Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tantalizing Animation

in Animation, Sci Fi | November 23rd, 2015

Last year we fea­tured art­work from the Dune movie that nev­er was, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, the mys­ti­cism-mind­ed Chilean direc­tor of such oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing pic­tures as El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, and the artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Mœbius, cre­ator of oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing comics as Arzach, Blue­ber­ry, and The Air­tight Garage. If ever a meet­ing of two cre­ative minds made more sense, I haven’t heard about it. Alas, Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ work did­n’t lead to their own Dune movie, but it did­n’t mark the end of their artis­tic part­ner­ship, as any­one who’s read The Incal knows full well.

Telling a meta­phys­i­cal, satir­i­cal, space-oper­at­ic sto­ry in the form of com­ic books orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished through­out the 1980s (with sequel and pre­quel series to come over the fol­low­ing 25 years), The Incal on the page became the fullest real­iza­tion of Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ com­bined vision.

Its suc­cess made it a log­i­cal can­di­date for film adap­ta­tion, and so direc­tor Pas­cal Blais brought togeth­er artists from Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine (in which Mœbius first pub­lished some of his best known work) to make it hap­pen. It result­ed in noth­ing more than a trail­er, but what a trail­er; you can watch a recent­ly revamped edi­tion of the one Blais and his col­lab­o­ra­tors put togeth­er in the 1980s at the top of the post.

Any Incal fan who watch­es this spruced-up trail­er will imme­di­ate­ly want noth­ing more in this life than to see a fea­ture-film ver­sion of dis­solute pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor John DiFool, his con­crete seag­ull Deepo, and the tit­u­lar all-pow­er­ful crys­tal that sets the sto­ry in motion. And any­one not yet ini­ti­at­ed into the sci­ence-fic­tion “Jodoverse” for which The Incal forms the basis will want to plunge into the com­ic books at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. Per­haps Blais will one day ful­ly revive the project; until then, we’ll have to con­tent our­selves with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Ele­ment (with its Mœbius-devel­oped pro­duc­tion design, sim­i­lar enough to The Incal’s to have sparked a law­suit) and maybe, just maybe, a live-action adap­ta­tion from Dri­ve direc­tor Nicholas Wind­ing Refn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Mœbius Illus­trates Paulo Coelho’s Inspi­ra­tional Nov­el The Alchemist (1998)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

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, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Ursula K. Le Guin’s Story, “The End” Dramatized: A Rare Audio Treat

in Radio, Sci Fi | October 11th, 2015

le guin

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Gor­thi­an

Mind Webs, a 1970’s radio series cre­at­ed by WHA Radio in Wis­con­sin, fea­tured dra­ma­tized read­ings of clas­sic sci fi sto­ries by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Brad­bury and Philip K. Dick. You can learn more about the series, and access a com­plete set of record­ings here. Below, we’ve high­light­ed for you a drama­ti­za­tion of an Ursu­la K. Le Guin sto­ry, “The End.” It’s rare to encounter an audio record­ing of a Le Guin sto­ry online, so we hope you enjoy. “The End” is now added to our col­lec­tion: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. And if you’re look­ing to immerse your­self in Le Guin’s fic­tion, give her ground­break­ing nov­el The Left Hand of Dark­ness a try. It won the Hugo and Neb­u­la Awards (the top award for fan­ta­sy/s­ci-fi nov­els) in 1969.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

And note this: Audiobooks.com also has a free tri­al offer where you can down­load a free audio­book. Details.

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The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Seminal Sci-Fi Novel The War of the Worlds

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | October 7th, 2015

As you know if you saw our pre­vi­ous posts fea­tur­ing Leonard Nimoy’s read­ings of sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury and Isaac Asi­mov, the late Star Trek icon could — unsur­pris­ing­ly, per­haps — tell a sci­ence-fic­tion tale with the best of them. It turns out that he could also give mas­ter­ful read­ings of sci­ence fic­tion from oth­er eras too, as far back as the ear­li­est works to define the genre, which we’ve dis­cov­ered after hear­ing his per­for­mance of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, an out-of-print edi­tion recent­ly dig­i­tized from cas­sette tape and post­ed to Youtube in two parts.

With this sto­ry of Earth invad­ed from “across the gulf of space” by aliens with “minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that per­ish, intel­lects vast and cool and unsym­pa­thet­ic,” Wells did much to help give sci­ence fic­tion the form we rec­og­nize today. The War of the Worlds came out in book form in 1898, pre­ced­ed by such sim­i­lar­ly spec­u­la­tive and inno­v­a­tive works as The Time Machine and The Invis­i­ble Man, and then fol­lowed by the likes of The First Men in the Moon and The Shape of Things to Come. (Find most of these works neat­ly pack­aged in the HG Wells Clas­sic Col­lec­tion.) This Leonard Nimoy record­ing orig­i­nal­ly came out in 1976, pub­lished by the record label Caed­mon, known for doing plen­ty of inno­va­tion of their own in the then-yet-unnamed field of audio­books.

Caed­mon put out not just this album and the one with Nimoy read­ing Brad­bury, but oth­ers fea­tur­ing Kurt Von­negut, Vin­cent Price, Ten­nessee Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and Sylvia Plath. As much as sci­ence-fic­tion die-hards will enjoy hear­ing this pair­ing of Nimoy and Wells here, some will cer­tain­ly want to track down the actu­al LP — not just for the col­lec­tors’ val­ue, but because it fea­tures lin­er notes by none oth­er than that oth­er vast­ly influ­en­tial cre­ator of sci-fi as we know it, Isaac Asi­mov. It looks like there’s one used copy on Ama­zon. The read­ing, we should note, is an abridged ver­sion of the orig­i­nal text.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Radio Dramas of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy & 7 Classic Asimov Stories

in Radio, Sci Fi | September 22nd, 2015

asimov-culture-of-ignorance

Paint­ing of Asi­mov on his throne by Rowe­na Morill, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Isaac Asi­mov’s huge­ly influ­en­tial sci­ence fic­tion clas­sic The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy will soon, it seems, become an HBO series, reach­ing the same audi­ences who were won over by the Game of Thrones adap­ta­tions. We can expect favorite char­ac­ter arcs to emerge, per­haps dis­tort­ing the orig­i­nal nar­ra­tive; we can expect plen­ty of inter­net memes and new rip­ples of influ­ence through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In fact, if the series becomes a real­i­ty, and catch­es on the way most HBO shows do—either with a mass audi­ence or a lat­er devot­ed cult following—I think we can expect much renewed inter­est in the field of “psy­chohis­to­ry,” the futur­is­tic sci­ence prac­ticed by the nov­els’ hero Hari Sel­don.

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This is no small thing. Foun­da­tion has inspired a great many sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers, from Dou­glas Adams to George Lucas. But it has also guid­ed the careers of peo­ple whose work has more imme­di­ate real-world con­se­quences, like econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man and fer­vent advo­cate of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy Mar­tin Selig­man. “The tril­o­gy real­ly is a unique mas­ter­piece,” writes Krug­man,” there has nev­er been any­thing quite like it.” The fic­tion­al sci­ence of psy­chohis­to­ry inspired the exper­i­men­tal pre­dic­tive tech­niques Selig­man devel­oped and described in his book Learned Opti­mism:

In his impos­si­ble-to-put-down Foun­da­tion Trilogy—I read it in one thir­ty-hour burst of ado­les­cent excitement—Asimov invents a great hero for pim­ply, intel­lec­tu­al kids…. “Wow!” thought this impres­sion­able ado­les­cent…. That “Wow!” has stayed with me all my life.

If you’re think­ing that the epic scale of Asi­mov’s sprawl­ing trilogy—one he explic­it­ly mod­eled after Edward Gib­bon’s mul­ti-vol­ume His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—will prove impos­si­ble to real­ize on the screen, you may be right. On the oth­er hand, Asi­mov’s prose has lent itself par­tic­u­lar­ly well to an old­er dra­mat­ic medi­um: the radio play. As we not­ed in an ear­li­er post on a pop­u­lar 1973 BBC adap­ta­tion of the tril­o­gy, Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card once described the books as “all talk, no action.” This may sound like a dis­par­age­ment, except, Card went on to say, “Asi­mov’s talk is action.”


Today, we bring you sev­er­al dif­fer­ent radio adap­ta­tions of Asi­mov’s fic­tion, and you can hear the many ways his fas­ci­nat­ing con­cepts, trans­lat­ed into equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, and yes, talky, fic­tion, have inspired writ­ers, sci­en­tists, film­mak­ers, and “pim­ply, intel­lec­tu­al kids” alike for decades. At the top of the post, hear the entire, eight-hour BBC adap­ta­tion of Foun­da­tion from start to fin­ish. You can also stream and down­load indi­vid­ual episodes on Spo­ti­fy and at Youtube and the Inter­net Archive. Below it, we have clas­sic sci-fi radio dra­ma series Dimen­sion X’s drama­ti­za­tions of “Peb­ble in the Sky” and “Night­fall,” both from 1951.

Also hear two Asi­mov’s sto­ries “The ‘C’ Chute” and “Hostess”—both pro­duced by Dimen­sion X suc­ces­sor X Minus One. These series, wrote Col­in Mar­shall in a pre­vi­ous post, “show­case Amer­i­can cul­ture at its mid-20th-cen­tu­ry finest: for­ward-look­ing, tem­pera­men­tal­ly bold, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly adept, and sat­u­rat­ed with earnest­ness but for the occa­sion­al sur­pris­ing­ly know­ing irony or bleak edge of dark­ness.”

Not to be out­done by these two pro­grams, Mutu­al Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem cre­at­ed Explor­ing Tomor­row, a “sci­ence fic­tion show of sci­ence-fic­tion­eers, by sci­ence-fic­tion­eers and for sci­ence-fic­tion­eers” that ran briefly from 1957 to 1958. Below, they adapt Asi­mov’s sto­ry “The Liar.”

These old-time radio dra­mas will cer­tain­ly appeal to the nos­tal­gia of peo­ple who were alive to hear them when they first aired. But while their pro­duc­tion val­ues will nev­er come close to match­ing those of HBO, they offer some­thing for younger lis­ten­ers as well—an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get lost in Asi­mov’s com­plex ideas, and to engage the imag­i­na­tion in ways tele­vi­sion does­n’t allow. Whether or not Foun­da­tion ever suc­cess­ful­ly makes it to the small screen, I would love to see Asi­mov’s fiction—in print, on the radio, on screen, or on the internet—continue to inspire new sci­en­tif­ic and social vision­ar­ies for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy: Hear the 1973 Radio Drama­ti­za­tion

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

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

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

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Who Was Afraid of Ray Bradbury & Science Fiction? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

in History, Sci Fi | August 25th, 2015

ray bradbury fbi fb

When you think of the most astute minds of our time, you might well think of Ray Brad­bury’s — but you prob­a­bly don’t think of him as one of the most astute ter­ror­ist minds of our time. The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, how­ev­er, saw things dif­fer­ent­ly. Col­lab­o­ra­tive news site Muck­Rock found that out through files “released to for­mer Muck­Rock­er Inkoo Kang [which] doc­u­ment the decade the Bureau spent try­ing to deter­mine if Brad­bury was, if not a card-car­ry­ing Com­mu­nist, at least a sym­pa­thet­ic ‘fel­low trav­el­er.’ ” See snip­pets of doc­u­ments here from 1959.

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You can view the files them­selves, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, at Muck­Rock. There, the site’s JPat Brown also sum­ma­rizes the orga­ni­za­tion’s basis for sus­pi­cion against the author: his “mem­ber­ship in the Screen Writer’s Guild, as well as his vocal oppo­si­tion to McCarthy­ism, drew par­tic­u­lar atten­tion,” as did the use in The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles of the “repeat­ed theme that earth­men are despoil­ers and not devel­op­ers.” Not just Brad­bury’s work but the whole of sci­ence fic­tion, which infor­mant Mar­tin Berke­ley calls a pos­si­bly “lucra­tive field for the intro­duc­tion of Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy,” comes in for an indict­ment.

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“Com­mu­nists have found fer­tile oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ment,” Berke­ley says, “for spread­ing dis­trust and lack of con­fi­dence in Amer­i­ca [sic] insti­tu­tions in the area of Sci­ence Fic­tion writ­ing.” Anoth­er, unsur­pris­ing­ly clear­er view of the genre comes from Brad­bury him­self, quot­ed dis­ap­prov­ing­ly in the file from a 1959 Wom­en’s Leg­isla­tive Action Bul­letin. There, he said he uses the medi­um of sci­ence fic­tion to “try to bring to light some of the cur­rent fal­lac­i­es in human val­ues today” — the one thing, as the author of Fahren­heit 451 must have known full well, that the pow­ers that be least want any­body to do. Get more at Muck­Rock.

bradconclu

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: “I Am Not Afraid of Robots. I Am Afraid of Peo­ple” (1974)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

FBI’s “Vault” Web Site Reveals Declas­si­fied Files on Hem­ing­way, Ein­stein, Mar­i­lyn & Oth­er Icons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Transcends Science Fiction

in Film, Sci Fi | August 14th, 2015

If you haven’t yet seen Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris but do plan on watch­ing it (find it online here), rest assured that there’s no wrong way to go about it. You can plunge, with­out prepa­ra­tion, right into its vivid, tor­ment­ed Sovi­et sci-fi world of fail­ing high tech­nol­o­gy, sub­lime nat­ur­al forces, and haunt­ing mem­o­ry. You can do no end of pre­lim­i­nary research on the film, its mak­er, and its mak­er’s strug­gle to adapt the orig­i­nal Stanis­law Lem nov­el to his own dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ty. Or you could just pre­cede your screen­ing with “Auteur in Space,” a brief exam­i­na­tion of Solaris by well-known cinephile video essay­ist kog­o­na­da.  It was made on behalf of The British Film Insti­tute.

“The very con­cept of genre is as cold as the tomb,” the nar­ra­tor quotes Tarkovsky as writ­ing, going on to cite his crit­i­cism of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001 “for being too enam­ored by the spec­ta­cle of the genre, for being too exot­ic, too immac­u­late.” From then on, the video demon­strates not just what Tarkovsky does to push Solaris out of the shad­ow of 2oo1, but also to break it out of the stan­dard forms of sci­ence fic­tion and, ulti­mate­ly, to free it from the stric­tures of genre itself — to occu­py that cat­e­go­ry we can only call Tarkovsky.

And so the Russ­ian auteur decides to make the space sta­tion on which most of the film takes place “look like a bro­ken-down old bus.” He decides “to spend five min­utes show­ing a man in an ordi­nary car trav­el­ing along the high­way, and less than two min­utes show­ing his main char­ac­ter trav­el­ing through space.” He gives in to his “occu­pa­tion with the ele­men­tal things of Earth.” He comes to “ques­tion the lim­its of sci­ence in engag­ing the mys­ter­ies of exis­tence,” ulti­mate­ly using Solaris to pit sci­ence against fic­tion, “each with their own weight and his­to­ry and pur­suit of truth and knowl­edge.”

If, indeed, you haven’t yet seen Solaris and watch this video essay, you’ll sure­ly find your­self no longer able to resist the temp­ta­tion to expe­ri­ence the film as soon as pos­si­ble. Maybe you’ll pop in the DVD or Blu-Ray, or bet­ter yet, maybe you’ll catch a the­atri­cal screen­ing. But if you under­stand­ably can’t wait for even a moment, you can watch it free online right now. And find oth­er Tarkovsky films free online here.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Watch Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Haunt­ing Vision of the Future

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read Arthur C. Clarke’s Super Short, 31-Word Sci-Fi Story, “siseneG”

in Sci Fi | August 10th, 2015

clarke 31 word story

As brevi­ty in fic­tion goes, who can top “For sale: baby shoes, nev­er worn”? That much-ref­er­enced six-word sto­ry, often attrib­uted to Ernest Hem­ing­way, cer­tain­ly packs an impres­sive amount of human dra­ma into its short length. But what about oth­er gen­res? What would a six-word sci­ence- fic­tion sto­ry look like? i09 crowd­sourced count­less such works in 2014: respons­es, which tend­ed toward the escha­to­log­i­cal, includ­ed “The Uni­verse died. He did not,” “New world. Cryo­genic fail­ure. Seeds dead,” and “Final­ly sen­tient, it switched itself off.”

Not bad, but what would we get if we went to the pro­fes­sion­als? Alas, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, pro­lif­ic author of such respect­ed sci-fi nov­els as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ren­dezvous with Rama, passed away just five years before i09 issued its chal­lenge. Still, we have an idea of the direc­tion his entry might have gone in from of “siseneG,” a sto­ry sto­ry — a very short sto­ry indeed — Clarke sent in to Ana­log mag­a­zine in 1984:

And God said: DELETE lines One to Aleph. LOAD. RUN.
And the Uni­verse ceased to exist.

Then he pon­dered for a few aeons, sighed, and added: ERASE.
It nev­er had exist­ed.

“This is the only short sto­ry I’ve writ­ten in ten years or so,” Clarke wrote in the accom­pa­ny­ing note. “I think you’ll agree that they don’t come much short­er.” We now know that they can come some­what short­er, at least 25 words short­er than “siseneG,” but sure­ly we can all agree that Clarke set a high stan­dard for sci­en­tif­ic (or per­haps tech­no­log­i­cal-exis­ten­tial) flash fic­tion decades before the coinage of the term. But then, we always knew the man had a knack for look­ing ahead.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net, 3D Print­ers and Trained Mon­key Ser­vants

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts in 2001 What the World Will Look By Decem­ber 31, 2100

Arthur C. Clarke Nar­rates Film on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals; David Gilmour Pro­vides the Sound­track

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: Hear a Radio Dramatization (1973)

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | August 6th, 2015

TheFoundationTrilogy
Last year Jonathan Nolan–screenwriter of Memen­to and Inter­stel­lar and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan’s brother–announced that he would be devel­op­ing Isaac Asimov’s leg­endary Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy for HBO as a series. And we assume he’s still doing that, because there’s been nary a peep from the chan­nel since. So far the Inter­net con­sen­sus has been a col­lec­tive “well, that could be good!” instead of groans, which is a heart­en­ing thing these days.

For those who haven’t read the clas­sic books, but would like to get the jump on ol’ Nolan, we sub­mit this BBC Radio pro­duc­tion from 1973, which is now avail­able on Spo­ti­fy below. (Down­load Spo­ti­fy soft­ware here.) The record­ing also lives on Archive.org as well.

Right from the begin­ning we know we are in good hands, with the ana­log drones of the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop ush­er­ing us into a stereo land­scape filled with plum­my British accents and atmos­pher­ic sound effects. It’s like the best ever episode of Doc­tor Who with­out a Tardis, cor­ri­dors, or the enfee­bled cries of a lost com­pan­ion.

The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy is heav­i­ly indebt­ed to Edward Gibbon’s The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as a belief in the cir­cu­lar nature of his­to­ry.

Asimov’s hero in the first book, Hari Sel­don, using a sci­ence called psy­chohis­to­ry, can see the inevitable col­lapse of the Galac­tic Empire in which he lives and sets about try­ing to change it by set­ting up an oppo­si­tion called the Foun­da­tion. The nov­els then jump decades ahead, check­ing in with this essen­tial con­flict, much like Gibbon’s work goes from emper­or to emper­or, mark­ing the decline of empire and its inevitabil­i­ty. Free of aliens and shoot-em-ups, Foun­da­tion is very human despite its galac­tic scope.

Adapt­ed by Patrick Tull and Mike Stott, the eight part radio series does a good job of pre­sent­ing the nov­els as a char­ac­ter-dri­ven dra­ma, and while it is talky (it’s radio after all), it was Orson Scott Card who said of Foun­da­tion, it is “all talk, no action — but Asi­mov’s talk is action.”

It also influ­enced many future sci-fi writ­ers. No doubt some­where along the way Dou­glas Adams was lis­ten­ing to the radio play’s talk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia and think­ing, hmm, what if this had jokes?
And once you get through the trilogy–maybe after an eight-hour flight?–there’s more Asi­mov radio plays for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure on Spo­ti­fy: Host­ess, Peb­ble in the Sky, and Night­fall.

NOTE: Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

And note this: Audiobooks.com also has a free tri­al offer where you can down­load a free audio­book. Details.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

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

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.