Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Martian Chronicles Playlist (DIMX)

Radio script writers working in the 1950's loved the author, Ray Bradbury. His stories seemed perfectly suited to dramatization. I recently read through The Martian Chronicles for the fourth or fifth time and I had some thoughts on what would be the best approximation of the book, in terms of a playlist of vintage radio drama, and on how one should read the book itself. I left the reading notes to the end, so you can ignore them if you want.

The Martian Chronicles Playlist
This playlist uses the Dimension X lineup of the stories. The trick is that the actual episode titled The Martian Chronicles is split up in the playlist, so pay attention to the notes at the end of the links! The missing section is a shortened version of --And the Moon Be Still as Bright. There is a longer version of There Will Come Soft Rains I didn't include because it is so interwoven with Off Season and The Million-Year Picnic.

1. Rocket Summer/Ylla
19500818(020)_DIMX_TheMartianChronicles.mp3 - stop at 11:25. 

2. Mars is Heaven (MC chapter title: The Third Expedition)
19500707(014)_DIMX_MarsIsHeaven.mp3

3. —And the Moon Be Still as Bright
19500929(026)_DIMX_AndTheMoonBeStillAsBright.mp3

4. The Off Season, There Will Come Soft Rains, & The Million-Year Picnic montage
19500818(020)_DIMX_TheMartianChronicles.mp3 - start at 17:10

5. The Long Years (MC chapter title: Dwellers in Silence)
19510719(040)_DIMX_DwellersInSilence.mp3

Or, you can download the whole thing as a "remix" by me.

Reading Notes
First, buy an old copy of the book. If the timeline in the TOC starts with 2029, you've got a newer one. It's not a big deal, but I don't like that the publishers have monkeyed with it.

Second, you don't need to read every story. The stories are so good! But, I think The Martian Chronicles, as a book, was a mistake. The vignettes that are supposed to tie the stories together really cause confusion, as if Bradbury is telling you all of this is happening in the same universe. It isn't. You should read the stories as if each were happening in a slightly different dimension from the last. When viewed as a continuity there are discordant notes, but when taken as a collection of thematically-related stories the book is brilliant. This is no surprise as many of the chapters were written separately and published in pulp magazines in a radically different order than they appear in the book. The added vignettes are well-written, so they are seductive; you want them to belong, to have a home, but they really don't add anything except a kind of literary padding and false glue. I think that focusing on the core stories and taking out this glue, ironically, will make it a better book.

Here are the stories and reading order I recommend. I keep to the same chronology as the book. The structure (three headings) is something I added, but I'm rather fond of it. It divides the stories into 1) first contact stories, 2) the struggles of the settlers to feel at home on Mars and deal with the Martian remnants, and 3) the stories of humans as a species caught between two worlds. (I don't want to explain that because ... spoilers.)

Part I: First Contacts
Ylla: February 1999
The Earth Men: August 1999
The Third Expedition: April 2000

Part II: Mars is Ours?
—And the Moon Be Still as Bright: June 2001
Night Meeting: August 2002
The Martian: September 2005
The Off Season: November 2005

Part III: Between Worlds
The Long Years: April 2026
There Will Come Soft Rains: August 4, 2026
The Million-Year Picnic: October 2026

If you read/re-read it this way, I'd love to hear about it!

By the way, I know there are other good stories in the book! But honestly, they don't add much and some of them don't have anything to do with the story of Mars ("Usher II" for instance, seems repurposed to fit the book). I think the pattern above will be a more condensed, coherent, and potent reading experience.







The Petrified World (MWEB)

A man’s dream world threatens to take over his absurd and unpredictable everyday reality.

You can see this one coming, but it's still good. There's a kind of topical relationship between this and Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles, a brilliant book in which the main character experiences alternate Earths.

Mind Webs
The Petrified World
5 August 1977
19770805(000)_MWEB_PetrifiedWorld.mp3
WHA Madison, Wisconsin, Michael Hanson (host), Robert Sheckley (author).



Robert Sheckley

The Martian Chronicles (DIMX)

A blend of stories from The Martian Chronicles, including pieces of Rocket Summer, Ylla, And the Moon Be Still as Bright, There Will Come Soft Rains, Off Season, and The Million Year Picnic.

Where the dramatization hews closely to the original tales, e.g. Ylla, it is pretty good. Otherwise it doesn't hold together quite as well. But the last half of the show is an admirable attempt blend multiple stories nonetheless.

FYI, there are full-length adaptations of And the Moon Be Still as Bright and There will Come Soft Rains in Dimension X episodes 26 and 11, respectively. Also, Dimension X did versions of The Third Expedition (Mars is Heaven) and The Long Years (Dwellers in Silence).

Dimension X #20
The Martian Chronicles
18 August 1950
19500818(020)_DIMX_TheMartianChronicles.mp3
Author: Ray Bradbury. Voices: Donald Buka, Inge Adams, Roger De Koven (doubles), David Anderson, Ian Martin, Jan Miner. Summary: Vignettes about the colonization of Mars.

And the Moon Be Still as Bright (DIMX)

This third expedition to Mars finds the Martian cities deserted and the Martians dead from exposure to Chicken Pox. (Funny how in these tales Earthmen never get any Martian diseases and die out!) One spaceman is disgusted by his alcohol-loving, window-smashing crewmates, and he appoints himself the sole defender of the artifacts of the dead race.

Dimension X #26
And the Moon Be Still as Bright
29 September 1950
19500929(026)_DIMX_AndTheMoonBeStillAsBright.mp3
Albert Buhrman (music), Alexander Scourby, Bill Chambers (engineer), Bob Warren (announcer), Edward King (director), Ernest Kinoy (adaptor), Norman Rose (host), Ray Bradbury (author), Wendell Holmes, Van Woodward (producer), Dan Ocko, John McGovern, Joseph Julian, Arthur Gary (announcer).


Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Hall of Machines (MWEB)

This haunting story about an ancient and seemingly unending hall filled with mysterious machines has echoes of Borges and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic.

This one is cool, but it's not for everyone. Some machines are more interesting than others. A few I feel like I have seen in real life, others are just downright disturbing!

The story was first published in The Eye of the Lens (1972).

Mind Webs
The Hall of Machines
9 September 1977
19770909(000)_MWEB_TheHallOfMachines.mp3
WHA Madison, Wisconsin, Michael Hanson (host), Langdon Jones (writer).



The Eye of the Lens (1972).



The Sentinel (MWEB)

In the late summer of '96 a lunar expedition exploring the great walled plain of the Mare Crisium detours to investigate a metallic glitter high on the ridge of an unclimbed peak.

This story, originally published in 1951 in 10 Story Fantasy, was the partial basis for the 1968 film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This was an interesting story that unfolds slowly to a fairly dramatic conclusion, but it is in many ways upstaged by the early chapters of 2001.

Mind Webs
The Sentinel
28 January 1979
19790128(000)_MWEB_TheSentinel.mp3
WHA Madison, Wisconsin, Michael Hanson (host), Arthur C. Clarke (writer).



Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Desertion (MWEB)

Four men have been transformed into native Jovian life forms and sent from the protective dome to explore the surface of Jupiter. None have returned.

As I started listening to this one I remembered reading it in some collection decades ago. It's a cool little story. At first I was annoyed at the title, which seems to give something away. Also, the scientific ideas relative to the transformation are really shaky and hand-waived. Even so, the story pays off with a rich texture and interesting idea.

What is it with Simak and dogs? :)

Mind Webs
Desertion
18 February 1982
19820218(000)_MWEB_Desertion.mp3
WHA Madison, Wisconsin, Michael Hanson (host), Clifford Simak (author).



Clifford D. Simak