The Que?, a new online video show attached to Roddenberry.com, features an interview Walter Koenig in Episode 2. Walter talks about his Big Little Book collection, Star Trek, blogging reviewers (ouch!), and his upcoming gig with Colonial Radio Theatre (BUCK ALICE AND THE ACTOR ROBOT) which is set to record this August! Watch it HERE.
[via The Colonial Radio Theatre Blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
L.A. Theatre Works podcast has just released a production of The War Of The Worlds with Leonard Nimoy. They received a $253,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The idea behind the grant is to “enhance people’s lives by providing a better understanding, through media and the arts, of the increasingly scientific and technological environment in which we live.”
“War of the Worlds” by Adapted by Howard Koch from the novel by H.G. Wells
Starring: Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Meagan Fay, Jerry Hardin, Dwight Schultz, Armin Shimerman, Tom Virtue, and John de Lancie. Includes an interview with Dr. David Stevenson, professor of Planetary Science at CalTech.
No direct MP3 links available (that’s a mistake LATW) but there are two podcast feeds for this show:
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510190
http://www.scpr.org/programs/latw/podcast.php
Or, if you have iTunes, you can get both individual episodes:
[Thanks Esther!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul Book 3: Epiphany
By Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz; Read by Richard Poe
10 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9731419315176
Themes: / Science Fiction / Star Trek / Vulcans / Romulans /
For a long time, Star Trek on audio was limited to the excellent yet abridged productions published by Simon and Schuster Audio. The Simon and Schuster recordings are packed with music and sound effects, but Recorded Books has published this trilogy of unabridged Trek novels (this is the third) in their single narrator style.
Die-hard Trekkers will find the whole trilogy interesting, as it explains in detail the origins of the Remans, which were introduced in the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). It also tells the story of Spock and Saavik, a romance that has been explored in Star Trek novels, but not on the screen, though Captain Jean-Luc Picard mentions attending Spock’s marriage ceremony in the Next Generation episode, “Unification”. He doesn’t mention who Spock married in that episode, but Sherman and Shwartz included the ceremony in their previous novel (which is not part of this trilogy) entitled Vulcan’s Heart.
The trilogy as a whole follows two connected storylines; one from the distant past, and one in the “present”. In the past, the story follows the family of the Vulcan Karatek as they leave Vulcan and travel across the stars to find a new world to colonize. In the “present”, which is set after the Dominion War but before Star Trek: Nemesis, Spock diplomatically deals with the Watraii, a race with grievances against the Romulan Star Empire.
In this book, Karatek’s family and other Vulcan exiles are imprisoned on Remus, indentured to hard labor mining the various ores the inhabitants of Romulus need. The present thread finds the crew of the Enterprise-E fighting Commander Tomalak and the Romulans as they try to find the origins of the invading Watraii and their claims on an artifact that predates the Romulan sundering from Vulcan at the time of Surak.
Richard Poe once again does an excellent job, voicing the various characters of the story; not imitating the actors, but mimicking their speech patterns. He even voices the women well. This is an excellent series of books for those Trekkers who like reading about Star Trek history.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson and Scott A.
Here’s another episode of Prisoners Of Gravity uploaded to YouTube (and audio’d by SFFaudio). The three videos below make up the bulk of one episode from the 2nd season of PoG. The episode is titled “Robots & Artificial Intelligence“. In the show, Commander Rick and guests talk to and about, Douglas Adams, Gregory Benford, Karel Čapek, Isaac Asimov, Nancy Kress, George Zabrowski, Stanislaw Lem, Robocop, Frank Miller, Robert J. Sawyer, Donald Kingsbury, Brian Fawcett, Pamela Sargent, Lewis Shiner, Roger Penrose, Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek and Judith Merril and William Gibson, John Varley. This is a terrifc survey of the cross’d subjects of robots and AI. Check it out…
Prisoners Of Gravity – “Robots & Artificial Intelligence”
1 |MP3| – 25 Minutes [AUDIO FROM VIDEO]
Broadcaster: TV Ontario
Broadcast: Thursday, January 24th, 1991
“This week’s topic is Robots… unfortunately, NanCy, Commander Rick’s computer, changes the topic on him to Artificial Intelligence; Commander Rick manages to discuss a little of both with his guests. Including clips from Hardware and Robocop 2.”
Part 1 of 3:
Part 2 of 3:
Part 3 of 3:
Posted by Jesse Willis
TV Ontario, the channel that brought us Prisoners Of Gravity is now podcasting the audio track from its terrific lecture show Big Ideas. The most recent broadcast and podcast features SF author Robert J. Sawyer expounding on the virtues of Science Fiction (and the original Star Trek) and the vices of Star Wars. Have a listen |MP3| to his 40 minute lecture and be blown away! RJS’ analysis is solid, and his delivery is absolutely Shatnerian. Also under the microscope are the film of Planet Of The Apes and novelist Michael Crichton. Here’s the official description:
“Author Robert J. Sawyer explains how Hollywood’s approach to science fiction, starting with George Lucas’s Star Wars, has dulled the edge that made science fiction such a pertinent film genre. Sawyer disects the problematic aspects of the original Star Wars film and shows how science fiction books continue to tackle difficult issues while their big screen counterparts take the easy road of big explosions and small ideas.”
Subscribe to the podcast feed:
http://www.tvo.org/TVOspecial3/WebObjects/TVOMedia.woa?bigideasfeed
Posted by Jesse Willis
Slice Of Sci-Fi, the premier podcast resource for TV and movie related SF, has an interview with the creators of a new Star Trek audio drama. |MP3|
Sebastian Prooth and Andy Tyrer, executive producers of Star Trek: The Continuing Mission, join us to talk about this exciting new audio drama that revolves around the Trek Universe first created by the late Gene Roddenberry. “The Continuing Mission” focuses on the Starfleet crew aboard the Federation vessel, the USS Montana and its captain and crew.
The first episode comes out December 25th 2007!
Posted by Jesse Willis