Sat 15 Dec 2007
I just stumbled across a blog post that contained the following in the comments:
“…back to CBC, especially CBC-AM — it isn’t perfect by any means, and sometimes it tries to chase popularity a bit too much, but when it knows what it’s doing it’s fantastic. I like Ideas, myself, weekdays at 9 p.m., and also we’ve got a couple goddamn funny radio shows on there. And, hey, I like that we can all tune into the same thing, all over the country.
I just wish they hadn’t killed off their science-fiction radio-play show from a few years back, I thought it was really impressive. The first broadcast featured a play made from The Cold Equations, and it was outstanding. Think what they could’ve done with, I don’t know, a serialization of Foundation, or something! So much material to pick and choose from, I can’t believe it didn’t fly. I met Spider Robinson recently at a party, and just missed buttonholing him about this: “come on, Spider, call CBC up and tell them you’ll host that show! You know you want to!”
I may still tell him that.”
Got a serious pang reading that. He’s talking about Faster Than Light, a pilot I produced with Robert J. Sawyer a few years back. It had been my intention to adapt a wide variety of classic science fiction stories in future episodes. Alas…
The pilot, which aired on Sunday Showcase, received excellent listener response. The deputy director of the department championed the show to the Program Director. When told how much mail the show had received over a short period of time, the Program Director responded: “You see, that’s the problem with a show like that. Once you put it on the air you’ll never get it off!”
That Program Director didn’t last long. Sadly, neither did Faster Than Light. But it’s great to know that someone out there liked it.
December 15th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Well, that would be my pleasure, then — very nice job you did with “The Cold Equations”, as I mentioned. Really a perfect little idea, and I miss it.
Do you mind me asking what some of the other stories were, that you’d planned to adapt?
December 15th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Well, just for a start, this is what I had in mind:
1. Military science fiction:
Harry Turtledove “The Road Not Taken”
Lois McMaster Bujold “The Borders of Infinity”
Keith Laumer “The Last Command”
2. Modernish SF
Harlan Ellision “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, “Repent Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman”
Phillip K. Dick “The Third Variety”
Daniel Keyes “Flowers for Algernon”
David Brin “Senses 3 and 6”
James Blish “Surface Tension”
Brian W. Aldiss “Who Can Replace a Man?”
James Patrick Kelly “Rat”
3. Cyberpunk
Bruce Sterling
William Gibson
4. Golden Era SF
Ray Bradbury “Martian Chronicles”
Arthur C. Clarke “Rescue Party”
Lewis Padgett (AKA Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore) “What You Need”
The French Catholic Guy, forget his name, about the robot Pope, etc.
Cordwainer Smith “Scanners Live in Vain” “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”
5. Swords and Sorcery
Fritz Leiber’s Fafhred and the Grey Mouser
Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian
John Steinbeck’s King Arthur material
6. Fantasy
Charles DeLint, urban fantasy
7. Hard SF
Vernor Vinge, Robert J. Sawyer
8. English Canadian SF
Robert J. Sawyer “You See But You Do Not Observe”
Spider Robinson “The Guy With the Eyes”
Terence Green “Barking Dogs” (the short story, not the novel)
Paul Darcy “Kaylie’s Smile”
A.E. Van Vogt “Slan”
Nalo Hopkinson
9. Original Sawyer/Mahoney science fiction
Where we mess with the listener’s mind
10. Quebecois Speculative Fiction
Jean-Louis Trudel
11. International Speculative Fiction Stanislaw Lem
12. Others
Richard Matheson “Born of Man and Woman”
Neal Stephenson “Jipi and the Paranoid Chip”
We actually produced Matheson’s “Born of Man and Woman” as a part of the third pilot… it’s a real shame it was never broadcast. I also wrote an adaptation of Asimov’s Robot Dreams that would have made a nice little five minute two hander, but we couldn’t get the rights to it… it looked like Dreamworks had bought up all of Asimov’s rights for their adaptation of I, Robot.
I also had spoken with Harlan Ellison about an adaptation of City on the Edge of Forever, based on his original script (before Roddenberry got his hands on it) but Ellison didn’t quite get that we were public radio and didn’t have tons of money to throw at him.
Again, alas…
December 16th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Holy crap!
You are damaged in the head, Joe, if you think you could make a radio play of “Surface Tension” or “Slan”! Well, okay, especially “Slan” — I want to hear the pitch for that one, I really do. You’d have better luck with “Two Hundred Million A.D.!”, for my money…
Can I go all Fantasy League on this one?
A radio version of “Scanners Live In Vain” would obviously be awesome…may I add “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”, “Under Old Earth”, and “The Dead Lady Of Clown Town” to that? An Instrumentality series for the first season, if you will. And leave out “Ballad Of Lost C’Mell” ’til the next season.
Leaving aside the obvious, like “The Martian Chronicles”…or, by Crom, “Red Mars”…!
Leaving all that aside, though I hate to, I cast my vote for Poul Anderson’s “The High Castle”. And Jack Vance’s “Galactic Effectuator”, AND “The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World”! Also a big “yes” for “Borders Of Infinity”, very nice call.
As I said, I think the Foundation Trilogy would be ridiculously something I would tune in to hear…
And a serialization of “Caves Of Steel” and “Robots Of Dawn” wouldn’t go amiss, either.
I’m sorry, you answered my question so brilliantly and at such length, and here I am turning the knife. I’m just still so in love with the idea, you see. I really do think it’s marvellous. So apologies, Joe — you are now the new guy I appreciate, and so I hope you’ll forgive me disputing your judgements.
I hope you’ll forgive, too, me making this a blog post. I promise it won’t be bad.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:16 am
No problem, Plok, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the idea. It had been my intention to consider suggestions from listeners. One thing I’ve learned making radio plays is that what appears to be a great idea on the surface is sometimes a lousy idea, and vice versa.
I remember reading a script for a radio play called Heart of A Dog and thinking that it was absolutely terrible. But although it did turn out to be somewhat impenetrable storywise, it’s one of the more interesting sonic pieces I’ve ever worked on. Another one was White Mice… again, I thought the script was perhaps the worst I’d ever seen. But to my surprise it turned out pretty good.
Likewise, on the surface it seems like a good idea to take a Stratford or Shaw production and turn it into a radio play. And doing so has worked on occasion. But it’s also fraught with perils that have sunk more than one production that had seemed like a good idea at the time.
So I don’t think it’s necessarily obvious at the outset which SF stories might work on radio and which might not. I’m a firm believer that there are few truly bad ideas… only bad execution.