An SFFaudio reader, Jason S., tells us that he has been enjoying the latest drama on BBC Radio 7‘s The 7th Dimension. The show is called Ghost Zone and is an original series produced for BBC7. All five parts of the series are still available, but only for a short time, through the “Listen Again” service. Click on over to check it out!
posted by Jesse Willis
The Time Traveler Show podcast #2 is LIVE from the future! In this episode the eponymous Time Traveler waxes nostalgic for his favorite old time podcasts; Dragon Page Cover-To-Cover, Escape Pod, and Spaceship Radio. Even better, podcast #2 has two complete and unabridged stories from the February 1957 issue of The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction! First up is a short story, The Inferlab Project by G.C. Edmondson (read by Terry Lenz). Next is a flash fiction story called Expedition by the legendary Fredric Brown (read by The Time Traveler himself). You can read the complete show notes HERE or download the show HERE.
Better yet, subscribe using this feed:
http://www.timetravelershow.com/shows/feed.xml
It’s been a little while since we last mentioned James Patrick Kelly’s Free Reads podcast. Too long in fact. I blame this on my iTunes XML subscription, which broke. After waiting too long for the next installment from this Hugo award-winning author, I finally realized this, and re-subscribed. When I did, I was delighted to discover that Jim had released a three part audio adaptation of a one-woman play based on his short story “Breakaway, Backdown”. The story first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in June of 1996.
Breakaway, Backdown the play, had several productions. In February 2006, Jim was able to capture an excellent one in sound. This is the New Hampshire Theatre Project production, starring Lisa Richardson and directed by Genevieve Aichele. Here are the details…
Breakaway, Backdown
Adapted for the stage, from a story by James Patrick Kelly; Performed by Lisa Richardson
3 MP3 Files – 35 Minutes 54 Seconds – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Download: | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
Breakaway, Backdown“It’s the future, and living in space is no laughing matter. It’s hard work, and hazardous to your health, cutting life expectancy by 40 to 50 years. What kind of person would give up 40 to 50 years for the adventure of breaking away from Earth? Not Cleo. She tried desperately to break away, to start a new life in space, but failed. She backed down.”
The OTR Plot Spot has, in honour of Canada Day (July 1st) posted three retro radio dramas. The first is one segment of a WWII era series called Nazi Eyes On Canada which you can read the review for HERE. The second and third are two tales from the 1980s. One is from the series Nightfall and is called “Future Fear” and the other is from the series Vanishing Point with a story entitled “Meteor.” You can click on over to the The OTR Plot Spot’s Listening Booth HERE to grab the MP3s.
And we wish a happy, belated, Canada Day to Canadians from all nations.
J.C. Hutchins‘ podiobook 7th Son, Book One: Descent is doing a clever crossover with Scott Sigler‘s lastest podcast novel Infection. This is the first time in the podcast history where two fiction podcasts have shared scenes! I’d guess that a mutual cross-pollination of listeners is the general idea but J.C. informs me there’ll be some rewards for some careful listeners of both shows…
To participate, you must listen to both novels and deduce the six “cross-over scenes” – there are three in Sigler’s, and three in Hutchins’. Prizes include…
To play, subscribe to both podcasts, read the rules for the contest, listen, deduce and win!
A Scanner Darkly
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Paul Giamatti
8 CDs – Approx. 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 073932392X
Themes: / Science Fiction / Drugs / Consciousness / Identity / Paranoia / Law Enforcement /
“I myself? I am not a character in this novel, I am the novel.”
-Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly
Bob Arctor is the owner of a ramshackle Orange County, California bungalow that houses a small group of drug users. The police think Bob is a dealer in the dangerously addictive drug called Substance-D but Bob really isn’t. Or is he? Fred thinks so, Fred is a deep-cover police agent assigned to surveil Bob’s every move by means of holoscanners and upclose undercover investigation – but Fred’s job is made more difficult because it requires him to take Substance-D, the effects of which have been to gradually split his brain into two very distinct and mutually combative conciousnesses. Fred schizm is so bad that he now doesn’t realize that he is also Bob Arctor and that he has in fact been narcing on himself! Fred/Bob’s only hope is to convince his/their dealer, a druggie named Donna, to get him to the source of Substance-D. Yep it is another typical Dickian plot, the downtrodden protagonist/s finds him/themselves at odds with complicated plot, which while not specifically aimed against him, is something in which he/they have become inadvertently entangled. Unfortunately when survival is the object of the game, Dick’s poor characters don’t know that doubling-down only multiplies the jeopardy by a factor of two.
Dick was no stranger to paranoid drug fantasies. Back in 1972 with his fourth marriage in ruins, an unsolved burglary in his Marin County home and a serious amphetamine addiction Dick travelled to Vancouver, British Columbia to be Guest of Honor at V-Con. After delivering a landmark speech he attempted suicide. Desperate for help, Dick begged and gained entrance to an exclusive heroin addiction treatment center called X-Kalay. This despite the fact he wasn’t addicted to heroin. When he eventually retuned to California he started work on a new novel. A Scanner Darkly was the result. Now 33 years later Dick’s novel has been adapted for audio as a result of the new film version. The good news is, no matter what you think of the film you’ll dig the audiobook. Despite what mayu sound like a downer, you’ll dig this book, A Scanner Darkly has some of the funniest scenes in all of Science Fiction. One section about a suicide gone wrong showcases Dick’s absurdist intellect… “[Charles Freck] spent several days deciding on the artifacts [that would be found by the archaeologists who discovered his dead body]….He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card.” Even better, the ending is masterful, giving up the same Science Fiction satisfaction as did his Hugo winning The Man In The High Castle.
Actor Paul Giamatti (who had a supporting role in the film version of PKD’s Paycheck) was the perfect choice to read A Scanner Darkly. Giamatti’s on-screen characters only hint at his range and it took this audiobook to showcase all that talent. This is an excellent performance, Giamatti has said that Steve Bucemi should have been cast in the Tom Cruise role of the Minority Report film but I’m thinking it should have been Giamatti. His sympathetic portrayal of these drugged-out hippies and drugged-up cops makes this Random House’s A Scanner Darkly the definitive reading of a Dick novel. Giamatti ably gives distinction to the cast of losers and even carries off the German sequences without a hitch. What blows me away about this production is that Giamatti had expresed interest* in being in the Linklater film version of the same name, Giamatti has stated in multiple interviews that he is a fan of PKD’s work. Giamatti has even been approached to play PKD in a film adaptation of Dick’s life! That’d be a hoot.
Two Seeing Ear Theater alumni, Brian Smith and John Colluci, produced and directed Giamatti’s performance. The audiobook also includes intro music and the complete coda; a list by Dick of many of his closest friends who died or were severely damaged by drug use. I heartily endorse this unabridged audiobook and we in our influenced wisdom have seen fit to grant it a hallowed place in the hall of SFFaudio Essentials. This is a book to be long remembered and a reading never to be forgotten.
*Entertainment Weekly (issue #884/885 Summer 2006 Double Issue – page 117)
Posted by Jesse Willis