Side Trip #6 - Eyes of Redemption by Marshal Latham

Morgan, recently separated from his wife, visits an old abandoned church in search of redemption.

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Realated Links:

Residential Aliens
While The Morning Stars Sing anthology
Triangulation anthology
Dark Faith anthology
Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine
The Roundtable Podcast

Music used in this production: "Lone Harvest" by Kevin MacLeod


Theme music: Surf's Down by Man In Space


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Journey #65 - Knock by Frediric Brown (presented by X-Minus One)

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...

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Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was born in Cincinnati.  He is perhaps best known for his use of humor and for his mastery of the "short short" form—stories of 1 to 3 pages, often with ingenious plotting devices and surprise endings. Humor and a somewhat postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well.

The famous pulp writer Mickey Spillane called Brown "my favorite writer of all time".  Science fiction and fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has also expressed fondness for Brown's work, having his novel Here Comes A Candle narrated by the character Rose Walker in the collection The Kindly Ones of The Sandman.  Brown also had the honor of being one of three dedicatees of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

X Minus One was a half-hour science fiction radio drama series broadcast from April 24, 1955 to January 9, 1958 in various timeslots on NBC.  Initially a revival of NBC's Dimension X (1950–51), the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new versions of Dimension X episodes, but the remainder were adaptations by NBC staff writers, including Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, of newly published science fiction stories by leading writers in the field, including Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl and Theodore Sturgeon, along with some original scripts by Kinoy and Lefferts.

Realated Links:

The War Of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, and its many adaptations
Signs
The Day if the Triffids
Independence Day
Mars Attacks!
The Twilight Zone - Hocus-Pocus and Frisby
Marvel's The Avengers
Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phontom Menace
 

Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space

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Journey #64 - Fire Watch by Connie Willis (presented by Seeing Ear Theatre)

Young Bartholomew is a graduate student in history from a future Oxford who is assigned to travel back in time to join and study the famous Fire Watch Brigade-the volunteer corps whose brave members kept St. Paulâs Cathedral from being burned to the ground by Nazi incendiaries.

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Connie Willis was  born on 31 December 1945 is an American science fiction (SF) writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards. Her first published story, "The Secret of Santa Titicaca," appeared in Worlds of Fantasy in 1971. After receiving an NEA grant in 1982, she left her teaching job and became a full-time writer.

Willis has written several pieces involving time travel by history students at a faculty of the future University of Oxford.   It all started with  short story "Fire Watch" (found in the collection of the same name) and the novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, as well as the two-part novel Blackout/All Clear. All of the Oxford Time Travel stories have won the Hugo Award, and all but To Say Nothing of the Dog have won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband, Courtney.


SEEING EAR THEATRE was an extension of the SCI-Fi Channel, and produced audio dramas between 1997 and 2001.  Dozens of Science Fiction and Fantasy stories were produced by a dedicated and talented crew of multimedia artists, writers, actors and musicians and delivered “radio” drama via streaming audio. It managed to capture some of the top living SF writers of today, like Harlan Ellision, J. Michael Straczynski, Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, and Kim Stanley Robinson. It also produced some classic stories, from the likes of Fredric Brown, Poul Anderson, and William Tenn.

Cast and crew:

Sebastian Roché as Bartholomew
Rika Daniel as Frieda
Ian Reed as Langby
George Holmes as Professor Dunworthy
Nicky as the cat
also Rita Ben-Or, Anthony Ferguson, Nicholas Haylett, Gideon Juvenal, Ron Keith, Giovanni Pucci, John Rainer, Dieter Riesele, Vicki Stuart, and Felix Van Dyke

Produced and Directed by George Zarr
Story adapted for audio by Tony Daniel
Sound Design by John Colucci
Vocalists, Paul Amadeo and Cheri Leone
Guitars, John Colucci and Robert Legault
Original lyrics by Tony Daniel
Original music by George Zarr

Realated Links:
SFF Audio
The London Blitz
Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout, and All Clear by Connie Willis
Doctor Who on Netflix
Dr Who S1E9 - The Empty Child
Barrage Ballons

Music used in this production:
"Largo" by Dvorak
Doctor Who Theme

Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space

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Journey #63 - The Age-Old Question by Christopher Munroe

Never ask a woman her age, yet a young husband feels compelled to do just that.

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Christopher Munroe is a author/actor/comedian from Calgary, Alberta whose fiction has appeared in the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, the Way of the Buffalo and Journey Into… podcasts, and numerous other places around the web, and whose debut novel, Broken Escalator, is available now in eBook and as a podcast at Podiobooks. He likes words and ideas, and occasionally has trouble seeing the difference between horror and comedy, which has led to unexpectedly amusing stories and absolutely terrifying standup sets…

Special Thanks to Eric J. Blommel for narrating this story.  Eric is a counseling psychology graduate student. big time nerd. cci-fi and fantasy fan, long time computer geek, and brand new aquaponics gardner.

Realated Links:
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Groundhog Day
Doctor Who on Netflix
Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout, and All Clear by Connie Willis
Back To the Future Trilogy
12 Monkeys
Timeline by Michael Crichton (and its bad movie adaptation)
A Wrinkle in Time by H. G. Wells
The Time Machine by Madeline L'Engle

Music used in this production:
"Frannie" by Josh Woodward

Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space

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Journey #62 - Lieutenant Hornblower: Court of Inquiry by C.S. Forester (presented by BBC)

Upon overtaking the Spanish fort on Haiti, Lieutenant Hornblower and his fellow officers are in a position to negotiate surrender and to bombard any attempted escape.  However, a court of inquiry awaits them when they return to the British shores of Jamaica.

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The radio series "The Hornblower Story" (1968-69) was adapted from four of the Hornblower books by C.S.Forester. Dramatised into 20 half-hour parts by Val Gielgud, it was produced by Trevor Hill, and directed by Trevor Hill and Christopher Hayton Webb. Music by Johnny Pearson, special effects by David Fleming-Williams, Jack Hollinshead in conjunction with the Sea Training Association.


Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space


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Journey #61 - The Boy Who Could Bend and Fall by Ken Scholes

Focus Jones, a.k.a Slinky Boy, has an interesting way of escaping his reality.

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Ken Scholes grew up in a trailer outside a smallish logging town not far from the base of Mount Rainier in the Pacific Northwest.  Baptized into Story at a young age, he fed himself on Speed Racer, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants and Marine Boy sprinkled with a generous dose of dinosaur picture books.  When he was thirteen, he read Bradbury's essay "How to Keep and Feed a Muse" and knew he had to be a writer. When he was fourteen, he started writing stories of his own and by fifteen, he had started his own Rejection Slip Collection. 

After a long break away from writing, Ken returned to it after logging time as a sailor, soldier, preacher, musician, label gun repairman, retail manager and nonprofit director. He sold his first story to Talebones Magazine in 2000 and won the Writers of the Future contest in 2004. His quirky, offbeat fiction continues to show up in various magazines and anthologies like Polyphony 6, Weird Tales and Clarkesworld Magazine.

In 2006, his short story "Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise" appeared in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy. Later that year, inspired and taunted by his friends and family to finally write a novel, Ken extended that story aand Lamentation was born. Lamentation is the first in a five book series from Tor Books called The Psalms of Isaak.  He has since also written Canticle, Antiphon, and Requiem in that series.

Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes and their twin daughters: Elizabeth and Rachel.  If you'd like to know more about Ken, you can  contact him through his website or through his blog. 

Special Thanks to Christopher Munroe for producing this story.

Christopher Munroe is a author/actor/comedian from Calgary, Alberta whose fiction has appeared in the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, the Way of the Buffalo and Journey Into… podcasts, and numerous other places around the web, and whose debut novel, Broken Escalator, is available now in eBook and as a podcast at Podiobooks. He likes words and ideas, and occasionally has trouble seeing the difference between horror and comedy, which has led to unexpectedly amusing stories and absolutely terrifying standup sets…

Cast of characters:

Christopher Munroe as the Narrator, and Focus Jones
Brad Duffy as Someone
Alex McDonald as Another
Cliff Lowe as Ninja Bob
Kat Fullerton as Angela and/or Focus' wife
Laurence Simon as Uncle Joe
Michelle Ristuccia as Aunt Margaret
Alex Mackie as the Guidance Counselor
Becky Shrimpton as the Real Counselor

Realated Links:

"Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk" by Ken Scholes on Escape Pod
Salvdore Dali

Spellbound (1945)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Solaris (2002)
Sphere
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


Music used in this production:
"Trippy" by Voice


Several sound effects were found at freesound.org.


Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space

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Journey #60 - Space Patrol: Commander Corry

This is how Commander Buzz Corry received his position.

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The success of the Space Patrol TV show on ABC spawned an almost instant radio version, which ran from 4 October 1952 to 19 March 1955 producing approximately 129 episodes. The same cast of actors performed on both shows. The writers, scripts, adventures and director had some crossover between the radio and TV incarnations however; the radio broadcasts were not limited by the studio sets and became more expansive in scope and story than the television version.  Although there was seldom any deliberate crossing-over of storylines, some of the television villains regularly appeared on the radio (notably Prince Bacarratti).

Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space


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