Reading, Short And Deep #072
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Wind by Ray Bradbury
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
The Wind was first published in Weird Tales, March 1943.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Tag: Ray Bradbury
“The Smithsonian Collection” of “Old Time Radio Science Fiction” featuring an essay by Ray Bradbury
Published in 1995, a year prior to the birth of Archive.org (and all that has meant to access to classic radio drama), the “The Smithsonian Collection – Old Time Radio Science Fiction” is a collection of radio dramas likely never to see physical production again. This out of print collection from Radio Spirits, featured a detailed “60” page history booklet on the history of SF in radio, and uniquely, a Ray Bradbury essay as a foreword. Here it is:
Here too are all the radio dramas included in the release:
The Mercury Theatre On the Air – The War Of the Worlds |MP3|
Suspense – Zero Hour |MP3|
Lights Out – The Meteor Man |MP3|
X Minus One – Mars Is Heaven |MP3|
The Mysterious Traveler – Operation Tomorrow |MP3|
Lights Out – Rocket From Manhattan |MP3|*
Escape – The Time Machine Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
Family Theater – Twenty thousand Leagues Under The Sea |MP3|
Suspense – Donovan’s Brain Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
Dimension X – The Martian Chronicles |MP3|
*I have substituted the Arch Obler’s Play version of Rocket To Manhattan for the Lights Out version, but the original Arch Obler’s Plays version is HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis
CBC Vanishing Point – The Playground adapted from the story by Ray Bradbury
Where did helicopter parenting come from? Maybe from the same deep fearful psychological roots as Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story THE PLAYGROUND.
This Ray Bradbury Vanishing Point adaptation of The Playground is one of Ray Bradbury’s rarest radio dramas! Not available in any of the Archive.org listings, missing from all the other usual sites around the web, I finally tracked down one old archived link and here it is:
|MP3|
Dramatized by Martin Lager
Cast: Roger Dunn, Elva Mai Hoover, Tom Butler, Chance Drury, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Brian Stittle, Danny Higham
This episode was supposedly broadcast on CBC Radio on November 2, 1984 – but that may not be correct.
Funny thing, I would have suspected this episode didn’t actually exist except for the facts that I had heard it and actually have a copy. Yet, even more strangely it is possible it may never have been broadcast* despite the fact that the end of the preceding episode of Vanishing Point mentions “The Playground” by “Ray Bradbury” will be broadcast “next week”.
This is a really, really rare modern audio drama folks!
For those who’d like to add some details to the various archives around the web here’s the front, back, and inside covers for the 1994 Listening Library commercial release giving the episode’s credits. This last is the only place I’ve found The Playground‘s credits:
Here’s the art from the first magazine publication in Esquire, October 1953:
And here’s The Ray Bradbury Theater TV adaptation, starring William Shatner:
Posted by Jesse Willis
*even the commercial released cassette version above doesn’t have any end of episode credits!
The SFFaudio Podcast #399 – READALONG: The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak
The SFFaudio Podcast #399 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Maissa discuss The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak
Talked about on today’s show:
1968, Maissa loved it, primed to like it, pastoral themes, little conflict, conversations, lightness, philosophy, Wisconsin, aliens, previous universes, pastoral gonzo, in the hands of another writer, a slow amble chase scene, lots of beer, more steaks for the sabertooth, Jesse’s problem with this book, heavy themes, there’s no buried subtext, a mystery, the book’s over?, this isn’t a novel, geared for subtext, so fluffy, more substantive than candy, swimming through clouds, what is the matter with all of you, sit back and play for a little while, there’s nothing to connect, Waystation has no conflict, the wheelers, the magazine illustrations, comedy figures, the Lovecraftian monsters, R.A. Lafferty, John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar, making a challenge, like The Demolished Man, text as a form, spinning my wheels, more is going on in this backstory, time travel, this is like a short Connie Willis novel, a relaxed pace, pub, trolls under the bridge, Clarke’s third law, full of magic, and dragons!, a very heavy word, it’s a metaphor (but it’s not), growing up, no evidence of the dinosaurs, a missing sequel, a big university project, Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock, no evidence of Jesus, Diogenes (that guy with the lamp), where the hell is Jesus?, lighter than Robert Sheckley, lighter than Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury, we’re mid-westerners, the artifact, the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Sentinel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, a picture of the 2001 monolith from 1952, the Crystal World, are you sure?, the knowledge is lost, suck it up earthling!, going into Tolkien, a couple of banshees, very Simak, the fall of Man and the rise of Dogs, bittersweet, you’ll love it, go down to the river and have a lick, what’s up with Shakespeare?, comedy relief, the neanderthal, nice little paralleled, Alley Oop, wrong headed, just read the stories and watch the plays, a guy exercising his vital powers in a life affording them scope, read the Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s ghost, really?, isn’t that interesting, something completely obvious at the time (now nearly forgotten), L. Sprague de Camp, Poul Anderson, The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, Riverworld, that Brendan Fraser movie, unfrozen cave man lawyer, Futurama‘s space chicken, distilling the facts, that’s not what’s going on here, the way that people love this book, unashamedly enjoying it, Maissa’s dog is in The Destiny Of Special Agent Ace Galaksi, goon show style, bizaaro humour, Sylvester, he just wanted your gold, the opposite of the feeling you get when watching Game Of Thrones, it’s just their pet, arguing with the trolls, the ale, a big bucket of bugs, a beer snob, just the right amount of neglect, we’re gonna analyze the crap out of this thing, beautiful scenes, sad, only two left, when its ridiculous I understand it, the novel that got Kim Stanley Robinson into science fiction, it’s going to be City, the Wisconsin countryside in the fall, a talented writer, a whole genre of pastoral Science Fiction (and only one writer who wrote it), really rural Science Fiction, Los Angeles ruralized, Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson, southern California, Garrison Keillor, Bradbury is about the suburbs, he’s not about the farms, The Wizard Of Oz is closer to Simak than anything else American, Lovecraft, going full fantasy, we’re forgetting Tolkien, it doesn’t exist, Zenna Henderson, Escape To Witch Mountain, Henderson taught at a Japanese internment camp during WWII, space opera, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Doctor Who, technobabble, SCIENCE!, engineering, Smith is the engineering department on Star Trek, Scotty on steroids, it’s nigh impossible!, William Riker’s transporter accident, the two Kirks, the thoughtful Riker and the asshole Riker, misunderstood, funny fake twitter accounts, Riker Googling, the trolls, a bridge to the other world, bits of symbolism here and there, the wrong kind of tires for the wrong kind of track, so much does and doesn’t happen at the same time, nobody is upset, enjoy the fall colours.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Marionettes, Inc. by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s Marionettes, Inc. was first published in Startling Stories, March 1949.
The Dimension X adaptation from August 30, 1951: |MP3|
The X Minus One adaptation from December 21, 1955: |MP3|
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, broadcast November 9, 1958, under the title Design For Loving:
The Leonard Nimoy narration from 1976:
The Ray Bradbury Theater adaptation from May 21, 1985:
An independent adaptation uploaded September 29, 2012:
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #383 – READALONG: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
The SFFaudio Podcast #383 – Jesse, Bryan Alexander, and Steen Hansen talk about The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.
Talked about on today’s show:
1969, before the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, contemporary critics, SF critics vs. mainstream critics, the defense of the ghetto against interlopers, Ray Bradbury, Doris Lessing, a deep feeling, spoiling the book, showing what was wrong with it, getting the facts wrong, interpretation, Luke Burrage reviewing, Robert J. Sawyer, bad writing, had they done nothing … nothing would have happened, the mutation, the Wildfire facility, Star Trek, scientists out for the good of humanity, self-destruct sequences, MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction, every nuclear sub movie, film-like, The Ipcress File by Len Deighton, airport fiction tropes, hyper competent high level government high tech mcguffins, brain-washing, novel -> film, written for film?, ER, picky fiddly science and bureaucratic operation, killed or useless, trusted scientists to save the world, ruthlessly hard science, Hollywood couldn’t make this movie now, restrained, chilly, the gender swap, Robert Wise, Shirley Jackson, The Haunting Of Hill House, Alfred Bester, a document dump, classified material, overloading the reader with verisimilitude, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Thirteenth Warrior, Vikings, Russians and Byzantium, completely bullshit, Mr. Bullshit, regular SF vs. techno-thriller, a yummy INFODUMP, nobody had a definition for life, black cloth, a watch, a piece of granite, pure Science Fiction, Bryan’s mind destroyed at age 8, binary numbers, lasers vs. darts, Larry Niven, 24, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Steen welcomes our robot overlord, high-scale AI, Iain M. Banks, humans as pets, humans as cogs, I Have No Mouth And I must Scream, Prof. Eric S. Rabkin, Dante Alighieri, lost race, the descent into Hell, from red to blue, the harrowing of Hell, a cold war story where the Russians aren’t the bad guys, The Bedford Incident, James Follett’s The Light Of A Thousand Suns, set in the recent past, the shotgun approach, Margaret Atwood, picking and choosing at the buffet table, dedicated to A.C.D., M.D. -> Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle -> Dr. Michael Crichton, “not a new story”, the glowing review in Life magazine, a retelling of The Blob, the Technovelgy, auto-doc, the suppressed cancer drug, Jensen Pharmaceuticals, gut flora, nudity and ass-grabbing, rectal suppository, astro-Tang, coffee, all that cleaning, they’re too holy, the five levels is a gimmick, the leveling, it’s bullshit!, we all know we have to wash our hands, the Wikipedia entry for the Airport Genre
Airport novel(s) represent a literary genre that is not so much defined by its plot or cast of stock characters, as much as it is by the social function it serves. An airport novel is typically a fairly long but fast-paced novel of intrigue or adventure that is stereotypically found in the reading fare offered by airport newsstands for travelers to read in the rounds of sitting and waiting that constitute air travel.
Rudyard Kipling’s fiction was published as a railway magazine, the origin of pulp fiction, The Lion’s Game by Nelson DeMille, the opening to The Strain, having the reins of political power at your fingertips, in the 2008 miniseries remake, back stories/love stories, a muddy anti-science mess, pre-Apollo -> Watergate -> conspiracy theories, the technical glitch (paper between the bell and the striker), germ warfare?!, the remake of The Manchurian Cantidate, the films and adaptations reflect the times, the 2008 version is super-militarized, X-18, F-4 phantoms, Dracula, the long gothic tradition of found documents, Plan 9 From Outer Space, a cold war document, The Parallax View, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Crichton like Spielberg loves power, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, medical people as superheroes, uber-expert scientists, power fantasy fiction, scepticism of power, image Michael Crichton at a Science Fiction convention, the immune reaction, You are not of the body!, techno-thrillers, why Ian Fleming’s James Bond books became so popular, JFK, Ronald Reagan was a big fan of Tom Clancy, The Hunt For Red October, Reagan based foreign policy of Red Storm Rising, Jack Ryan was a wonk Navy -> CIA agent -> CIA Director -> President, Firefox, political fiction written for a jet-set audience, conservative Heinleinian, Andromeda Strain cosplay?, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, SF writers save the world from alien invasion, science matters vs. science fiction, the first biology crisis, outflanking the ghetto, the 2006 Worldcon, Greg Benford, Greg Bear, David Brin, thinking up scenarios, if I was a terrorist how would I destroy the the United States, Wildfire, Cold War contingency planning, the Rand Corporation, the odd-man out element, his name was Hall but should have been Corridor, does this make sense?, the odd man is gay?, The Odd Couple, gay coding?, gay men are most likely to turn off nukes?, The Great Train Robbery, timing pacing planning tricking, that roller-coaster spark, opening observation, we are always observing, fun fiction for Henry Kissinger and the jet set, bureaucrats of a class, this function material is reflective, Science Fiction writers are poor, Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake, Isaac Asimov, a biology book, Paul Di Filippo, bio-punk, Ribo-funk, The Bay (2012), The Hot Zone, the wet science, cloning, the neglected science, Coma, Protector by Larry Niven, how electron-microscopes work, crystallography, “it mutated”?!?!?, that was odd, it’s communicating with itself, block-chain virus, deep hurting, The Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski, medicine without silicon, the Patriarchy, The Highest Frontier, Blood Music by Greg Bear, a Halo novel, The Wind From A Burning Woman, a “wild” writing style, bio is hard to do, Pontypool, prions, the worst part of The Walking Dead, we’re all infected, a symbol for regular death, Titan by John Varley, a 100ft tall Marilyn Monroe monster, The Satan Bug by Alistair Maclean (1962), where does the techno-thriller begin, a precursor to techno-thriller, The Stolen Bacillus by H.G. Wells, a really obvious anarchist, Wells defused the whole genre for sixty years, The Food Of The Gods, a convincing linguistic maneuver, fawning of technology bureaucracy power and the function of government, a stack of Jane’s Fighting Ships, the Sputnik shock, British invasion novels, Tom Clancy as a zombie brand, special helicopter trip, massive government expenditure for the competent man, an empty jetliner, vicarious thrill, power fantasy, “he’s the most important person right now”, this is our bailiwick!, nice and short, Dean Koontz, Phantoms, A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Ghost Fleet by August Cole and P.W. Singer, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child books, no CRISPR, China is no Soviet Union, futurism, education moves so slowly, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, an X-Box with Paranoid Linux, Reamde by Neal Stephenson, a Kurt Vonnegut vibe, a Welsh Muslim terrorist, like pornography you know a techno-thriller when you see it.
Posted by Jesse Willis