Cat Women Of The Moon
Presented by Sarah Hall
2 Part Broadcast – Approx. 1 Hour [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: August 30, 2011 and September 6, 2011 11.30am-12.00 UK Time Cat Women Of The Moon was a Fifties film that followed a popular motif in science fiction; an all-women society surviving without men. In the first of these two programmes, Sarah Hall looks at how science fiction has been used to examine relationships between the sexes – and in some cases, more than two sexes. In many novels the exploration of sexuality is unconventional and experimental. Some societies have more than one sex; in others, people can change sex at will. In other science fiction worlds, people form relationships with aliens or they might have sex with artificial life forms. The programme includes contributions from leading science fiction writers including Iain Banks, China Mieville and Nicola Griffith. The programme is presented by the Sarah Hall, author of The Carhullan Army and The Electric Michelangelo, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Producer by Nicola Swords
I did a search and it appears that the complete 1954 film of Cat Women Of The Moon is in the public domain. Even better it is easily available for download from the Internet Archive |CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON| in a variety of formats (though there isn’t a 3D version as far as I could see). Here’s the |AVI|.
Lets assume that each medium offers its own best format. If that’s true, then on TV it is the limited series programme that is the least respected and most underrated. Take The Shadow Line, a BBC 2 television series, created written and directed by Hugo Blick and starring Chewitel Ejifor. The UK paper reviewers seem to want to compare it to The Wire or the Danish series The Killing. But that’s wrong. The Shadow Line isn’t much like either. Really it is just good old fashioned thriller, something the BBC TV has done before. It’s more in the vein of House Of Cards or Edge Of Darkness. But this time it comes primarily from a single creator’s vision. This give it an extended metaphor, the “shadow line” of the title, a thread that pops up in new ways in each episode. It is both a point of dialogue and a mass of ideas. Here’s the show’s premise:
A homicide detective, with partial amnesia, returns to the job to investigate the murder of a recently pardoned heroin importer.
The Shadow Line was aimed high, and it achieved many of its goals. Where it works, it works stunningly well. Where it fails, it fails in small ways, and then moves on. In the end it is an utterly noir thriller, a highly stylized television poem and meditation on life, death and society. The methodically slow paced, cryptic, surprisingly ruthless plot delivers its message in a persuasive form, as a limited series. Most refreshing of all, it does not play, as seems does most TV, to the stupidest person in the room. One commenter put it succinctly:
“This series reminds me why it is worth paying a licence fee. Only the BBC makes drama as good as this. Drama that doesn’t treat the audience like morons.”
A sheer joy from start to finish, even with the odd line of clunky dialogue. It was crisp and weird, and the odd, crystal-clear delivery and stylised speech of the characters, from the police to the gangsters, made it stand out from a host of dirge that has been on the screens lately. Yes it had flaws, but the complexity, the suspense, the tension, the labyrinthine plotting and the odd-ball cast of characters made it the best British drama for years.
Some stories adapt better than others. I think a straight narration of an audiobook of Daniel Keyes’ novelette of Flowers For Algernon would be an easy and natural way to experience most of the story’s power. Sadly, that’s still yet to happen.
The original story, of course, makes great use of spelling mistakes which could not fully be illustrated in any audiobook narration, but a straight single voiced reading of the story still provides the main thrust of the tale’s dramatic technique; we get the grammar of the main character, his account of what his doctors ask of him, and we get what his”friends” think of him.
The film and television versions that I’ve seen have, with video’s visually orientation, have all eliminated much of the very valuable power inherent in the epistolary.
Indeed, as editor James Gunn puts it in his introductory essay to Flowers For Algernon, found in The Road To Science Fiction #4 – From Here To Forever, “Part of the appeal of the story is the comparison of the reader’s knowledge to Charlie’s, and the ability to see more in Charlie’s reports than he knows is there.” Once you actually get out of Charlie’s head you lose his perspective and lose the unreliable narration.
So I was thinking about all of this as I was downloading a 1991 BBC Radio dramatization, via torrent, from RadioArchive.cc.
I was pretty skeptical of any radio dramatization’s ability to convey the story’s full power. Now though, after listening, I’ve come away convinced that it retains much of its power, and offers up a very innovative use of the aural medium. It is actually quite a tricky balance but it totally worked in the way it is put together.
Bert Coules, who adapted the novelette had this to say:
“In 1991 the BBC asked me to suggest some SF material for a short season. I drew them up a list and at the same time put in a claim to do Flowers, which I think is a tremendous story: it completed knocked me out when I first read it as a kid. I was delighted when I got the commission.”
In Flowers For Algernon the central character keeps a diary – in fact, the entire story consists of his diary entries. I changed the diary into a series of audio recordings made on a personal tape machine, and interspersed them with dramatised scenes which are mentioned or implied in Daniel Keyes’ original but which don’t actually appear in the story at all. When you’re writing new material like that, the challenge of course is to keep it consistent with the stuff that does come more or less straight from the book.
Flowers posed a particular problem: if you’ve read the story you’ll know that Charlie Gordon, the central character, goes through some huge changes which are brilliantly depicted by the way his diary entries are written: as he develops, so does his spelling, grammar and punctuation. I had to find a spoken way of reflecting the same journey.”
I believe he’s done a fantastic job with it.
Incidentally, the other plays in that series included: Brave New World, Kaleidoscope, The Midas Plague, The Chrysalids, Space Ache, Who Goes There? and Tiger! Tiger!.
So, like I was saying, if you haven’t read the original novelette, I recommend you experience the story that way, as a piece of text, first. If you have read it, then I heartily recommend you try the audio drama. It’s a wonderful adaptation with excellent acting and a highly innovative use of the microphone.
Flowers For Algernon
Adapted from the novelette by Daniel Keyes; Dramatized by Bert Coules; Performed by a full cast
Approx. 59 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: September 5, 1991
Source: RadioArchive.cc The play featured as part of a series of forward-looking productions collectively named “The shape of things to come.” Tom Courtenay stars as the intellectually challenged Charlie, who as part of an experiment is offered a “cure” for his low IQ…..First published in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction’s April 1959 issue.
Cast: Tom Courtenay ………………… Charlie
Algernon …………………….. Himself
Joanna Myers …………….. Miss Kinnian
Barrie Cookson …………….. Dr Strauss
Ronald Herdman ………………. Dr Nemur
Clarence Smith ………………….. Bert
Nigel Carrington …………. Joe/Donnegan
Auriol Smith ………….. Mrs Flynn/Ellen
Alan Barker …………. Frank/Sherrinford
Adapted by Bert Coules
Produced by Matthew Walters
Recorded Books produced an unabridged edition of the novelized expansion of the story:
Flowers For Algernon
By Daniel Keyes; Read by Jeff Woodman
8 CDs – Approx. 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 1998
ISBN: 9781402550348 Charlie Gordon knows that he isn’t very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie’s brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon. Meanwhile, each day Charlie keeps a diary of what is happening to him. This is his poignant record of the startling changes in his mind and his life. Flowers for Algernon was first published as a short story, but soon received wide acclaim as it appeared in anthologies, as a television special, and as an award-winning motion picture, Charly. In its final, expanded form, this haunting story won the Nebula Award for the Best Novel of the Year. Through Jeff Woodman’s narration, it now becomes an unforgettable audio experience.
As mentioned earlier there have been four major video adaptations of Flowers For Algernon (three television movies and on theatrical film): Des Fleurs Pour Algernon (a 2006 French TV movie), Flowers For Algernon (a U.S. TV movie from 2000), Charly (a U.S. theatrical release from 1968) and a live broadcast teleplay that aired as a part of The United States Steel Hour in 1961 (it was titled The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon).
And I’m afraid there was also a frightening looking musical theater version:
Audio dramatist Marty Ross recommends we check out a new audio drama producer called 3D Horror Fi. Sez Marty:
I’m a professional writer of audio drama, specializing in the genres of SF and horror. Much of this has been for BBC Radio (the serials GHOST ZONE and CATCH MY BREATH, the anthology series THE DARKER SIDE OF THE BORDER.) Most recently, I’ve had a couple of Doctor Who audio books produced by Big Finish, NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS and Lurkers At Sunlight’s Edge (which is basically Doctor Who meets H.P. Lovecraft!). But what I’m really seeking to plug here is my play BLOOD & STONE, which has recently been produced by 3DHorrorFi, a new web-based company specializing in horror and SF audio, using seriously state of the art technology. My play for them is gothic horror: you may be acquainted with the true story of Elizabeth Báthory, the Hungarian ‘bloody countess’ who bathed in the blood of innumerable servant girls to preserve her own beauty and was then punished by being locked away in a tower of her own castle. Well, my play imagines what would have happened if she had escaped, after convincing a seemingly naive servant girl of her innocence. I think it’s really good and this company deserves all the encouragement they can get – they’re just starting out, but with a little help, they could become major producers in the horror/SF field. If you check their website, www.3Dhorrorfi.com you could investigate what they offer: their other plays (not written by me) are good too, including the best adaptation of The Cask of Amontillado I’ve ever heard.
Thanks Marty! Yep, that sounds like some stuff we are interested in!
The SFFaudio Podcast #115 – Scott and Jesse talk to Anne Frid de Vries of the Anne Is A Man blog for a talk about podcasts and podcasting.
Talked about on today’s show:
Anne rhymes with manna, SFFaudio Podcast #053, finding time to review podcasts, listening ideas, recruiting blog readers to be blog contributors, working with WordPress, this Anne needs 3G, university courses, iTunes U, Yale, Joanne B. Freeman, subscribe to iTunes U programmes as podcast, University of California, Berkeley, Anne does the detective work for his readers, BBC World Service: Witness, Fermat’s Last Theorem, Luke Burrage, The Tobolowsky Files, Groundhog Day, HuffDuffer, use your DropBox public folder to HuffDuff your audio files, this doesn’t fit the Wikipedia definition of podcast, podcasts are not radio, retweeting and re-retweeting, using Google Reader as a podcatcher, Dutch Treat (a podcast about the audiobooks of Elmore Leonard), sooo nichey, radio is about scarcity, paper publishing and ebooks, there’s a need for a new podcasting snipper software, drag and drop and trim and label and tag online, we need an audio search engine, speech to text, YouTube’s transcribe beta feature, MIT, speech recognition, podscope.com, trend in podcasting (blogs adding podcasts), iO9.com, Rivets And Trees, are podcasts just portable blogs?, podcasts about podcasts are the best podcasts, what makes a podcast good?, BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg, On Being (aka Speaking Of Faith), CBC Radio One, Spark, Spark Plus, Eric S. Rabkin, Robert J. Sawyer, using podcast medium to enhance radio shows, Rachel Remen, prep and post production, live podcasts vs. scripted podcasts, “Interesting Stuff About History” pisses Anne off, Europe From Its Origins, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, Julie Davis’ Forgotten Classics, Genesis, what do you do with footnotes?, CBC Ideas, 104 Pall Mall (the Reform Club), Phileas Fogg, Around The World In Eighty Days, Ideas is too pretentious, Entitled Opinions, a very insightful slice into English history, putting in a bad episode in a podcast feed can hurt your podcast (or ours), LibriVox, Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale Of Singular Happenings by Dame Rose Macaulay, The League Of Nations, The United Nations, iTunes is not where you find podcasts anymore?, HBO’s Realtime with Bill Maher podcast, CBS’ 60 Minutes podcast, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, can podcasting do for TV what it did for radio?, NBC’s Meet the Press, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, The Ricky Gervais Show, how do you listen to podcasts? TWiT, how many podcasts exist?, can you hurt students by recording their classes? – consensus no, smartpens (like the Livescribe) should be hacked to podcast, podcast editing app, people get really hung up on video, Fr. Roderick‘s Catholic Insider podcast, the intimacy of audio podcasts, sound seeing tours, ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone, Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Brief History Of Mathematics, CBC Radio One’s Tapestry, thank you to all the Australian taxpayers, why is philosophy so prevalent in podcasting, A Partially Examined Life, Philosophy Bites, The History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, CJSW’s Today In Canadian History, Bob Packett’s History According To Bob‘s endless Civil War series, Viking armor, The Conquest Of Mexico, Matt’s Today In History, The Tunguska Event, Medieval Commune, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Death Throes Of The Republic VI, The Ghosts Of The Ostfront, Dan Carlin has perfected the art of the monologue, Common Sense with Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, blitz shows, James Burke, Gwynne Dyer, New Books In History podcast, the New Books Network, New Books In Public Policy, iTunes fail, I like podcasts about books, Marshall Poe interview with Christopher Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania From The Roman Empire To The Third Reich, The Origins Of Political Order, BIG HISTORY, Anne needs funding, The Do It Yourself Scholar, podcast directories are dead (Podcast Pickle), The Podcast Place, soccer, Tour de France, big media is dropping podcasts in favour of iPod and Android apps, Lance Armstrong, Queen Elizabeth II, “there’s something to be said for a constitutional monarchy in which the monarchy doesn’t live in the country.”
Ted Chiang, perhaps the greatest living Science Fiction writer, has very little of his excellent fiction (a dozen stories, novellettes and novellas) available in the audio format. That is a bitter, bitter shame. It is my hope this post will help change that.
Lamentably, no Ted Chiang audiobooks have ever been commercially released. There are, however, several podcast sources for readings and the BBC commissioned an unabridged recording of Understand (which has been occasionally rebroadcast).
Below is a chart detailing all of Ted Chiang’s published fiction.
Cat Women Of The Moon
Lets assume that each medium offers its own best format. If that’s true, then on TV it is the limited series programme that is the least respected and most underrated. Take 
– Tower Of Babylon – Omni, November 1990 – novelette
– Understand – Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1991 – BBC Radio 7 – occasionally rebroadcast on BBCR7, read by Rashan Stone, novelette