Dimension X: Almost Human adapted from a story by Robert Bloch

SFFaudio Online Audio

Almost Human illustrated by Rod Ruth

This is a truly terrible story, by someone who is normally perceived to be a great author, Robert Bloch. I suspect Bloch chose the pseudonym for this one because it is so bad. Indeed, I suspect this is precisely the kind of story Isaac Asimov was trying to defeat with his Three Laws of Robotics. But beyond the dangerous robot trope it also features, at least to my ears, the most creepily lascivious robot ever!

Junior is oily, immoral, and oversexed.

Ewww!

Dimension XDimension X – Almost Human
Adapted from the story by Robert Bloch; Adapted by George Lefferts; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: May 13, 1950
A gun moll answers an ad to be a nursemaid to a baby robot, things are fine until her boyfriend, a professional thief, shows up and teaches the robot a few things. First published in Fantastic Adventures, June 1943.

UPDATE:
Here’s Robert Bloch’s introductory essay to Almost Human (as written for My Best Science Fiction Story a 1949 anthology edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend):

Robert Bloch - "My Best Science Fiction Story" - Almost Human

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #163 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #163 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Jenny (from Reading Envy) talk about newly released and recently arrived audiobooks.

Talked about on today’s show:
please send Jenny audiobooks for review, a lack of a listing of the short stories on audiobooks, kudos to Welcome To Bordertown, George R.R. Martin’s Warriors II and Down These Strange Streets (urban fantasy), Jenny is reading around the world in 52 books, Tigana is sort of Italian, future releases, Happy Audiobook Month, audiobook sale at Tantor, Nick wants Redshirts by John Scalzi, coming soon on Audible, Audible Modern Vanguard, Colin Firth narrated the Graham Greene novel The End Of The Affair, Redshirts has three codas (short stories), Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth, Flood, Discworld has giant turtles, Good Omens is great in audio, Stephen Baxter is doing a Doctor Who (The Wheel Of Ice), Gregory Benford’s free audio novelette The Hunger For The Infinite is part of the Galactic Center series, sort of like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, sheer amount of David Brin audiobooks, Jenny might read Kiln People, how do Scott and Jesse truly feel about David Brin? (Jesse’s review of Startide Rising), the value of awards, The Greatest Science Fiction Stories Of The 20th Century has a good Brin and others, (Ben Bova was in the news not David Brin), The Postman book and movie, “if you build it they will come”, Heinlein’s Glory Road narrated by Pinchot, it’s one of Jo Walton’s least favorites, How To Build An Android also narrated by Pinchot, Alastair Reynolds’s Blue Remembered Earth, reviewed by Luke, Heinlein’s The Number Of The Beast (666?), Moonwar by Ben Bova, 21st Century Dead (zombies), Jenny’s collecting subgenres, Daniel Wilson’s Amped (1st three chapters on io9), someone stole that title, Energized by Edward M. Lerner sounds like Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, separate chapters like the Nova tv show, Red Mars, super science!, Jonathan Maberry, Robert Bloch’s Psycho series, “did he escape?”, H.G. Wells stuff added, Etsy 101: Sell Your Crafts On Etsy, Jenny wants N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon in audio, Liz Williams’s Worldsoul has librarian heroes, “X-men meets The Breakfast Club”, Sfsignal’s book cover gallery for June, is body horror the same as splatterpunk?, Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination looks like a Jenny book, The Islanders by Christopher Priest (author of The Prestige), waiting for international books, Paul McCauley’s In The Mouth Of The Whale is not in America, “I would buy the ebook”, small fonts, William Gibson is only in mass market paperback, many Philip K. Dick novels with plain covers, the value of book covers, “it’s like a good looking person”, “that screams I am a literary miracle”, Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland, get the annotated one, Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You! A Very Grimm Tale by Yuri Rasovsky (audiodrama), so many fairy tales, a superficial interest in Further: Beyond The Threshold by Chris Roberson, a law that a bookcover should be honest, “that’s enough on that”, C.S. Friedman?, Adam-Troy Castro is not always super creepy, Paul Krugman’s End This Depression!, he was just on Geek’s Guide, “oh that kind of depression”, Justinian’s Flea, The Most Powerful Idea In The World, The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, author on The Bookworm podcast, Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds, “I’m sensing a pattern with your reading, Tam”, Delany interview, Delany’s Nova, Tigana is the Sword and Laser pick for June

cover for Chris Roberson's Further: Beyond The Threshhold

Posted by Tamahome

To Virgil Finlay… by H.P. Lovecraft (narrated by Wayne June)

SFFaudio Online Audio

To Virgil Finlay by H.P. Lovecraft

I mentioned to Wayne June that I’d found the above poem in the July 1937 issue of Weird Tales. He hadn’t heard of it before. Then he went and narrated it for us!

|MP3|

Written in a letter, dated November 30, 1937, it was sent from H.P. Lovecraft to Virgil Finlay. It was inspired by art drawn for a Robert Bloch story, published in the May 1936 issue of Weird Tales, and entitled The Faceless God. Here’s the illustration that inspired it:

The Faceless God - illustration by Virgil Finlay

Here’s at least part of the letter:

“I could easily scrawl a sonnet to one of your masterpieces if you weren’t too particular about quality. For example –

To Virgil Finlay Upon his Drawing Of Robert Bloch’s Tale “The Faceless God”
By H.P. LOVECRAFT

In dim abysses pulse the shapes of night,
Hungry and hideous, with strange miters crowned;
Black pinions beating in fantastic flight
From orb to orb through soulless voids profound.
None dares to name the cosmos whence they course,
Or guess the look on each amorphous face,
Or speak the words that with resistless force
Would draw them from the halls of outer space.

Yet here upon a page our frightened glance
Finds monstrous forms no human eye should see;
Hints of those blasphemies whose countenance
Spreads death and madness through infinity.
What limnner he who braves black gulfs alone
And lives to wake their alien horrors known?

Well well – quite in the Yuggoth tradition! I’ll have to keep a copy of this to try on one or another of the fan magazines!”

[Thanks Wayne!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #147 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model
The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #147 – Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (21 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it by Jesse, Tamahome, Mr Jim Moon, Wayne June and Mirko Stauch. Here’s the ETEXT.

Talked about on today’s show:
S.t.a.u.c.h., comic book explosion sounds, “thwip”, Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, Hypnobobs Podcast, Hypnogoria.com, Jim Moon’s audio essay about ghouls, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Amicus Press, Beyond The Grave, The Monster Club, The H.P. Podcraft Podcast, The Tomb, The Call Of Cthulhu, The Crawling Chaos, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Festival, nobody wants to talk about art, Neonomicon, Pickman’s Necrotica, Night Of The Living Dead, Richard Burton, the German audio drama adaptation, The Thing On The Doorstep (annotated by S.T. Joshi), I Am Providence: The Life And Times Of H.P. Lovecraft, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Robert E. Howard, Omar Epps, House, M.D., “no nordic man”, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, lead-lined coffins, a slurry of sauce, “the lesson”, “subway accident”, The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath, Bradford Dillman, “for procreational purposes”, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Unnameable, Gustav Dore’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, the power of art, Supernatural Horror In Literature, Aristotle’s Poetics, Algernon Blackwood, YogSothoth.com, What The Moon Brings, a ghoulish sense of humor, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, eldritchdark.com, Out Of Space And Time, Cotton Mather, spectral evidence, the original waterboarding, The Horror At Red Hook, He, Audio Realms, The Mountains Of Madness, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, two one sided conversations, what would Lovecraft write today?, The Lovecraft Chronicles by Peter Cannon, Lovecraft’s racism, Mr. Nigger Man (Lovecraft’s cat), racist paint colours, WWII, xenophobia, the strange and the stranger, Samuel Loveman, mythologizing the author, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Poe himself is the star of The Raven, laughing in horror, the Night Gallery paintings, Hannes Bok, a wolf with a mullet, a modern adaptation, The Rats In The Walls, if a story can be spoiled it’s probably not worth reading (or re-reading), Tam would have dropped his shit, Joanna Russ, Cthulhu 2000, Poe wrote his wife to death, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, The Crawling Chaos, “psychedelically cosmic”, Jim Moon’s Necronomicon woodcuts, 16th century Pickman,

Pickman's Model - as adapted for Tower Of Shadows #9

Pickman's Model - original Weird Tales illustration

Pickman painting #1

Pickman painting #2

Pickman painting #3

Pickman painting #4

Pickman painting #5

Pickman painting #6

Pickman painting #6 DETAIL

Hannes Bok illustration of Pickman's Model

Pickman's Model - adapted for Skull Comics, No.4, (1972) by Herb Arnold

Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Pickman's Model - iIllustrated by David Prosser (1965)

Mitch Jenkins - Ghoul photo

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #130 – READALONG: Human Man’s Burden by Robert Sheckley

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #130 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome and Jenny discuss Human Man’s Burden by Robert Sheckley.

Talked about on today’s show:
uppity damn robots, hilarious characterization, soulless robots, Galaxy Magazine September 1956, Star Trek, Harry Mudd, Sears Roebuck catalogues, freeze dried vs. flash frozen, Kiln People by David Brin, The Twilight Zone episode “The Lonely“, robot wives, manufactured fingernails, center of gravity, “could she have been a robot?”, Gunga Sam the foreman robot, duenna is Portuguese for chaperone, Gunga Din, the Writing Excuses podcast with Lou Anders, HuffDuffer, John Scalzi, Casablanca, The Dark Knight, Edward Flaswell, “Sure pal. Sure.”, Frontier Bride, mail order bride, freeze dried preacher, programmed by “a human supremacist of the most rabid sort”, was Flaswell talked into feeling bad, what is the Human Man’s Burden?, is it all a marketing ploy?, The Mote In God’s Eye, the Gold Rush, why is the combustion god?, “Him strong him good, believe me brothers, it is even as I say.”, Rudyard Kipling poem’s The White Man’s Burden, the justification for empire, satire, the page 99 illustration, labeling people, ultra deluxe model bride, “oil glistened on their honest faces”, Tama can prove the robots are having sex, “in their carefree robot fashion”, a series of robots on the moon ordering from Sears Roebuck catalogues (15 F&SF covers by Mel Hunter), Charles van Doren, face-parts, “the robot frontier”, Asteroids in fiction (Wikipedia entry), TZ ep.: “Two“, Dumb Martian by John Wyndham, TZ ep.: “The Lateness Of The Hour“, android vs. gynoid, Firefly, Gunga Sam knows best, Sheila was down-selling herself, this is a feminist story?, Human Man’s Burden could be a cartoon, Kindles/Xboxes/Wiis/PS3s are sold as cheaply as possible because of the profit being in the media they play, iTouch vs. iPhone, free robots in our homes selling moon makers and solidovisions, nesting dolls, Human Man’s Burden probably isn’t public domain, Psycho by Robert Bloch, The Status Civilization, Seventh Victim, Mindswap, Warrior Race, The Space Merchants, Blackstone Audio, Charles Stross, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

ISFDB publication history for Human Man’s Burden HERE.

Human Man's Burden by Robert Sheckley - Page 95 - Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, September 1956

Human Man's Burden by Robert Sheckley - ilustration by Weiss

Sears Roebuck Ordering Robot - Art by Mel Hunter

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Blackstone Audio, Penguin Audio, Macmillan Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson, read by Michael Kramer
The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe, read by Emily Janice Card and Stefan Rudnicki
The Apothecary by Maile Meloy, read by Cristin Milioti
Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick, read by the author
The Walking Dead: The Rise Of The Governor by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga, read by Fred Berman
Psycho 2 by Robert Bloch, read by Paul Michael Garcia
Steel and Other Stories by Richard Matheson, read by Scott Brick
We’re Alive: Season Two by Kc Wayland, performed by full cast
Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry, read by Tom Weiner
Beggars Ride by Nancy Kress, read by Judy Young
Vacation by Matthew Costello, read by Peter Macon
To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein, read by Bernadette Dunne

Posted by Jesse Willis