Mike Walker’s H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence is a 43 minute dramatized biographical broadcast that aired on BBC Radio 4 on September 10, 1983.
There’s currently a direct download of an MP3 available HERE and it’s also available over on RadioArchive.cc via |TORRENT|.
Directed by Shaun McLaughlin
Cast:
Narrator … Hugh Burden
Lovecraft’s letters … David March
Excerpts from the stories … Blayne Fairman and Garrard Green
The latest Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter serial has just wrapped. If you’re young enough you probably won’t appreciate all the historical and mythological detail that’s in these terrific adventure stories – but they’re definitely in there! Previous adventures have seen Jake and crew visiting lush jungles or dessicated deserts – this one sees them flying up to THE ROOF OF THE WORLD!!!
Here’s the official description:
Jake is summoned to Massachusetts to visit an aging former professor. Soon the gang is involved in a quest for a magic flower that only grows in a remote part of Tibet. Others also hunt the secrets held within that mysterious land, but for a more nefarious purpose. What is the price for immortality, and does the fabled lost city of Shambala really exist? Weird tales abound in the land known as The Roof of the World!
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3|
I guess I’m starting on another Dick kick. I’ve been thinking, and reading a lot of his short stories lately. Thanks in part to the two Blackstone Audio audiobook collections entitled The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick.
I’ve read Colony maybe a half dozen times over the years, I still find it utterly readable.
First published in the June 1953 issue of Galaxy magazine, Colony is a cleverly plotted one-note tale of paranoia and identity.
Robert Silverberg’s wonderful 1987 essay on it, entitled Colony: I Trusted The Rug Completely, points out how very far ahead of the reader Dick is. Dick indulges our expectations, teases us with a foreshadowing doom and still pulls off the unexpected twist ending. The story is also notable for inventing a couple of minor tropes; namely the Robot Door and the Robot Psyche Tester (both with emotive personalities rivaling that of their fellow human protagonists).
This is one of the few PKD tales given the old radio drama treatment.
Unfortunately, there were a few detrimental changes made to the 1956 X-Minus One adaptation. Maybe it’s the audio drama format that neutralizes much of the humor in Colony. It certainly pacifies some of the absurdities. And the 1950s script adds in an unnecessary bit of sexual harassment that’s absent from the original 1950s text (perhaps so as to have it better fit into the decade). On the whole, however, X-Minus One’s adaptation is still well worth listening to. It retains much of the dialogue and the anti-consumerism message, and it also retains the excellent and story-making ending.
Dick wrote, in regards to this story:
The ultimate paranoia is not when everyone is against you, it’s when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me”, it would be “My boss’ phone is plotting against me”.
Here’s the play:
X-Minus One – Colony
Based on the story by Philip K. Dick; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: October 10, 1956 Colony tells the story of an advance research team scouting the planet Blue in the Aldebaran star system to assess what may be required to render this newly discovered planet habitable. Strange occurrences soon plague members of the scout team, as they are attacked by inanimate objects with the unmistakable intent to kill. It is soon discovered that some force, or entities unknown, have the power to mimic any conceivable object, rendering even seemingly benign items such as a belt, a bath towel, or even a weapon such as a blaster, instruments of murder.
Here are the original illustrations from Galaxy:
And here are the images and the audio combined into a YouTube video:
Sci-Fi Radio Theater is “the brain child of international internet man Charles Davis and opera singer Josie Corichi.” Here’s their mission statement:
To produce high quality original fiction radio play podcasts that fall within the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres.
Why Sci-Fi? Because it’s what we like and it’s what we know. At SFRT we are huge personal fans of this genre of story telling and we feel that we have more to offer to the science fiction community than being observers. Our drive is to be active participants in the creation of original Science Fiction stories.
Why a Radio Play Podcast? Because the greatest imagery that exists is within your own mind. We believe that by delivering these stories in an audio format we allow the listener to be taken to a far deeper and more complex world than we would be able to offer through video.
Another reason is the freedom of length. One of the joys of a science fiction story is the depth and detail you are able to get into. By presenting these radio plays as a podcast we are able to tell a story as long as it naturally takes to tell.
The only question I have is whether the narrator is intentionally doing a Bill Hollweg impersonation.
So far, audiobook publishers have been going to their usual sources to produce audio theater: Commercial voice-over studios, Industrial/educational studios or the publishers themselves. Frankly, the results are really mixed. These people aren’t audio theater people. They haven’t been listening and producing audio theater for years.
My prediction is that at some point pretty soon the audiobook publishers are going to get feedback from their listeners that there’s a whole ‘nother world of audio theater out there. It’s on community radio. It’s podcast. It’s handed back and forth on the Internet. It’s sounding better and better all the time.
Brad Lansky and the 4D-Verse
By J.D. Venne; Performed by a full cast
1.5 Hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Protophonic.net
Published: 2012
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Audio Drama / Dimensional space / Quantum entanglement / Artificial Intelligence /
Taking up where the previous Brad Lansky title ended, this drama has Brad and Alex exploring the 4D-Verse. They get split up while searching for MAMAI (an artificial intelligence), with Alex moving to a higher dimension while Brad figures how to get him back.
In a previous review I compared a Brad Lansky audio to Meatball Fulton’s Ruby series. This one comes from the same mold. It’s a aural feast from start to finish; among the richest audio you’ll hear. Another comparison leapt to mind this time: the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not only is the subject matter similar (hard SF involving alien beings), but the tone is similar. Just like Kubrick lingered on shots to allow the viewer time to experience awe, Dieter Zimmerman and crew linger with sound that creates images in the listener’s mind. This is very much a cooperative experience. Break out your best headphones and be prepared to provide imagination.
Lansky: I can’t wait to check out these places!
Alex: What? Are you crazy?
Lansky: No, just an explorer who doesn’t run away when he finds something interesting!
Dieter Zimmerman, one of the creative people behind the Brad Lansky series, was recently interviewed on Fred Greenhalgh’s Radio Drama Revival podcast. Find that episode |HERE|.
All of the Brad Lansky titles can be purchased at Protophonic.net!
Mike Walker’s H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence is a 43 minute dramatized biographical broadcast that aired on BBC Radio 4 on September 10, 1983. 
X-Minus One – Colony
