip K. Dick‘s life. “Confessions of a Crap Artist” by Ken Hollings isn’t specifically about the PKD novel of the same name but it is a documentary about the last years of his life he encountered something so strange and troubling he couldn’t stop writing about it.
You can use the “Listen Again” feature on the BBC4 website HERE to hear it.
This latest episode of The Signal podcast contains an interview with Andrew Dorfman and Jack Ward from Firefly: Old Wounds. Hosts Les and Kari talked to Andrew and Jack about the creation of the audio drama for nearly 90 minutes! You can download the episode HERE. Or to subscribe to The Signal Podcast plug this feed into your podcatcher:
http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/podcast.xml
BBC7’s the 7th Dimension will be re-airing a truly AWESOME unabridged reading of Ted Chiang‘s novelette Understand.
This story has been broadcast on BBC Radio 7 previously and it blew my mind when I first heard it! This sort of unabridged reading is what makes me so attuned to what The 7th Dimension is up to. If you listen to no other BBC Radio production this year listen to this one!
Here’s a teaser: Leon is a former coma victim, who has gone experimental medical treatment to repair the massive trauma his brain recieved after he was trapped under ice for more than an hour. He’s regained consciousness, found he has all of his faculties back and a whole lot more. In the tradition of Daniel Keyes’ Flowers For Algernon. It was originally published in “Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine” in 1991.
Understand
By Ted Chiang; Read by Rashan Stone
4 half-hour segments – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
BROADCASTER: BBC Radio 7
AIRING: Saturdays for four weeks @ 6pm (repeats 12am) UK Time
This will be available via the Listen Again service shortly after it airs.
Our UK correspondent codenamed “Roy” writes:
“Just spotted an item in the latest Radio Times that might be of interest to at least a section of the SFFAudio audience…….
Star Trek At 40 – Where No-One Has Gone Before
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 2
Broadcast: Tuesday October 3rd – 20:30-21:30
Roy sez: “I don’t suppose this will be the only Star Trek anniversary documentary and it remains to be seen if this will have any unique insights, but I for one will be tuned in. It will likely be available via ‘listen again‘ for a week or so, but archiving of R2 is not perhaps as comprehensive as other BBC stations.”
And over on Radio 4:
Tomorrow, Today!
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: Friday October 6th – 11:30-12:00
A new four part comedy series, a spoof on life in the BBC’s Light Entertainment Unit: A BBC Producer in 1961 struggles to make a radio soap set in the unimaginably futuristic world of 2006.
Roy sez: “Much of the BBC’s radio comedy output has been poorly received by both critics & listeners over the last few years so I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything on the scale of Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, but the cast looks pretty high-powered (Peter Bowles, Cheryl Campbell and John Fortune amongst other British stalwarts) so I live in hope.”
We do to. Thanks Roy!
Paul S. Jenkins, of The Rev-Up Review podcast fame, has created a Science Fiction podcast novel andthe first five episodes are available now at Podiobooks.com. It’s called The Plitone Revisionist. Here’s the description…
Will Captain Paola Mackie, independent space courier, thrown out of her home ten years previously, escape the unsavory clutches of the man who thinks she can lead him to the notorious Revisionist mothership secretly orbiting within the Lutrana system and plotting to destabilize its economy, its culture, its very way of life?
Will Paola be reconciled with her estranged and aged father before it’s too late for him to pass on his onerous legacy to her? And will she finally get it together with Nantuke Orlis, the Revisionist President’s enigmatic scout?
The Plitone Revisionist is a fast-paced, sexy science-fiction thriller that will keep you enthralled to the end — and beyond.
It sounds cool! Way to go Paul!
posted by Jesse Willis
Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column podcast has a new interview with Charles Stross. Rick writes: “We covered all the high points that I suspect listeners will want to hear; space opera, economic genre fiction, gender bending and everything from the status of children in so-called Victorian London to Napoleonic space battles over far-flung planets, from the Cory Doctorow-like lead character of Accelerando to the status of children in so-called Victorian England.”
Click to download the MP3 direct!
posted by Jesse Willis