Audio Drama – Page 31

The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant

SFFaudio Online Audio

Guy de Maupassant’s short story, La Main Écorchée (which translates to The Flayed Hand), is a creepy supernatural tale of horror. The title delivers exactly what you might suspect – a gruesome story that doesn’t end at all well for one of the characters. More surprising to me, as compared to W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw, are the characters.

They were not what I expected at all. The story played itself out like a black comedy. Then, in researching the story I learned that in his teens Maupassant was shown, by the poet Algernon Swinburne, a mummified hand!

The Flayed Hand
By Guy de Maupassant; Read by Alan Winterrowd
1 |MP3| – Approx. [UNABRIDGED]
Published: Boomcoach’s Audiobooks
Published: 2009
|ETEXT|
Published under the pseudonym Joseph Prunier, this was Guy de Maupassant’s first short story. It appeared in L’Almanach Lorrai in 1875.

The Weird Circle Weird Circle – The Hand
Based on The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant; Perfomed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: MBS, NBC, ABC
Broadcast: October 14, 1943 or December 19, 1943
A severed hand in a trophy room gets its revenge on the one who cut it off.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater – #0080 – The Hand
Based on the short story The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant; Adapted by Ian Martin; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3|- Approx. [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS
Broadcast: April 24, 1974
Source: CBSRMT.com
A postal surprise in the form of a human hand leaves a man convinced of its apocalyptic portents.
Cast:
Mildred Clinton
Ian Martin
Alexander Scourby
Guy Sorel

Here is the splash page from the Classics Illustrated comics adaptation:

Classics Illustrated - The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant

Incidentally, one of my favourite Michael Caine movies, the schlocky 1981 film, The Hand, was probably indirectly inspired by The Flayed Hand:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter – The Hyborean Gate – in Lego

SFFaudio Online Audio

Inspired by the first Jake Sampson serial and the recent fan art posted to the Jake Sampson blog, I’ve constructed my own Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter playset out of Lego!

Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter – The Hyborean Gate
By Paul Mannering and Mark Kalita; Perfomed by a full cast
5 MP3s – Approx. 62 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: BrokenSea Audio Productions
Podcast: September 2007
Jake Sampson is called to Cross Plains, Texas by a small-time writer to investigate the appearance of a ferocious creature from a world believed to be fictitious.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://brokensea.com/jakesampson/feed/

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Although it hasn’t been specified in the show so far I imagine that Jake Sampson purchased a prototype of the Grumman Goose. The period is almost exactly right for it, and Sampson is just the sort of wealthy American customer that actually commissioned the Goose’s creation. Based on that, and my enduring affection for this long running adventure series, I’ve been building a Lego version of the Jake Sampson airplane. Here they are: Texas Holdum, Jake Sampson, and Lucy Carter atop a Grumman Goose:

Texas Holdem, Jake Sampson, and Lucy Carter atop a Grumman Goose

And here’s an apocryphal scene from the first serial, The Hyborean Gate. Passionate listeners will of course be aware that the airplane in that story was actually WWI-era biplane and not a Grumman Goose:

The Hyborean Monster rages as Jake and Lucy escape to the Grumman Goose

Jake Sampson and Lucy Carter escape:

Jake Sampson and Lucy Carter escape!

“Wherever there is strange…”:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Country Of The Blind by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

TITLE - The Country O fThe Blind by H.G. Wells

Here’s the editorial introduction to The Country Of The Blind from Amazing Stories, December 1927:

We take many things for granted in this world. We accept many preconceived notions about an amazing large number of things, which, like as not prove to be amazingly wrong. If any story ever proved this point, The Country Of The Blind certainly is that one. The author exploits the well-known saying , “In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” Indeed that statement is most easy to believe and all logic should point that way. In reading this interesting story, you will soon find out how far wrong even seemingly good logic can be.

The above, presumably written by Hugo Gernsback himself, ably covers most of what I thought to say about this story. But that didn’t quite stop me.

This audiobook was my first time reading this story. I’m starting to think that H.G. Wells always wrote allegory and fable. The main character in this piece, and all Wellsian fiction, is completely unlikeable. The society he creates is unlikeable too. What does it say about me that I appreciated the story, even if I didn’t like it? What does it say about modern SF that stories with unlikeable protagonists in unlikeable societies are so few?

I guess I appreciated The Country Of The Blind because there’s a very deep skepticism to it, about human nature, about society but most importantly about the claim of wisdom. Man is a foolish, foolish beast. His only guide to the future is what has come before. But we’re always tempted to take some distilled bit of wisdom and use it that to do our thinking for us. What does it say for us when for every proverb we use to rationalize a decsion there is another proverb that could have supported an alternate?

Better, perhaps, to reject proverb entirely.

The Country Of The Blind
By H.G. Wells; Read by llite (aka George Cooney)
1 |MP3| – Approx. 61 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 17, 2010
While attempting to summit the unconquered crest of Parascotopetl, a mountaineer named Nunez slips and falls down the far side of the mountain. At the end of his descent, down a snow-slope in the mountain’s shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Nunez has discovered the fabled Country of the Blind. The valley had been a haven for settlers fleeing the tyranny of Spanish rulers until an earthquake reshaped the surrounding mountains and cut it off forever from future explorers. The isolated community prospered over the years despite a disease that struck them all blind. As the blindness slowly spread over the generations and the last sighted villager had died, the community had fully adapted to life without vision. First published in the April 1904 issue of the Strand Magazine.

The Country Of The Blind - illustrated by Frank R. Paul

Included below are all the audio drama adaptations I could find. I recommend the episode of Escape with Paul Frees.

Escape – The Country Of The Blind
Based on the story by H.G. Wells; Adapted by John Dunkel; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: November 26, 1947
produced/directed by William N. Robson
Cast:
William Conrad … Ibarra
Paul Frees … Nunez
Produced/directed by William N. Robson

Escape – The Country Of The Blind
Based on the story by H.G. Wells; Adapted by John Dunkel; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: June 20, 1948
Cast:
Berry Kroeger … Ibarra
Paul Frees … Nunez

Escape – The Country Of The Blind
Based on the story by H.G. Wells; Adapted by John Dunkel; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: March 20, 1949.
Cast:
Berry Kroeger … Ibarra
Edmund O’Brien … Nunez
Produced/directed by Norman MacDonnell

Suspense – The Country Of The Blind
Based on the story by H.G. Wells; Adapted by John Dunkel and William N. Robson; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: October 27, 1957
Cast:
Raymond Burr

Suspense – The Country Of The Blind
Based on the story by H.G. Wells; Adapted by John Dunkel and William N. Robson; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: CBS Radio
Broadcast: December 13, 1959
Cast:
Bernard Grant
Produced/directed by Paul Roberts

Favorite Story – Strange Valley
Based on The Country Of The Blind by H.G. Wells; Adapted by ???; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: KFI
Broadcast: April 23, 1949
Cast:
Ronald Coleman … Nunez

[via Escape-Suspense.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4 Extra: Seven Blake’s 7 RADIO DRAMAS to air

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 4 Extra (the station formerly known as BBC Radio 7) will be airing the excellent Blake’s 7 series of prequel adventures over four consecutive Saturdays starting on Xmas eve. From the Blake’s 7 blog:

The BBC Radio 4 Extra season includes the premiere of ESCAPE VELOCITY on Saturday 24 December at 18:00hrs. Featuring ZOË TAPPER, JASON MERRELLS and TRACY-ANN OBERMAN, ESCAPE VELOCITY is scripted by award-winning writer/novelist, James Swallow. Other audio drama premieres included FLAG AND FLAME, written by Marc Platt, and POINT OF NO RETURN, also written by James Swallow.

BLAKE’S 7: THE EARLY YEARS is a thrilling new prequel series of audio stories that explores the origins of key BLAKE’S 7 characters before they met rebel leader Roj Blake, taking you back to where the seeds of rebellion against the Federation really began.

These re-imagined BLAKE’S 7 audio adventures have been described by news-stand magazine SciFiNow as “… a bold and revitalising addition to the Blake’s 7 story” and by SFFAudio.com as “morally complex, deeply noir.”

The audio dramas feature well-known names including COLIN SALMON (Doctor Who), KEELEY HAWES (Ashes To Ashes), BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH (Sherlock), GEOFFREY PALMER (As Time Goes By), MICHAEL COCHRANE (Sharpe) and ALISTAIR LOCK as Zen.

Here are the broadcast dates and (U.K.) times: SFFaudio Essential

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Blake’s 7 The Early Years – Jenna: The Trial / The Dust Run (Vol. 1.5)

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Blake’s 7 The Early Years – Jenna: The Trial / The Dust Run (Vol. 1.5)
By Simon Guerrier; Performed by a full cast
1 CD – Approx. 70 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: B7 Productions
Published: November 30, 2009
ISBN: 9781906577087
Themes: / Science Fiction / Galactic Empire / Dystopia /

The Dust Run – Jenna Stannis has grown up as a spacer, where the normal rules don’t apply. No school, no police, no public imperatives – that’s still all to come. But the situation on Earth is changing and the effects are slowly being felt throughout the Vega system. It’s going to mean trouble for a brash boy called Townsend – who Jenna doesn’t fancy at all. Soon Jenna and Townsend are competing in the Dust Run – racing shuttles through an asteroid field without using computers, making the complex calculations in their heads. It’s dangerous, fool-hardy and really good fun. But they’re playing for the highest of stakes…

The Trial – The election is going to change everything. A man called Roj Blake promises the voters new hope, an end to years of corruption. There are those who can’t let him be heard. But Jenna Stannis is determined to get his message out to the colonies. It’s been years since the Dust Run, and Jenna’s a changed woman. She’s left the Vega system far behind, using her exceptional piloting skills to carve out a life as a smuggler. Blake’s message could earn her a fortune – or cost her, her life.

This is the final two stories in the first Blake’s 7 The Early Years series. First up is The Dust Run. It starts with a framing story in which we see the cruelty of the Earth Federation up close. Under torture Jenna, a young woman, reveals everything about her truant past. Then, in the story proper, we meet her as a charming teen. She comes from an underemployed spacer family, has just a few friends but none of them are particularly trustworthy. For fun Jenna likes piloting shuttles at high speed through a region of space filled with a heavy concentration of particulates. It’s precisely her lightheartedness that sets Jenna up for a fall.

The Trial also uses the framing device but skips ahead in time to the events which lead to Jenna’s incarceration. The problem is that her interrogator also claims to be acting as her advocate! If Jenna is to have any chance of avoiding imprisonment on Cygnus Alpha she’ll have to shade the truth. This episode reminded me of the other great Orwellian episodes of serial SF (like Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Chain of Command” – in which Picard is tortured and Babylon 5‘s “Intersections In Real Time” – in which Sheridan is tortured). The darkness of Jenna Stannis’ Federation universe is equally Orwellian, but, as I’ve mentioned in other reviews of this series it has more than a touch of Brave New World in it too. This new Blake’s 7 series, like it’s TV predecessor, is an intelligent Science Fiction series that masquerades as consumable pop-culture “sci-fi”.

Carrie Dobro, who played a charismatic alien thief in the Babylon 5: A Call To Arms TV-movie and on the prematurely canceled Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade, stars as Jenna Stannis. Dobro has a star-level magnetism in both these productions. She’s sure of herself, a devious and clever power seeker, never fully in control, always seeking it, but at heart a sympathetic survivor. Simon Guerrier and Carrie Dobro have created a worthy back-story for Jenna Stannis. Highly recommended!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Blake’s 7: The Early Years: Zen: Escape Velocity

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Blake’s 7: The Early Years: Zen: Escape Velocity (Volume 2.1)
By James Swallow; Directed by Andrew Mark Sewell; Performed by a full cast
1 CD – Approx. 1 Hour [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: B7 Productions
Published: April 26, 2010
ISBN: 978190657709
Themes: / Science Fiction / Artificial Intelligence / Cloning / War / Aliens /

Based on Terry Nation’s seminal 70s science fiction TV series, The Early Years is a prequel series of audio stories that explores the origins of key Blake’s 7 characters prior to them meeting rebel leader Roj Blake. This latest entry to the ever-expanding series takes a new twist, concentrating on a character that doesn’t breathe or have any parents, the synthetic intelligence known only as Zen. When Roj Blake first stepped on board the mysterious, derelict alien spaceship Liberator, his every movement was monitored by the ship’s controlling intelligence, Zen Luckily, Blake and his rebel crew managed to gain the ‘confidence’ of this creation from an alien world and so he was able to use the Liberator in their quest for justice against the Federation. But the origins of Zen have remained a mystery, until now. What terrible catastrophe left the Liberator drifting and shattered? What drove the ship’s intelligence to murder its original crew? What dark secrets lie at the heart of this alien machine? And are Blake and his crew really safe on board the Liberator?

Often, you’ll want to know somebody’s back-story, and then later, when you actually get it – in a prequel story – you’ll find that it is far, far, far less interesting than whatever was going on in your imagination. For me, the years between 1980 and 1999 were ones filled with near-reverence for a fascinating character, the ultimate baddie: Darth Vader. But no amount of apologetics can possibly remove the sickly saccharine story of a nine-year-old Darth Vader filled with “a high concentration” of midichlorians. Yuck. And yet “prequel” is not always a dirty word. I don’t feel that way about The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and likewise the Blake’s 7 prequel stories (1.1 |READ OUR REVIEW|, v.1.2 & 1.3 |READ OUR REVIEW|, 1.4 |READ OUR REVIEW|). By far the most mysterious character in the original TV series was Zen, the artificial intelligence. Zen was pretty closed-circuit about its past, not revealing much over the two years it appeared in the series (1978 – 1980). In life Zen “projected a dour, non-committal personality” and would “reply to certain questions with the phrase ‘That information is not available.'” This left left open the possibility that Zen was hiding secrets or “secretly executing its own agenda.” In this magnificent audio drama we are given a genuinely interesting explanation as to why Zen was so very melancholic, why the ship was found crew-less, seemingly abandoned and drifting near Cygnus Alpha.

Zen: Escape Velocity clearly reveals the frightening truth about all of Zen’s character quirks and its cryptic answers from the TV series. But it also shows more. Back in 2008 I reviewed the Blake’s 7 – Audio Adventures boxed set |READ OUR REVIEW| – the first three episodes of the new B7 audio drama series. One detail found within that review was that Zen was, unlike the original series, suicidal at the time of its discovery. Listening to Zen: Escape Velocity you will discovery exactly why that was so.

Six actors, Zoë Tapper, Jason Merrells, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Alastair Lock, Sam Woodward and Pamela Banks play different members of the original crew of the Liberator (back when it was still called “Deep Space Vehicle 2” and when Zen was called “SHIP-MIND”). The story, told by a careful cross-cutting backwards and forwards in time, shows the original crew welcoming their new PILOT, Zoë Tapper, aboard DSV2. Strangely, she is having memory problems and needs shepherding by the ship’s doctor. As the crew takes its positions and readies themselves for battle, we learn about their fascinating society. This is wonderful social Science Fiction like nothing exactly I’ve read or seen or heard before!

Zen (SHIP-MIND) only used the first-person, singular personal pronoun (“I”) once on the television series – it is used multiple times in this production. Zoë Tapper (who appeared in another Terry Nation re-imagined series) and Jason Merrells (playing the doctor), are the central sympathetic heroes of Zen: Escape Velocity. Alastair Lock, who also acts as a post-producer, musician and sound effects man for the CD, portrays SHIP-MIND (Zen). Sounds are rich, deep and best experienced in a quiet room. The stereo effect and a good set-of headphones,as I used, will bring an immense visual experience that belies the fifty-six minute running time. A five minute “Bonus Music Track” (original to this episode) rounds out the disc.

Posted by Jesse Willis