Month: August 2016

Rolling Stone recently published a list of their all-time best TV shows.

Just for fun, see if you can name these shows which are on the list.

Answers: Torchwood, AstroBoy, Firefly, Quatermass Experiment, Utopia, Star Trek Next Gen, Dollhouse, Black Mirror, Outer Limits (Demon with a Glass Hand),  Star Trek (The Trouble with Tribbles), Quatermass and the Pit, Orphan Black, X-Files, Fringe, Buffy, Dr Who, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (remake), The Prisoner

Take a trip down the Einstein Highway where the course of mighty rivers can be changed, journey into space travelling the universe with Speed King, King of Space, Rocky Starr, and Captain Miracle, passing beyond the stars on to the conquest of time itself, and, on the day of the triffids, be menaced by Man, Mark 2.

These were the worlds of science fiction broadcast on radio in nineteen-fifties Australia. You too can be exposed to the radioactivity of the air waves. Only scattered fragments in the fading memories of one who was there and heard too much. This is your chance to catch a few rays.

Quick audio quiz:

• Which hardboiled detective has been dealing with angels in Chicago?
  The Angel’s Kiss by Melodie Malone is the book the Doctor was reading when he and Amy and Rory were sitting in Central Park at the beginning of The Angels Take Manhattan. The book has been properly completed, and was released as a BBC audiobook, read by Alex Kingston. So the answer is Melodie Malone/Alex Kingston
• Which series is set in a world where disputes are settled by duels, often fought by professional swords for hire?
  Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint trilogy
  
• What radio serial is connected by the London tube stations? (Hint: not Mornington Crescent.)
  It is, of course, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It started out as a 6-part TV series, followed by a novelisation, audio book, complete extended edition novel. It’s also appeared as a comic written by Mike Carey. In 2010 it became a hit stage play for Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre. March 2013 saw an all-star radio adaptation by BBC 4

  

• Who are the Android Sisters and how are they connected to PK Dick?
  Two frankies (androids) who appear in the first Ruby radio series, singing songs including Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?, the title of the PK Dick novel made into the film Bladerunner.
• Name two australian podcasts which have been nominated for Hugo and/or world fantasy awards. Galactic Suburbia, The Coode St Podcast, The Writer and the Critic were all nominated for fancast Hugos in 2014; Galactic Suburbia won in 2015.