SFFaudio Podcast #189 featured our chat with the fantastic writer Tim Prasil – about his MARVELLOUS BOXES anthology series (as produced by Decoder Ring Theatre). Something that came up in that discussion was that one of the stories, Plotting For Perfection, was based on a short story Tim has the story online, |PDF|, and has now graciously narrated it for our listening pleasure:
Plotting For Perfection
By Tim Prasil; Read by Tim Prasil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Tim Prasil
Provided: December 2012 A photographer on assignment meets his future love, an astrophysicist, and then is visited by photographs of their future life together.
The SFFaudio Podcast #189 – Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, and Tim Prasil talk about the six episode anthology series Marvellous Boxes, recorded and podcast by Decoder Ring Theatre. But first we play an episode, Facing Cydonia.
Talked about on today’s show: The Magic Of The Movies, The Crasher, horror, stage play (post Meridian Radio Players), Thinking In Trinary, Decoder Ring Theatre, Gregg Taylor, the Cobol Club, OTR, radio commercials, flash fiction, CBC, The Age Of Persuasion, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”, Plotting For Perfection (the short story), stage play, the Vera Van Slyke stories, occult detectives, Fitz-James O’Brien, audio dramatizations of the Vera Van Slyke stories, Black Jack Justice, The Red Panda Adventures, why be locked into the 1/2 hour audio drama format?, A Demon Once Removed, a one set one act play, Nicole (the peripheral character with a personality), Chekhov’s Gun, an alternate history, “Gregg Taylor need not be played by Gregg Taylor”, Orson Welles, history, Frozen Words Thawed, Remembering The Martians, an all black cast of MacBeth, The War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells, The Tempest (as an alien contact story), William Shakespeare, a controversy over the character names in Facing Cydonia, Jenny will sing us a song, the boxes, “are there more boxes in you?”, ghosts, the button, the wax cylinder recorder, the Piltdown Man hoax, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an authentic hoax, Conan Doyle is the most gullible, the Cottingley Fairies, FairyTale: A True Story, Harry Houdini, Terry Jones, Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, the EULA on wax cylinders, Thomas Edison, the most science-fictiony story, Plotting For Perfection, a femme fatale story without the femme fatale, “talk about your retro-causality”, “a box with a hole in it”, Andrea Lyons?, Scene Of The Crime, Remembering The Martians, racism, difference, tolerance, Doctor Who – The Power Of Three, fish people, are the Martians really dead?, binary fission, fruitful names, Jacob, Jason, Easter eggs, Finbar, The Silver Tongued Devil, The Sonic Society, Roger Gregg, it’s a pseudo-documentary, a joke/haiku, “conclusions should be drawn with a pencil not a pen”, Aliens Are Like Mirages, “it’s an indictment I’m just not sure what it’s an indictment of”, “if we had this power would we use it?”, the curiousness of the chaplaincy, prequels are for readers not writers, the miracle, the yup, human history in a nutshell, To Serve Man, narrative structure, why is X-Minus One a good name?, Marvellous Boxes as a name doesn’t have a super-punch, steampunky, “steamy contraptions”, Murdoch Mysteries (CBC TV), “a little less steam and a little more electricity”, Netflix in Canada sucks, Weeds, Walk Off The Earth.
There’s a new anthology series running on Decoder Ring Theatre – it’s entitled Marvellous Boxes. I’ve somehow missed the first episode because I’ve just heard the second episode, Frozen Words Thawed?. The plot impressed me, the unconventional storytelling impressed me, the research and scholarship impressed me, and I liked a whole lot too! Once you’ve heard it, check out THIS terrific post on the writing of it. And there’s a nice discussion thread starting on AudioDramaTalk HERE. Very, very impressive Mr. Prasil!
Here’s the official description:
The second installment of author Tim Prasil’s all-new anthology series continues our tour of new worlds of the imagination. This week, a reminder that history is written by the victor, and that the strangest gladitorial arenas are often the ones that appear the most civilized. What will happen when we hear… Frozen Words Thawed?
Gregg Taylor, of Decoder Ring Theatre, writes in to tell us about his upcoming Summer Showcase #3 (this is the third year):
“We start our next edition of the DRT Summer Showcase in a week and a half with a two part thriller by New Pulp Media Baron Bill Cunningham called The Knightmare and then continue with a pair of Westerns (one old-timey, one much less so, both by Phil Bledsoe). Through the course of the summer we’ll also have a pair of science fiction stories, Thinking In Ternary by Tim Prasil who wrote “The Crasher and Magic Of The Movies for us a couple of seasons back, and Shienki by Matthew Stephens. We’ll also be running a couple of Decoder Ring Spotlight episodes, where I’ll be turning the bright lights of our lovely audience on a pair of audio production groups of which I am very fond, Icebox Radio and Texas Radio Theatre… and that’ll bring us through to the fall.”
Thanks Gregg! It sounds like we’re in for a terrific summer!
And, since the regular season has wrapped up, that means the Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice are complete – time for me to get listening.