We here at Open Cul­ture believe that, as far as sci­ence-fic­tion deliv­ery sys­tems go, you can’t do much bet­ter than radio dra­ma. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured quite a range of it, from the clas­sic 1950s series Dimen­sion X and its suc­ces­sor X Minus One to adap­ta­tions of such clas­sic works as Isaac Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy, Aldous Hux­ley’s Brave New World, and, most recent­ly, Ursu­la K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Dark­ness. Now we’ve opened up anoth­er trea­sure trove of sci-fi radio in the form of the archives of Mind Webs, orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on Madi­son, Wis­con­sin’s WHA-AM, start­ing in the 1970s

One old-time radio site describes Mind Webs as “not real­ly audio dra­ma in the strict sense of the def­i­n­i­tion,” but “read­ings of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries by some of the gen­re’s best writ­ers [ … ] enhanced by music, peri­od­ic sound cues, and the occa­sion­al char­ac­ter voice.” As the col­lec­tor who made his record­ings of the series avail­able to the Inter­net Archive puts it, Mind Webs “stands as a tes­ta­ment to not only some of our great­est spec­u­la­tive fic­tion authors, but just how well sim­ple dia­log and music minus major sound effects can con­vey sto­ries so well.”

Which authors count­ed as great enough for inclu­sion into the Mind Webs canon? Some of the names, like Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Brad­bury, you’d expect to find in this archive, but oth­ers go far­ther afield: the series also fea­tures sto­ries by the likes of Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard, H.P. Love­craft — writ­ers who, each in their own way, bent the bound­aries of all known fic­tion, sci­ence- or oth­er­wise — and even such sup­pos­ed­ly tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­tellers as John Cheev­er and Roald Dahl who, in these selec­tions, put their own spin on real­i­ty.

Lis­ten to enough episodes of Mind Webs, and you may get hooked on the voice and read­ing style of its host Michael Han­son, a fix­ture on Wis­con­sin pub­lic radio for some­thing like forty years. Back in 2001, just after wrap­ping up his career in that sec­tor, Han­son wrote in to the New York Times lament­ing the state of pub­lic radio, espe­cial­ly its pro­gram direc­tors turned into “syco­phan­tic bean coun­ters” and a “pro­nounced dumb­ing down of pro­gram con­tent.” Mind Webs, which kept on going from the 70s through the 90s, came from a time before all that, and now its smart sto­ry­telling has come avail­able for all of us to enjoy.

The playlist above will let you stream all of the sto­ries — rough­ly 88 hours worth — from start to fin­ish. Or you can access the audio at Archive.org here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Inven­tive Sto­ries from Ursu­la Le Guin & J.G. Bal­lard Turned Into CBC Radio Dra­mas

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Nov­el, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, as a BBC Radio Play

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

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

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.

Who can call them­selves fans of cyber­punk, or even mod­ern sci­ence fic­tion, with­out hav­ing expe­ri­enced William Gib­son’s Neu­ro­mancer? That 1984 nov­el, which many see as the defin­ing work of the sci-fi sub­genre where, as Gib­son him­self put it, “high tech meets low life,” has gone through many print runs in many lan­guages. But you don’t need to read it to get to know its dis­tinc­tive real­i­ty — its Japan­ese mega­lopo­lis set­ting of Chi­ba City, its char­ac­ters like “con­sole cow­boy” Case and “street samu­rai” Mol­ly Mil­lions, its tech­nolo­gies like advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse weapons, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty space called, yes, the Matrix. You can also hear it.

Last year, we fea­tured the out-of-cir­cu­la­tion audio­book ver­sion of Neu­ro­mancer read by Gib­son him­self, and though it faith­ful­ly trans­mits his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sawed-off writ­ing style, some may find that form a bit lack­ing in dra­ma. But as luck would have it, the BBC, home to some of the last remain­ing mas­ters of the radio dra­ma form, adapt­ed the nov­el in 2002, and you can hear the result­ing two-hour pro­duc­tion on the Youtube playlist above or stream it from SFFau­dio. Even Gib­son purists may well come away sat­is­fied, since its respect for the orig­i­nal text begins right with the clas­sic open­ing line: “The sky above the port was the col­or of tele­vi­sion, tuned to a dead chan­nel.”

In any form, Neu­ro­mancer has endured for many rea­sons, not least that it still gets us think­ing every time about the inter­sec­tion between tech­nol­o­gy and human­i­ty. It cer­tain­ly gets crit­i­cal the­o­rist Fredric Jame­son think­ing, and you can read his thoughts in his new essay “A Glob­al Neu­ro­mancer.” He con­tends that, among oth­er things, cyber­space still does­n’t exist: “It is a lit­er­ary con­struc­tion we tend to believe in; and, like the con­cept of imma­te­r­i­al labor, there are cer­tain­ly his­tor­i­cal rea­sons for its appear­ance at the dawn of post­moder­ni­ty which great­ly tran­scend the tech­no­log­i­cal fact of com­put­er devel­op­ment or the inven­tion of the Inter­net.” Jame­son does­n’t write prose quite as eas­i­ly fol­lowed as Gib­son’s, but like any true clas­sic, Neu­ro­mancer keeps inspir­ing not just works sim­i­lar to it, but works wild­ly dif­fer­ent from it as well.

Note: You can down­load for free a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read ver­sion of Neu­ro­mancer (the com­plete book) if you take part in one of the free tri­als offered by our part­ners Audible.com and/or Audiobooks.com. Click on the respec­tive links to get more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Gib­son Reads Neu­ro­mancer, His Cyber­punk-Defin­ing Nov­el (1994)

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond 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.