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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

BBC Radio 4: Great Lives – Series 26 – Philip K Dick

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Great Lives programme, now in it’s 26th series, is a half hour biography show that explores the lives of “the greatest people who ever lived.” Host Matthew Parris interviews an eminent guest who argues for the magnetism of his or her historical hero.

And guess who is was profiled just the other day?

Philip K. Dick!!

Here’s the official description:

Actor Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon; The Queen; Midnight In Paris) champions the life of Philip K. Dick and explains why he had such a big influence on his recent production of Hamlet.

Michael first discovered Philip K. Dick through the film Blade Runner, and moved onto his short stories which got him thinking about science-fiction in a new way. Whilst reading about philosophy, quantum physics, and comparative mythology, it struck him how Dick was intuitively weaving narratives around all the most interesting elements that these fields were throwing up.

He talks about Philip K. Dick’s innate interest in multiples realities, and how they overlap with Sheen’s own family experiences of mental health issues. In fact the more he found out about him, the more he was drawn to this enigmatic writer.

The description fails to mention that SF scholar Roger Luckhurst is also in on the conversation. |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/greatlives/rss.xml

Producer: Toby Field.

[Thanks Dave!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: A Night With A Vampire – David Tennat reads stories by Calmet, Tolstoy, Maupassant, Freeman, Gautier

SFFaudio Online Audio

Last year The Book At Bedtime, BBC Radio 4’s evening book reading program, also had a collection of five short stories called A Night With A Vampire (you may have noticed I just posted about the sequel).

The first story in this collection of five vampire tales was written by a Benedictine Monk. It purports to be non-fiction (the author having surveyed Europe for real life eighteenth century stories in his book The Phantom World). The second story, by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (a Soviet SF writer with an asteroid named after him) may be the best of the bunch – it’s romantic and creepy. The third story, by Guy de Maupassant, well we did a whole show on that one, is extremely abridged with only about a quarter of the original text still present. Numbers four and five didn’t do much for me, but maybe you’ll find them more engaging than I did.

From November 22nd to 26th, 2010 (BBC R4 22:45-23:00) David Tennant narrated five 14 minute (abridged) short stories. The complete set is available as a |TORRENT| from RadioArchive.cc.

1. Dead Persons In Hungary by Antoine Augustin Calmet – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
Antoine Augustin Calmet published an apparently serious anthropological history of the Vampire throughout Europe in the early 19 century called “The Phantom World.” All the people he spoke to were adamant about what they had witnessed. His account therefore appears all the more disturbing and became the basis for the flights of Vampiric fancy that took off in the Victorian age.

2. The Family Of The Vourdalak by Alexis Tolstoy – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
Leo Tolstoy’s lesser known brother has written this compelling story about a patriarch who sets off on a mysterious mission but fears he may come back a Vampire. If he should return to their village after 10 days – he begs his family to deny him access and plunge a stake through his heart.

3. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
After an unusual Brazilian ship enters the harbour – our hero suddenly begins to feel unwell, and starts to have feverish and disturbing visions. Only too late does he discover the demonic nature of the South American ship’s cargo.

4. Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
Luella Miller seems incapable of surviving on her own – so she calls on friends, relatives and lovers to help her. And they all die – one by one – until there is no one left to lift a finger to assist this most demanding of women. An unusual tale – set in small town America.

5. Clarimonde by Theophile Gautier – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
As a young man approaches his first moments as a priest his eyes glance to heaven – and sees leaning over the sanctuary railing – a young woman of extraordinary beauty. And so begins a sensational struggle for his soul…

Producer: Clive Brill
A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: A Night With A Vampire 2 – David Tennant reads stories by Wharton, Matheson, Lieber, Swindells, Carter

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Book At Bedtime, the serialized audiobook slot on BBC Radio 4, last week featured a collection of five short stories called A Night With A Vampire 2. From November 29th to December 3rd, 2011 (BBC R4 22:45-23:00) five 14 minute (abridged) stories were read by David Tennant. Now the set is available via |TORRENT| for download at RadioArchive.cc.

As you might guess from the title, these are all vampire stories.

My pick of the lot is Richard Matheson’s Drink My Blood (aka Drink My Red Blood… aka Blood Son) which was Matheson’s seventh published short story. I find it to be extremely creepy. Parents will probably find it doubly so. Also good is Fritz Leiber’s Girl With The Hungry Eyes which is a bit less sanguineous and a bit more sexual.

The Lady Of The House Of Love by Angela Carter – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
“This wonderful retake on the Sleeping Beauty story first appeared in Carter’s 1979 volume “The Bloody Chamber“. A virginal English soldier, travelling through Romania by bicycle, finds himself in a deserted village. He comes across a mansion inhabited by a vampiress who survives by enticing young men into her bedroom and feeding on them. She intends to feed on the young soldier but his purity and virginity have a curious effect on her…”

The Girl With The Hungry Eyes by Fritz Lieber – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
“This 1949 story has exerted it’s grip on many an imagination and has been filmed several times. It concentrates on the magnetic power of the Vampire and – in this case – the utterly captivating and inescapable lure of a Vampiress cum glamour model.”

The Girl With The Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber

Bewitched by Edith Wharton – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
Saul still goes out to see his previous girlfriend…even though she died years ago.

Drink My Blood by Richard Matheson – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
A young schoolboy whose only ambition in life is to become a vampire.
First published in Imagination, April 1951 (as Drink My Red Blood).

Drink My Red Blood by Richard Matheson

A Lot Of Mince Pies by Robert Swindells – Read by David Tennant [ABRIDGED]
A group of carol singers visit the same cottage every year.

Producer: Clive Brill
A Pacificus Production for BBC Radio 4.

[via Roy in the SFFaudio Yahoo! Group]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Hunter’s Planet Of the Apes Archive: BBC interview with Hunter Goatley

Online Audio

Hunter Goatley’s Planet Of The Apes Archive has been on my radar since 2007. That’s when I discovered the abridged audiobook reading of Pierre Boulle’s Planet Of The Apes (La Planète Des Singes) original novel there. It’s still available and still excellent.

What’s new over there is this BBC Radio 3 Three Counties Radio interview, by Roberto Perron, with Hunter Goatley. Among other things Goatley discusses Rise Of The Planet of the Apes. |MP3|

posted by Jesse Willis

RadioArchive.cc: The Last Days Of Shandakor by Leigh Brackett

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Last Days Of Shandakor by Leigh Brackett (illustration by Alex Schomburg)

I’ve posted about this story before. But I was provoked to point to it again after discovering Alex Schomburg‘s wonderful interior art illustration, above, and the editorial about it, probably written by Samuel Mines, below.

Leigh Brackett - Master Painter

MASTER PAINTER:
SOME few decades ago an artist was only a man or woman who painted pictures. The word was not applied to sculptors, to poets, to composers, to actors or to authors. You painted pictures or you weren’t an artist and that was that.

Fortunately the term was expanded to include anyone in any sort of work who dies his job an artistic fashion – whether that work is juggling cigar boxes like the late W.C. Fields or stealing based like Tyrus Raymond Cobb. And authors, since fiction-writing is today rated as an art, are generally awarded the term.

Most of the time they don’t rate it – for the artist must convey feeling through the creation of an illusion that casts a tight web around the beholder and impels him into the mood the artist desires. It is a very special magic and only a very few authors have acquired its mastery.

Leigh Brackett is certainly one of them. She can cast a mood-net more unerringly than the most expert fisherman, can paint word-pictures that strike correspondingly vivid images in the mind and the imagination of the reader. Using the same keyboards employed by less gifted authors she can evoke high tragedy, ecstasy, the sense and vision of unbearable beauty or decay or horror.

We have a hunch that this story finds her at her very best. There may be some who will say that it is not properly science fiction. To which, as in the case of Ray Bradbury, we can only counter, “Who cares?” – THE EDITOR

The Last Days Of Shandakor
By Leigh Brackett; Read by Nathan Osgood
2 MP3 Files via TORRENT* – Approx. 56 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC 7 / 7th Dimension
Broadcast: March 2007
An epic space adventure written in which Mars is portrayed as a dying planet where desperate Earthmen compete with the last Martians and other alien races for lost knowledge and hidden power. First published in April 1952 issue of Startling Stories.

*Available through the number one source for publicly funded radio drama on the internet, RadioArchive.cc.

Posted by Jesse Willis