Nazi Germany – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #095 – READALONG: SS-GB by Len Deighton

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #095 – Jesse talks with Professor Eric S. Rabkin about an alternate history novel: SS-GB by Len Deighton.

Talked about on today’s show:
alternate history, Luke Burrage, “if it leaves a lasting impression that says something about its artistic character”, why write alternate history, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, historical fiction, 1941 vs. 1978, what is the relationship between Science Fiction and detective fiction, tales of ratiocination, Fatherland by Robert Harris, the Fatherland TV movie, BBC audio drama, Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle, what would it be like under Nazi rule?, utopia vs. dystopia, fantasy, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Karl Marx, “alternate history does what Science Fiction does without pretending to set it in a logical future – it sets it in a logical past”, racism, bureaucracy in 1978 London, Michael Caine, Operation Sea Lion, why did Len Deighton set SS-GB in 1941?, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, are historical forces inevitable?, fate and destiny in alternate history, the great man vs. social forces, Adolph Hitler, Alexander The Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, the individual vs. the community, Douglas Archer, if there was a just war it was WWII, the Holocaust, collecting militaria, Spain’s fascist dictatorship, the tale of the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, John le Carré, Agatha Christie, complicated vs. simple (le Carré vs. Christie), fathers and sons, historical fiction, The Battle Of Britain, Inside The Third Reich by Albert Speer, Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, when you’re helping the bad guys aren’t you one of them?, King George VI is a MacGuffin, The King’s Speech, Mackenzie King, police are the most cynical people in the world, the role of ambiguity in fiction, Channel Islands, every fiction is alternate history, is history a collection of things that happened or is it forces and rules?, The Sun Also Rise by Ernest Hemingway, The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells, Startide Rising by David Brin |READ OUR REVIEW|, uplift, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, disarming puns, Arma virumque cano, “I can’t imagine anyone smarter than me”, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Remains Of The Day, Pavane by Keith Roberts, Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, Inglourious Basterds vs. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Most Powerful Idea In The World by William Rosen, steam engines (and atmospheric engines).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #085 – TALK TO: Gregg Taylor

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #085 – Jesse talks with Gregg Taylor (aka Martin Bracknell aka Red Panda) of Decoder Ring Theatre about The Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice.

Talked about on today’s show:
Decoder Ring Theatre, Gregg is not as famous as Cher yet, something the same and something different, Girl’s Night Out, telling the mystery man’s story, World War II, Vancouver, secret identities, The Grey Fox (Vancouver’s own superhero), were there Japanese spy rings in Vancouver circa 1940?, Margo Lane, espionage, Nazi masterminds fomenting fifth-columns, Nazi Eyes On Canada |READ OUR REVIEW|, buying war bonds, Toronto, She’s secretly Japanese and secretly a superhero, Japanese-Canadian internment, Attack on Pearl Harbour, details from upcoming Red Panda Adventures episodes, the Dieppe raid, single-handedly defeating Hitler seems un-Canadian, augmented-dinosaurs, Professor von Schlitz, Captain America, Indiana Jones, how Gregg Taylor handicapped himself, “the man with an identity so secret even the audience doesn’t know it”, weaving a tangled web of lies, Superman was 4F, The Spirit, would static-shoes actually work?, Garth Ennis’ The Boys, what superhero you like tells us about you, the Martian Manhunter‘s kryptonite, Justice League: The New Frontier, Batman‘s superpower is a strength of will, Kit Baxter’s superpower is moxie, Trixie Dixon, creating dynamic female leads, CBC TV, the gender bending episode of Black Jack Justice (Justice In Love And War), Steven J. Cannell‘s Scene Of The Crime, gender switching, Black Jack Justice Hush Money, Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxanne, the formation of Black Jack Justice in opposition to The Red Panda Adventures, writing detective fiction vs. writing superhero fiction, Richard Diamond: Private Detective, the self-narrating hard-boiled post-war detective, The Adventures Of Sam Spade, paying your actors in corn, Philip Marlowe, writing drama in the half-hour format, Red Panda and retroactive continuity, an alternative universe that isn’t much different just a lot sillier, Baboon McSmoothie, the prime minister’s talking dog, the Moonlighting moment, flashback episodes, the Red Panda novels, Thomas Perkins, beautiful cover art helps, that repeated line: “It’s an interesting point.”, Aaron Sorkin, J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5, Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, Gregg Taylor’s Decoder Ring Theatre, The Maltese Falcon, Sherlock Holmes, The Shadow, Orson Welles, a good TV show is like a play, The Green Hornet, “the MP3 revolution saved old time radio”, Gregg’s most frequently ignored piece of advice (write and record several shows before you release), might Decoder Ring one day adapt Cyrano or a Shakespeare play?, theater people are wonderful, Gregg would love to do cartoons (call him!), the Black Jack Justice comic, Gregg loves comics too!, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the continuity of stories makes them more real, the nearly static Black Jack universe, Robert B. Parker, Spenser, the Jesse Stone tragedy, if Gregg gets crushed by a cement mixer…, The Old Testament God vs. New Testament God.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #051 – TOPIC: THE YELLOW PERIL

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #051 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Luke Burrage and Professor Eric S. Rabkin to discuss THE YELLOW PERIL.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (aka The Mysterious Dr. Fu-Manchu) – available via Tantor Media, fix-up novel, hypnosis, Sherlock Holmes, the yellow peril incarnate, the yellow peril as the hordes of asia, the Chinese Exclusion Act (USA), Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 (Canada), Tamerlane (the scourge of god), The Yellow Peril by M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, racism, WWI, colonialism, Burma, Thuggees, Boxer Rebellion, genius, The Talons Of Weng Chiang, if you read it as Fu-Manchu being the hero you may like the story more, mad scientist, Faust, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Robur-Le-Conquérant by Jules Verne (aka Robur-The-Conqueror aka The Clipper of the Clouds), The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, colonialism, The Invisible Man, the other colored other, The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman by Alan Moore, Hawley Griffin (The Invisible Man), Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde, Mina Murray (from Dracula by Bram Stoker), English 418/549: GRAPHIC NARRATIVE (Winter 2010), The Invisible Man shows I and II, If I Ran The Zoo by Dr. Seuss, Jonah And The Whale, Suess’ anti-Japanese propaganda during WWII, Japanese internment during WWII in USA and Canada, Aryan, India, Nazi Germany, The Thule Society, Sri Lanka, racial stereotypes, Marco Polo, Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, gender and skin color, blondness, Karamaneh (the love interest in The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu), femme fatale, Black Widow (1987), miscegenation, the Chinese hordes vs. the insidious Japanese, War With The Newts by Karel Čapek, Japan, LibriVox.org, Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein, beauty as goodness (in fairy tales), King Kong, Last And First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker, The Iliad by Homer, The Old Testament, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame edited by Robert Silverberg, Arena by Fredric Brown, Plato, the red scare, Jack London, The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, Arslan by M.J. Engh, Chung Kuo by David Windgrove, selective memory, polarized memory, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Encounter With Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes, China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh, Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It by Zachary Karabell, Firefly, Limehouse, London, Detroit, The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick |READ OUR REVIEW|, alternate history, SS-GB by Len Deighton, Fatherland by Robert Harris, Gorky Park, North Korea, the North Korea embassy in East Berlin.

The Yellow Peril

The Fiendish Plot Of Fu-Manchu (Thanks Gregg!):

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 3: Slaughterhouse 5 [RADIO DRAMA]

SFFaudio Online Audio

Radio Times - Slaughterhouse 5 [RADIO DRAMA] Airing on BBC Radio 3 This Radio Times column is announcing that BBC Radio 3 will have a radio drama adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5 airing on September 20, 2009. I belive this makes it the world exclusive premiere of this novel in radio drama. I’m betting that because of it a lot of people are going to be visiting RadioArchive.cc or installing Radio Downloader just to get it.

Slaughterhouse 5
Based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – Approx. 90 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC R3 / Drama On 3
Broadcast: 20:00-21:30 Sunday 20th September
Written by Kurt Vonnegut and dramatised by Dave Sheasby.
“Adapted from arguably one of the greatest anti-war stories of all time, the play centres on Billy Pilgrim, who hops back and forth in time, reliving various moments in his real and fantasy lives, as a prisoner of war, optometrist and time traveller.”

Narrator …… John Guerassio
Billy Pilgrim …… Andrew Scott
Bernard V O’Hare …… Nathan Osgood
Mary …… Joanne McQuinn
Montana …… Annabelle Dowler
Barbara …… Sarah Goldberg
Valencia …… Madeleine Potter
Roland Weary …… Simon Lee Philips
Mother …… Liza Ross
Eliot Rosewater …… Kerry Shale
Howard J Campbell Jnr …… Stephen Hogan
Bertram Rumfoord …… Peter Marinker
English Officer …… Michael Mears
Cinderella …… Philip Fox
Paul Lazarro …… Gunnar Cauthery
Soldiers …… Orlando James, Michael Shelford

Music by 65 Days of Static
Directed by David Hunter

[Thanks Roy!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick

SFFaudio Review

The Man In The High Castle
By Philip K. Dick; Read by George Guidall
7 Cassettes – 9.75 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Date Published: 1997
Themes: Science Fiction / Alternate History / World War II / Holocaust / Japan / Nazi Germany

World War II is over and to the victors go the spoils; Germany and Japan divide the world and the United States into East and West occupied zones. Alternate reality? Alternate history? Those are sheer fantasy, what if the Allies had won the war? Who would have been able to stop Stalin? Idle daydreaming, and Frank Frink can’t afford that, as one of the few surving Jews in North America and the world he’s got to concentrate to stay alive…

Set in an alternate history (and taking place in 1962 when Dick wrote the book), The Man in the High Castle is multiple viewpoint. There is: Mr. Tagomi, a collector of all things antique and American. Juliana Frink, seperated from her husband. She’s in Colorado on the border between the Nazis in the East and the Japanese in the West. Her husband Frank Frink, a shop owner and dealer in antiques, lives apart from his wife in occupied San Francisco serving the ruling Japanese. And all three of them have their fate intertwined with an officially banned underground novel entitled “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” which paints a picture of a world where the Allies won WWII.

The Man in the High Castle won the Science Fiction Hugo Award for best novel in 1962. It is one of the few great Philip K. Dick novels still unfilmed and so it will come as a great introduction to a new reader. Throughout the novel the I, Ching and its cryptic “wisdom” is used to push the plot along. This ingenious device is of further interest because Dick claimed that he himself used the I, Ching whenever it was used in the novel and let it take the novel wherever the results led it, in essence plotting the book as a result of the I, Ching’s advice. Superstar narrator George Guidall with his broad range and depth of voice is the perfect choice for this deeply complex novel. Oh and of course I can’t forget to mention the fantastic twist ending which will definitely… shall I say…change your persective? A profound SF experience that will blow your mind.

posted by Jesse Willis