Beginning today, BBC4 Extra is running Bradbury 13, a series of 13 short stories from author Ray Bradbury adapted for radio. These are new productions never previously broadcast, starting out with his story The Ravine, and it looks like some of his Martian Chronicles tales are included in the collection. Warren Ellis announced that you could stop by Brian Wood’s site and download the Entire Public Domain 2 PDF, which represents around a decade worth of sketches and artwork from his collected works. It is 132 pages and fairly high rez of some really nice graphic novel level creations (although no actual graphic novels… it is way too random for that), and looks good on your Android or iDevice as well. If you like it, you can support his work by picking up the signed and numbered limited edition print version from the link on his page, until they run out.
This trailer for Robert J. Sawyer’s book The Terminal Experiment is a little hard for me to follow (since I don’t speak Hungarian), but is quite nicely done. This one appears to be publisher created, although without a translation I am just guessing, but some quite excellent book trailers have been created by fans.
Every year on May 25th we celebrate Towel Day, taking a towel with us everywhere we go all day long. This is of course in honor of the brilliant author Douglas Adams, creator of the radio play that grew up to be the five books of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It then went on to become a computer game, a TV series, and a movie, among other things; and that was only one of the works created by Doug. Another began as a book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, then became a radio play, and finally turned into a TV show. Wear your towel with pride; I had DON’T PANIC printed on mine.
BBC Radio 4 is replaying the three Torchwood episodes that preceded Children of Earth this week in their Afternoon Play segment. That means that on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at 14:15 GMT (that’s 2:15PM London time) you can listen to them in real time, and probably play them back for the 6 days after that. Note that this is on BBC Radio 4 proper, rather than BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7). Over on that channel we have Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama on Sunday, and another brand new Doctor Who story, The Whispering Forest, with Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough joining Davison’s Doctor. That one started yesterday, but you have 5 more days to listen to the first episode, with the story continuing Monday.
This weeks winner has to be Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, a mix of the brilliant Tim Powers book with the Disney Pirates franchise. So far every film in this series has been top notch, and I really hope they keep up the quality with this one. When I first read the book a bit over two decades ago I was sad at the time that it was a story that could never make it to the big screen, and I am now happy to have been proven wrong.
Who is John Galt? If you have been asking this question since the mid 1950’s, the wait is over. The Ayn Rand sci-fi classic Atlas Shrugged is finally seeing widespread release on the big screen this week. It is flagged as Part 1, hopefully that means there is a Part 2 on the horizon as well. Before the ’70s the number of genre books recognized as actual Literature across the decades could be counted without having to take your shoes off, and this masterwork was one of them. Since the 70’s a tendency to claim one’s work was a normal drama about the human condition that just happened to have a setting on another planet with a protagonist from another dimension became the PR ploy du jour for serious literature authors. Just in case you haven’t read this, take a peek at the trailer. As usual, it gives you a set of scenes and dialog meant to encourage you to buy a ticket, but this one also gives you momentary images of a huge number of world-class actors who all wanted to be in on the production. You don’t see that without a world class story and incredible characters to drive actors to excel at their craft, so I have high hopes for this one.
The feel-good family friendly choice for this week is Rio, about a non-flying Macaw (raised in a cage in a small town in Minnesota) who travels to Brazil to meet a girl, and gets a LOT more than he bargained for. The animation is from the same team who did the Ice Age series, so get ready for non-stop visuals and action of the highest caliber. I’m thinking, one film Friday, one Saturday.