Old Book Illustrations: Free Archive Lets You Download Beautiful Images From the Golden Age of Book Illustration

in Art, Books, Literature, Magazines | December 17th, 2015

monstre-balloon-768

Need­less to say, before the devel­op­ment and wide­spread use of pho­tog­ra­phy in mass pub­li­ca­tions, illus­tra­tions pro­vid­ed the only visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment to reli­gious texts, nov­els, books of poet­ry, sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies, and mag­a­zines lit­er­ary, lifestyle, and oth­er­wise. The devel­op­ment of tech­niques like etch­ing, engrav­ing, and lith­o­g­ra­phy enabled artists and print­ers to bet­ter col­lab­o­rate on more detailed and col­or­ful plates. But what­ev­er the media, behind each of the mil­lions of illus­tra­tions to appear in man­u­script and print—before and after Gutenberg—there was an artist. And many of those artists’ names are now well known to us as exem­plars of graph­ic art styles.

It was in the 19th cen­tu­ry that book and mag­a­zine illus­tra­tion began its gold­en age. Illus­tra­tions by artists like George Cruik­shank (see his “’Mon­stre’ Bal­loon” above”) were so dis­tinc­tive as to make their cre­ators famous. The huge­ly influ­en­tial Eng­lish satire mag­a­zine Punch, found­ed in 1841, became the first to use the word “car­toon” to mean a humor­ous illus­tra­tion, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a humor­ous cap­tion. The draw­ings of Punch car­toons were gen­er­al­ly more visu­al­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed than the aver­age New York­er car­toon, but their humor was often as pithy and oblique. And at times, it was nar­ra­tive, as in the car­toon below by French artist George Du Mau­ri­er.

physiology-courtship

The lengthy cap­tion beneath Du Maurier’s illus­tra­tion, “Punch’s phys­i­ol­o­gy of courtship,” intro­duces Edwin, a land­scape painter, who “is now per­suad­ing Angeli­na to share with him the hon­ours and prof­its of his glo­ri­ous career, propos­ing they should mar­ry on the pro­ceeds of his first pic­ture, now in progress (and which we have faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed above).” The humor is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Punch’s brand, as is the work of Du Mau­ri­er, a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor until his death. You can find much more of Cruik­shank and Du Mau­ri­er’s work at Old Book Illus­tra­tions, a pub­lic domain archive of illus­tra­tions from artists famous and not-so-famous. You’ll find there many oth­er resources as well, such as bio­graph­i­cal essays and a still-expand­ing online edi­tion of William Savage’s 1832 com­pendi­um of print­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy, A Dic­tio­nary of the Art of Print­ing.

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Old Book Illus­tra­tions allows you to down­load high res­o­lu­tion images of its hun­dreds of fea­tured scans, “though it appears,” writes Boing Boing, “the scans are some­times worse-for-wear.” Most of the illus­tra­tions also “come with lots of details about their orig­i­nal cre­ation and print­ing.” You’ll find there many illus­tra­tions from an artist we’ve fea­tured here sev­er­al times before, Gus­tave Doré (see “Gor­gons and Hydras” from his Par­adise Lost edi­tion, above). As much as artists like Cruik­shank and Du Mau­ri­er can be said to have dom­i­nat­ed the illus­tra­tion of peri­od­i­cals in the 19th cen­tu­ry, Doré dom­i­nat­ed the field of book illus­tra­tion. In a lauda­to­ry bio­graph­i­cal essay on the French artist, Elbert Hub­bard writes, “He stands alone: he had no pre­de­ces­sors, and he left no suc­ces­sors.” You’ll find a beau­ti­ful­ly, and mor­bid­ly, 19th cen­tu­ry illus­trat­ed edi­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry poet Fran­cis Quar­les’ Emblems, with pages like that below, illus­trat­ing “The Body of This Death.”

body-death-768

Not all of the illus­tra­tions at Old Book Illus­tra­tions date from the Vic­to­ri­an era, though most do. Some of the more strik­ing excep­tions come from Arthur Rack­ham, known pri­mar­i­ly as an ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry illus­tra­tor of fan­tasies and folk tales. See his “Pas de Deux” below from his edi­tion of The Ingolds­by Leg­ends. These are but a very few of the many hun­dreds of illus­tra­tions avail­able, and not all of them lit­er­ary or top­i­cal (see, for exam­ple, the “Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy” cat­e­go­ry). Be sure also to check out the OBI Scrap­book Blog, a run­ning log of illus­tra­tions from oth­er col­lec­tions and libraries.

pas-deux-768

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Orson Welles Narrates an Animated Parable About How Xenophobia & Greed Will Put America Into Decline (1971)

in Animation, Current Affairs, Film | December 17th, 2015

More than 40 years and sev­en pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions have passed since Orson Welles nar­rat­ed Free­dom Riv­er. And although it shows signs of age, the ani­mat­ed film, a para­ble about the role of immi­gra­tion, race, and wealth in Amer­i­ca, still res­onates today. Actu­al­ly, giv­en the cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of xeno­pho­bia dur­ing this most unpres­i­den­tial of pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, you could say that Free­dom River strikes a big­ger chord than it has in years. That’s why, after a five year hia­tus, we’re fea­tur­ing the ani­ma­tion once again on Open Cul­ture.

The back­sto­ry behind the film deserves a lit­tle men­tion. Accord­ing to Joseph Cavel­la, a writer for the film, it took a lit­tle cajol­ing and per­se­ver­ance to get Orson Welles involved in the film.

For sev­er­al years, Bosus­tow Pro­duc­tions had asked Orson Welles, then liv­ing in Paris, to nar­rate one of their films. He nev­er respond­ed. When I fin­ished the Free­dom Riv­er script, we sent it to him togeth­er with a portable reel to reel tape recorder and a siz­able check and crossed our fin­gers. He was either des­per­ate for mon­ey or (I would rather believe) some­thing in it touched him because two weeks lat­er we got the reel back with the nar­ra­tion word for word and we were on our way.

Indeed, they were.

Direct­ed by Sam Weiss, Free­dom Riv­er tells the sto­ry of decline–of a once great nation laps­ing into ugli­ness. Despite the myths we like to tell our­selves here in Amer­i­ca, the ugli­ness has always been there. Xeno­pho­bia, greed, racism (you could add a few more traits to the list) are noth­ing new. They just tend to sur­face more dur­ing hard times, or when dem­a­gogues make it per­mis­si­ble, which is pre­cise­ly what we’re see­ing right now. For­tu­nate­ly, Orson Welles’s nar­ra­tion leaves us with room to hope, with room to believe that wis­dom will pre­vail and that peo­ple will find bet­ter options than what the provo­ca­teurs have to offer.

You can find Free­dom Riv­er in the the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Orson Welles Names His 10 Favorite Films: From Chaplin’s City Lights to Ford’s Stage­coach

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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Creativity, Not Money, is the Key to Happiness: Discover Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s Theory of “Flow”

in Creativity, Psychology | December 16th, 2015

The title of the TED talk above, “Flow, the secret to hap­pi­ness,” might make you roll your eyes. It does indeed sound like self-help snake oil. But as soon as you hear the speak­er, psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, describe the ratio­nale for his hap­pi­ness study, you might pay more seri­ous atten­tion. After liv­ing through the Sec­ond World War in Europe (he grew up in what is now Croa­t­ia), Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi says he “real­ized how few of the grownups I knew were able to with­stand the tragedies that were vis­it­ed upon them; how few of them could even resem­ble a nor­mal, con­tent­ed, sat­is­fied, hap­py life once their job, their home, their secu­ri­ty was destroyed by the war.”

He became inter­est­ed, he says, “in under­stand­ing what con­tributed to a life that was worth liv­ing.” Csik­szent­mi­ha­ly­i’s con­cerns are far from triv­ial, and his back­ground and wealth of research lend his ideas a good deal of weight and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

After chanc­ing upon a Jun­gian lec­ture in Switzer­land by a speak­er who turned out to actu­al­ly be Carl Jung, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi embarked on a course of study in the field now wide­ly known as “pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy.” He now co-directs the Qual­i­ty of Life Research Cen­ter at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty and stud­ies “human strengths such as cre­ativ­i­ty, engage­ment, intrin­sic moti­va­tion, and respon­si­bil­i­ty.” Yes, he may present his ideas in pop­u­lar self-help books and arti­cles, but this does not make his data or con­clu­sions any less sound than in his aca­d­e­m­ic work. “Flow” is the short­hand word he uses to refer to the the­sis of his book of the same name: “A per­son can him­self [or her­self] be hap­py, or mis­er­able, regard­less of what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing ‘out­side,’ just by chang­ing the con­tents of con­scious­ness.”

What does this mean? Youtu­ber Fight Medi­oc­rity’s short book video book review above—which also teach­es us how to pro­nounce Csik­szent­mi­ha­ly­i’s name—explains the con­cept in brief, not­ing the book’s ref­er­ences to Sto­ic philoso­phers Epicte­tus and Mar­cus Aure­lius and psy­chol­o­gist and Holo­caust sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl to point out that the idea isn’t new but has been around for cen­turies: The idea being, as Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi says in his TED talk, that we nat­u­ral­ly expe­ri­ence the great­est hap­pi­ness when ful­ly absorbed in work we find mean­ing­ful and ful­fill­ing. What Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi calls “flow” is a med­i­ta­tive state we might com­pare to the ancient Bud­dhist state of ekag­ga­ta—or “one-point­ed concentration”—a state med­i­ta­tion teacher Shaila Cather­ine describes as “cer­tain­ty, deep sta­bil­i­ty, and clar­i­ty…. The mind is com­plete­ly uni­fied and ‘one with the expe­ri­ence.’”

Indeed, like the Bud­dhist con­cep­tion, which con­trasts ekag­ga­ta with a rest­less greed that can nev­er be sat­is­fied, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi con­trasts “flow” with wealth, and cites research sug­gest­ing that above a cer­tain lev­el of basic mate­r­i­al well-being (which far too many peo­ple do not yet have), “increas­es in mate­r­i­al resources do not increase hap­pi­ness.” Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi part­ly reached his con­clu­sions by study­ing the emo­tion­al states of artists, musi­cians, sci­en­tists, and oth­er cre­ative indi­vid­u­als, who all report­ed expe­ri­enc­ing pure states of con­tent­ment and joy when so ful­ly con­cen­trat­ed on their work that they for­got themselves—or, more accu­rate­ly, the con­stel­la­tion of dai­ly anx­i­eties, regrets, wor­ries, fan­tasies, and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that we tend to call the self. As Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi strong­ly sug­gests in his books and talks, the more we can lose our­selves intense­ly in cre­ative activ­i­ties that bring us ful­fill­ment, the clos­er we come to being in har­mo­ny with our­selves and our world.

See anoth­er talk on “flow” and hap­pi­ness above, from a 2014 “Hap­pi­ness & its Caus­es” con­fer­ence in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

All You Need is Love: The Keys to Hap­pi­ness Revealed by a 75-Year Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Slavoj Žižek: What Full­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Does Sound Look Like?: The Audible Rendered Visible Through Clever Technology

in Photography, Physics | December 16th, 2015

How can you make the invis­i­ble, vis­i­ble? One way to do it is through a nine­teenth cen­tu­ry pho­tog­ra­phy tech­nique called Schlieren Flow Visu­al­iza­tion. Bet­ter demon­strat­ed than explained, the NPR video above shows Schlieren Flow Visu­al­iza­tion in action, ren­der­ing vis­i­ble (after the 2:00 minute mark) the sounds of hands clap­ping, a tow­el snap­ping, a fire­crack­er crack­ing, and an AK-47 fir­ing off a round. The images, which cap­ture changes in air den­si­ty, were pro­vid­ed by Michael Har­gath­er, a pro­fes­sor who leads the Shock and Gas Dynam­ics Lab­o­ra­to­ry at New Mex­i­co Tech.

via NPR 

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing WiFi Sig­nals with Light

George Mason Stu­dents Cre­ate Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Fire Extin­guish­er That Uses Sound Waves to Blow Out Fires

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Dis­tor­tion of Sound: A Short Film on How We’ve Cre­at­ed “a McDonald’s Gen­er­a­tion of Music Con­sumers”

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William S. Burroughs Narrates a Claymation of His Grim Holiday Story “The Junky’s Christmas”

in Literature, Music | December 16th, 2015

Let’s face it, the hol­i­days are a mis­er­able time of year for many peo­ple. Writ­ers have mined this fact for pathos and much dark humor in sto­ries fea­tur­ing low-rent mall San­tas, squab­bling fam­i­ly din­ners, inept home invaders, and King of the Hill’s res­i­dent sad sack, Bill Dau­terive. Most nar­ra­tives of unhap­py hol­i­days end with some kind of redemption—someone dis­cov­ers a Christ­mas mir­a­cle, the real San­ta shows up, the Grinch’s heart grows to near­ly burst­ing from his chest, Ebenez­er Scrooge repents….

What if the redemp­tion is one down-and-out junky shar­ing his only fix with a man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones—that is, after the junky spends the day try­ing to steal enough to buy hero­in, finds a suit­case con­tain­ing two sev­ered human legs, and final­ly scores a lit­tle mor­phine by gold­brick­ing at a crooked doctor’s house? That’s the plot of William S. Bur­roughs’ sto­ry “The Junky’s Christ­mas,” which appeared in the 1989 col­lec­tion Inter­zone and there­after achieved some noto­ri­ety in two adap­ta­tions from 1993.

The first (above)—produced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and direct­ed by Nick Donkin and Melodie McDaniel—-animates a read­ing by Bur­roughs in Clay­ma­tion, with appear­ances from the man him­self at the begin­ning and end. The sto­ry ends with a Christ­mas mir­a­cle of sorts, the “immac­u­late fix” the main char­ac­ter Dan­ny receives as if from heav­en after his unselfish act. It ain’t Frank Capra, but it’s a lot clos­er to some people’s real lives than It’s a Won­der­ful Life’s angel­ic vis­i­ta­tion.

Also in 1993, Bur­roughs col­lab­o­rat­ed with anoth­er artist plagued by addic­tion, enter­ing a stu­dio in Lawrence, Kansas with Kurt Cobain to read an ear­li­er ver­sion of “The Junky’s Christ­mas” titled “The ‘Priest’ They Called Him.” (Hear it in the fan-made video above.) This ver­sion of the sto­ry also has the suit­case full of sev­ered legs, but this time the recip­i­ent of the junky’s char­i­ty is a dis­abled Mex­i­can fel­low addict suf­fer­ing from with­draw­al. Under­neath Bur­roughs’ dead­pan, Cobain plays bars of “Silent Night” on a gui­tar that sounds like it’s being stran­gled to death. You can read Bur­roughs’ ear­li­er unhap­py Christ­mas sto­ry in full here. And if you’re still not bummed out enough, check out Nerve’s “Ten Most Depress­ing Christ­mas Songs Ever Record­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Naked Lunch, His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el

Watch William S. Bur­roughs’ Ah Pook is Here as an Ani­mat­ed Film, with Music By John Cale

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Makes Yasujirō Ozu a Great Filmmaker? New Video Essay Explains His Long-Admired Cinematic Style

in Film | December 16th, 2015

If you can rank the work of a film­mak­er by the num­ber of video essays it inspires, then Yasu­jirō Ozu must have made some of the great­est motion pic­tures of all time. Wes Ander­son, despite hav­ing got his start 65 years lat­er than Ozu, would also place well — and nat­u­ral­ly, as we post­ed back in July, one video essay even exam­ines the two men’s films (on most lev­els so seem­ing­ly dif­fer­ent) in par­al­lel. But today, let’s take a clos­er look at the mid­cen­tu­ry Japan­ese auteur of Tokyo Sto­ry, Float­ing Weeds, Late Spring and many more in iso­la­tion, through Lewis Bond’s new video essay “The Depth of Sim­plic­i­ty.”

At first glance, most of Ozu’s more than thir­ty films — domes­tic dra­mas which, as crit­ic Don­ald Richie wrote in his study of the direc­tor, “had but one major sub­ject, the Japan­ese fam­i­ly, and but one major theme, its dis­so­lu­tion” — might seem sim­i­lar to each oth­er. But that first glance only reveals the para­me­ters with­in which Ozu decid­ed to work, the stric­tures that engaged his genius. “Although I may seem the same to oth­er peo­ple,” he said in the quote that opens “The Depth of Sim­plic­i­ty,” “to me each thing I pro­duce is a new expres­sion and I always make each work from a new inter­est. It’s like a painter who always paints the same rose.” (Or maybe the same tea ket­tle?)

“Ozu want­ed to cap­ture the cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty of every­day life,” says Bond, “and doing so required a very spe­cif­ic style.” Rather than adding tech­niques on to his cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary, Ozu elim­i­nat­ed them, mak­ing com­plete and mean­ing­ful use of those that remained: rig­or­ous, paint­ing-like com­po­si­tions using frames with­in frames; a low-placed cam­era (set, leg­end has it, around the height of some­one sit­ting on a tra­di­tion­al tata­mi mat) that hard­ly ever moves and always uses a human eye­sight-like 50-mil­lime­ter lens; dia­logue that cuts between straight-on close-ups of each speak­er (break­ing film­mak­ing’s sacred “180-degree rule” every time).

These tech­niques and oth­ers, which “seem false at first glance but begin to weave their way into the tex­ture of his films,” give Ozu’s work what Bond calls its “radi­ant­ly calm tone,” its abil­i­ty to “strad­dle the line of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and objec­tiv­i­ty,” and its expres­sion of mono no aware, one of those not-espe­cial­ly-trans­lat­able Japan­ese con­cepts hav­ing to do with the dis­tinc­tive emo­tion felt upon recog­ni­tion of the tran­sience of all things. Of course, Ozu him­self, who com­pared him­self to a hum­ble tofu-mak­er, would nev­er have made such claims. “I just want to make good tofu,” he said, and cinephiles the world over con­tin­ue to eat it up today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Yasu­jiro Ozu, “the Most Japan­ese of All Film Direc­tors”

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear 6 Classic Philip K. Dick Stories Adapted as Vintage Radio Plays

in Radio, Sci Fi | December 15th, 2015

As you can prob­a­bly tell if you’ve inter­act­ed with any of his hard-core fans, the sci­ence fic­tion of Philip K. Dick has a way of get­ting into read­ers’ heads. What bet­ter way to adapt it, then, than in the medi­um of radio dra­ma, with its direct route into the head through the ears? Sci­ence fic­tion in gen­er­al pro­vid­ed radio dra­ma with a good deal of bread-and-but­ter sub­ject mat­ter since pret­ty much its incep­tion, and suit­ably so: its pro­duc­ers did­n’t have to both­er design­ing dis­tant worlds, alien races and elab­o­rate­ly futur­is­tic tech­nolo­gies when, with the right sound design, the lis­ten­ers would design it all them­selves in their imag­i­na­tions.

But does it real­ly do jus­tice to Dick to call his work “sci­ence fic­tion”? Sure, he knocked out a fair few straight-ahead (or sub-straight-ahead) sci-fi pot­boil­ers in his pro­duc­tive career, but many of his writ­ings, despite their rough edges, qual­i­fy under Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s def­i­n­i­tion of great works of lit­er­a­ture, which “either dis­solve a genre or invent one.”

Some of Dick­’s nov­els and sto­ries even seem to do both at once, cre­at­ing their own par­tic­u­lar (as well as pecu­liar) psy­cho­log­i­cal space in the process. Can radio dra­ma ren­der a Dick­ian world of mul­ti­lay­ered real­i­ty and rich para­noia as eas­i­ly as it does so many Mar­t­ian colonies, laser guns, and sen­tient com­put­ers? So you can judge that for your­self, we sub­mit today for your approval six radio plays adapt­ed from Dick­’s sto­ries.

From the series Mind Webs, which ran on Wis­con­sin pub­lic radio from the 1970s to the 90s, we have “Impos­tor,” “The Pre­serv­ing Machine,” and “The Builder.”

From NBC’s ven­er­a­ble X Minus One, which defined sci-fi at the tail end of old time radio’s “Gold­en Age,” we have “Colony” and “The Defend­ers.”

Into the mix we also throw Sci-Fi Radio’s “Sales Pitch,” Dick­’s satir­i­cal tale of a self-mar­ket­ing robot.  Some of this mate­r­i­al, of course, sounds not ter­ri­bly dif­fer­ent than the whiz-bang sto­ries of out­er-space adven­ture chil­dren of the 1950s grew up lov­ing.

But some of it sounds alto­geth­er more, well… Dick­ian. Those chil­dren of the 1950s, after all, grew into the twen­tysome­things of the late 1960s and 70s, who knew a thing or two about tun­ing in to a dif­fer­ent head­space.

Find these sto­ries list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to 188 Dra­ma­tized Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries by Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard & More

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Pre­dic­tions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Virus­es & More (1981)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Religious Songs That Secular People Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash & Your Favorites

in Music, Religion | December 15th, 2015

There are good rea­sons to find the onslaught of reli­gious music this time of year objec­tion­able. And yet—though I want to do my part in the War on Christmas—I don’t so much object to the con­tent of Christ­mas songs. It’s the music! It’s hack­neyed and tired and gross­ly over­played and a lot of it was nev­er very good to begin with. I’d make the same dis­tinc­tion with any kind of music, reli­gious or oth­er­wise. I grew up in church­es full of Chris­t­ian music, and a lot of it was just ter­ri­ble: the worst of kind of soft rock or adult con­tem­po­rary paired with lyrics so insipid they would make the gospel writers—whoever they were—cringe. Updates with the slick pro­duc­tion of alt-rock, hip-hop, or pop-coun­try styles have only made things worse. On the oth­er hand, some of the most pow­er­ful and mov­ing music I’ve ever heard comes from the church, whether Han­del, The Sta­ples Singers, the Lou­vin Broth­ers, or so many oth­er clas­si­cal and gospel artists and com­posers.

Any­one with a deep affec­tion for West­ern clas­si­cal music prob­a­bly has their share of favorite Chris­t­ian music, what­ev­er their per­son­al beliefs. So, too, do fans of Amer­i­can folk, blues, and coun­try. Some artists have cov­ered the odd reli­gious tune as part of a broad roots reper­toire, like the Byrds’ cov­er of Blue­grass gospel leg­ends the Lou­vin Broth­ers’ corn­ball “The Chris­t­ian Life,” above, from 1968’s Sweet­heart of the Rodeo. Though Gram Par­sons, with the band for the record­ing of this album, had his tra­di­tion­al lean­ings, his musi­cal reli­gion was more “Cos­mic Amer­i­can” than Chris­t­ian. But before Par­sons joined the band and turned ‘em full coun­try rock for a time, the Byrds record­ed anoth­er reli­gious song, one of their biggest hits—Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” (below), which cribs all of its lyrics ver­ba­tim from Chap­ter 3 of the Book of Eccle­si­astes (eas­i­ly the non-reli­gious person’s favorite book of the Bible).

Oth­er Amer­i­can leg­ends have turned to faith in dra­mat­ic con­ver­sions and have writ­ten earnest, orig­i­nal reli­gious music. Most famous­ly, we have the case of Bob Dylan, whose con­ver­sion to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty saw him pros­e­ly­tiz­ing from the stage. He also wrote some beau­ti­ful songs like “Pre­cious Angel,” at the top of the post, which he claimed was for the woman who brought him to Chris­tian­i­ty (and which sup­pos­ed­ly con­tains a dig at his ex-wife Sara for not con­vert­ing him). Though it fea­tures some of the more dis­turb­ing lyri­cal turns Dylan has tak­en in his career, it’s one of my favorite tunes of his from this strange peri­od, not least because of the bril­liant gui­tar work of Mark Knopfler.

What­ev­er beliefs he’s claimed over the decades, Dylan’s music has always been reli­gious in some sense, part­ly because of the Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tions he draws on. Almost all of the ear­ly R&B and rock and roll artists came from the folk gospel world, from Elvis to Lit­tle Richard to Jer­ry Lee Lewis. Notably, the gold­en-voiced Sam Cooke got his start as a gospel singer with sev­er­al vocal groups, includ­ing his own The Soul Stir­rers. The har­monies in their ren­di­tion of gospel clas­sic “Far­ther Along” (above) give me chills every time I hear it, even though I don’t cred­it the song’s beliefs.

It’s a com­mon feel­ing I get with Amer­i­can soul, blues, and coun­try singers who moved in and out of the pop­u­lar and gospel worlds. Then there are those artists who left gospel for out­law star­dom, then returned to the fold and embraced their church roots lat­er in life. A prime exam­ple of this kind of spir­i­tu­al, and musi­cal, renew­al is that of John­ny Cash. There are many sides of gospel Cash. Per­haps the most poignant of his reli­gious record­ings come from his final years. Though it suf­fers from some com­mer­cial overuse, Cash’s record­ing of blues clas­sic “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” (often titled “Run On”), above, is equal parts men­ac­ing and haunt­ing, a Chris­t­ian-themed memen­to mori that caught on big with lots of sec­u­lar music fans.

The list of reli­gious music that non-reli­gious peo­ple love could go on and on. Though the exam­ples here are explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian, they cer­tain­ly don’t have to be. There’s Yusef Islam, for­mer­ly Cat Stevens, who came back to record stir­ring orig­i­nal music after his con­ver­sion to Islam, and whose pow­er­ful “Morn­ing has Bro­ken” moves believ­ers and non-believ­ers alike. There’s Bob Mar­ley, or any num­ber of pop­u­lar Rasta­far­i­an reg­gae artists. Then there are more con­tem­po­rary artists mak­ing reli­gious music for large­ly sec­u­lar audi­ences. One could ref­er­ence indie dar­ling Suf­jan Stevens, whose reli­gious beliefs are cen­tral to his song­writ­ing. And there’s a favorite of mine, Mark Lane­gan, for­mer Scream­ing Trees singer and cur­rent rock and roll jour­ney­man who often works with reli­gious themes and imagery, most notably in the glo­ri­ous “Revival,” above, with the Soul­savers project.

The love many non-reli­gious peo­ple have for some reli­gious music often comes from a reli­gious upbring­ing, some­thing singer/songwriter Iris Dement dis­cussed in a recent inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air. Dement has record­ed one of the most mov­ing ren­di­tions of a hymn I remem­ber fond­ly from child­hood church days: a pow­er­ful­ly spare ver­sion of “Lean­ing on the Ever­last­ing Arms” from the 2010 True Grit sound­track. She’s also writ­ten what may be one of the best reli­gious songs for sec­u­lar (or non-reli­gious, or post-reli­gious, what­ev­er…) peo­ple. In “Let the Mys­tery Be,” above, Demen­t’s agnos­tic refrain express­es a very sen­si­ble atti­tude, in my view: “But no one knows for cer­tain and so it’s all the same to me / I think I’ll just let the mys­tery be.”

These are but a few of the reli­gious songs that move this most­ly sec­u­lar per­son. Whether you’re reli­gious or not, what are some of your favorite reli­gious songs that have broad crossover appeal? Feel free to name your favorites in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Reli­gions of Bob Dylan: From Deliv­er­ing Evan­gel­i­cal Ser­mons to Singing Hava Nag­i­la With Har­ry Dean Stan­ton

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Athe­ist Ira Glass Believes Chris­tians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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