Mindwebs: Free old science fiction radio plays
Kuranes sez, "Mindwebs was a radio series produced in Madison, Wisconsin in the late 70's and early 80's. It features semi-dramatized readings of stories by authors such as Norman Spinrad, Arthur C. Clarke, Gordon R. Dickson, and Ray Bradbury. I've been listening to it on the bus and it's really entertaining!"
Link
(Thanks, Kuranes!)
the latest
latest episodes
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Gordon Dixon is supposed to be Gordon R. Dickson
ARGH! Wel, there goes any chance for listening to music this week. ;) It's makes me want to haul out my (water damaged but readable) 40s/50s Amazing Science Fiction!
This is awesome.
Does anyone know where we might find some good metadata about all these files? The archive.org listing is pretty bare-bones. It'd be great to have info like author name and story title for each episode...
Plot summaries and writing credits for Mindweb episodes can be found here
http://www.otrplotspot.com/Mind%20Webs.htm
If you like this, I suggest a formidable NBC show from the 1950-51 radio season, Dimension X.
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Dimension_X
You can also find a companion show called X Minus One by searching on archive.org, it came later as network radio flamed out (1957). It's also excellent.
And yes, I am biased towards radio drama, it's a lost art in the United States.
Thanks for that.
If you like SciFi, be sure to check out the "Escape Pod" podcast, available through iTunes. Contemporary stories, many be well-known authors, and quality audio.
Here's a quick list by story with author, by doing some listening to the starts of some episodes not mentioned at the other resource. Some episodes have two stories, and there may be some others that do, too, I suppose.
Absalom - Henry Kuttner
Adam And No Evil - Alfred Bester
After The Myths Went Home - Robert Silverberg
Allegory - William T. Power
Apartment Hunting - Harvey Bilk and Audrey Bilk
A Beachhead In Utopia - Lloyd Biggle Jr
The Brink Of Infinity - Stanley G. Weinbaum
The Cage - A. Bertram Chandler
Carcinoma Angels - Norman Spinrad
Cephes 5 - Howard Fast
A Child Is Crying - John T. McDonald
Computers Don't Argue - Gordon R. Dickson
Corita - Roger Zelazny
The Country Of The Kind - Damon Knight
The Day Of The Butterflies - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Descending - Thomas Disch
The Devil Car - Roger Zelazny
Doing Lennon - Gregory Benford
Don't Look Now - Henry Kuttner
A Dream At NoonDay - Gardner Dozois
The Eel - Miriam Allen deFord
The End Of The World Rag - Jack C. Haldeman
The Enormous Radio - John Cheever
The Eternal Machine - William Spencer
The Ever-Branching Tree - Harry Harrison
The Exhibition - Scott Edelstein
The Fly - Arthur Porges
The Fog Horn - Ray Bradbury
The Food Farm - Kit Reed
The Funny Farm - Robert Bloch
Game For Motel Room - Fritz Leiber
The Garden Of Time - J. G. Ballard
The Hall Of Machines - Langdon Jones
Happily Ever After - William F. Nolan
Hands Of The Man - R. A. Lafferty
Harrison Beregeron - Kurt Vonnegut
I Kill Myself - Damien Kowalzyck
In The Abyss - H. G. Wells
In The Imagicon - George Henry Smith
In The Imagicon and Corita - George Henry Smith and Roger Zelazny
Kaleidoscope - Ray Bradbury
The Man From Earth - Gordon R. Dickson
The Man Who Returned - Edmond Hamilton
The Martian El Dorado Of Parker Whintley - Lin Carter
The Maze - Stuart Dybek
The Meeting - Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
Midnight Express - Alfred Nouyes
My Object All Sublime - Poul Anderson
A Night In Elf Hill - Norman Spinrad
The Night Of The Nickeled Beer - Kris Neville
The Night That All Time Broke Out - Brian W. Aldiss
The Nine Billion Names Of God - Arthur C. Clarke
None Before Me - Sydney Carroll
Paingod - Harlan Ellison
Paradise Regained - Cogswell Thomas
Paxtons World - Bill Pronzini
The Petrified World - Robert Sheckley
Phoenix - Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Place Of The Gods - Stephen Vincent Benet
The Plot Is The Thing - Robert Bloch
The Plot Is The Thing and Midnight Express - Robert Bloch and Alfred Nouyes
Pond Water - John Brunner
The Power Of The Sentence - David M. Locke
Promises To Keep - William F. Nolan
Pure Gold - Lord StDavids
The Racer - Ed Melchir
Remembrance To Come - Gene Wolfe
Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman - Harlan Ellison
Roller Ball Murder - William Harrison
The Rules Of The Road - Norman Spinrad
The Run - Christopher Priest
Running Around - Barry N. Malzberg
The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke
Singularities Make Me Nervous - Larry Niven
The Sky Was Full Of Ships - Theodore Sturgeon
The Snake - John Steinbeck
The Snake and the Fly - John Steinbeck
The Sound Machine - Roald Dahl
The Squirrel Cage - Thomas Disch
Stair Trick - Mildred Clingerman
The Star - Arthur C. Clarke
Subjectivity - Norman Spinrad
Summertime On Icarus - Arthur C. Clarke
The Swimmer - John Cheevre
The Tank And Its Wife - Arsene Garnet
A Taste For Dostoyevsky - Brian W. Aldiss
Test - Theodore L. Thomas
Test and the Nine Billion Names of God - Theodore L. Thomas and Arthur C. Clarke
That Only A Mother - Judith Merrill
They - Robert A. Heinlein
To See The Invisible Man - Robert Silverberg
To The Dark Star - Robert Silverberg
The Top - George Sumner Elders
Treasure Hunt - Joseph Green
The Unfinished - Frank Belknap Long
The Unremembered - Edward Mackin
The Valley Of Echoes - Gerard Klein
The Veldt - Ray Bradbury
A Walk In The Dark - Arthur C. Clarke
The Weapon - Frederic Brown
Webster - Greg Bear
When We Went To See The End Of The World - Robert Silverberg
The Winner - Donald E. Westlake
Winter Housekeeping - Molly Daniel
The Word and Stair Trick - Mildred Clingerman
The Word - Mildred Clingerman
The Worm - David Keller
Corrida, by Zelazny, too, not Corita. Doh.
I have an intense affection for this show. I was lucky enough to hear it while it was still on Wisconsin Public Radio (late Sunday nights, specifically) and managed to tape quite a few episodes in the final year it was on the air. The last broadcast I remember was in December 1995.
I went quite a few years with nothing but my dozen-odd recordings. When someone finally got around to putting their much larger collection on the 'net, I was overjoyed.
The great shame is that Michael Hanson took all the master recordings with him when he retired from WPR. So far as I know, he's made no effort to make them available to anyone else. Alas, alas!