Blade Runner 2049’s New Making-Of Featurette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Awaited Sequel

in Film, Sci Fi | June 22nd, 2017

All of us who excit­ed­ly write about Blade Run­ner 2049, the upcom­ing sequel to Blade Run­ner, have at some point described the film as “long-await­ed.” Since the orig­i­nal came out in 1982, that makes a cer­tain lit­er­al sense, but the wait has­n’t stretched to 35 years with­out cause. As Blade Run­ner rose high­er and high­er in stature, fol­low­ing it up prop­er­ly grew into a more and more daunt­ing chal­lenge. But now, as Blade Run­ner 2049 approach­es its Octo­ber release, the prospect that this most respect­ed of all sci­ence-fic­tion movies will have its con­tin­u­a­tion feels more real than ever — and it will feel even more real than that after you watch the short mak­ing-of fea­turette above.

Philip K. Dick, the pro­lif­ic author of Blade Run­ner’s source mate­r­i­al, a nov­el called Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, rec­og­nized imme­di­ate­ly how impor­tant the film would become. But its direc­tor Rid­ley Scott admits that he “could nev­er have imag­ined how icon­ic it would still be” today.

Though he did­n’t return to direct Blade Run­ner 2049, ced­ing the chair to Sicario and Arrival direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve and tak­ing on the role of pro­duc­er instead, he does make quite a few appear­ances in this fea­turette as a kind of pre­sid­ing spir­it. “Blade Run­ner rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we view sci­ence fic­tion,” says Vil­leneuve. “I’ve nev­er felt that much pres­sure on my shoul­ders — think­ing that Rid­ley Scott will see this movie.”

But more than any­thing the cast and film­mak­ers have to say, Blade Run­ner fans will savor the video’s glimpses of the new pic­ture’s aes­thet­ic, clear­ly both mod­eled after and delib­er­ate­ly made dif­fer­ent from that of the orig­i­nal. As the title makes obvi­ous, the sto­ry takes place thir­ty years after Blade Run­ner’s 2019, and just as things have changed in our world, so they’ve changed in its world — not least in the form of a Kore­an influ­ence that has its found its way in with the Japan­ese and Chi­nese ones that so char­ac­ter­ized Blade Run­ner’s future Los Ange­les. “Defin­ing this was like walk­ing on a knife’s edge,” says pro­duc­tion design­er Den­nis Gassner, “rid­ing the line between the orig­i­nal film and what we’re doing now.”

If you’d like to com­pare the build-up to Blade Run­ner 2049 with the build-up to Blade Run­ner, have a look at its own thir­teen-minute pro­mo­tion­al fea­turette above. Made well before the time of the mod­ern inter­net, let alone mod­ern inter­net videos, this 16-mil­lime­ter film pro­duc­tion, which fea­tured Scott, “visu­al futur­ist” Syd Mead, and spe­cial effects artist Dou­glas Trum­bull, cir­cu­lat­ed by mak­ing the screen­ing rounds sci-fi, fan­ta­sy, and even hor­ror con­ven­tions all across Amer­i­ca. Few movies, let alone sequels, have built up as much antic­i­pa­tion as Blade Run­ner 2049 has, and even few­er have such a lega­cy to live up to. At least the film­mak­ers can rest assured that, if the crit­ics don’t hap­pen to like it, well, they did­n’t like the first one either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

How Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Illu­mi­nates the Cen­tral Prob­lem of Moder­ni­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, 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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Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dramas of Sci-Fi Stories by Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin & More (1989)

in Audio Books, Radio, Sci Fi | June 16th, 2017

Image by Mr.Hasgaha, via Flickr Com­mons

If you dig through our archives, you can find no short­age of fine­ly-pro­duced radio drama­ti­za­tions of your favorite sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries. Dur­ing the 1950s, NBC’s Dimen­sion X adapt­ed sto­ries by the likes of Isaac Asi­mov, Ray Brad­bury, Robert Hein­lein, and even Kurt Von­negut. Lat­er in the ’50s, X Minus One con­tin­ued that tra­di­tion, dra­ma­tiz­ing sto­ries by Robert A. Hein­lein, Philip K. Dick, Poul Ander­son and oth­ers. By the 1970s, Mind Webs got into the act and pro­duced 188 adap­ta­tions–clas­sics by Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke. And the BBC did up Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy.

Those pro­duc­tions will keep you busy for a good while. But if you’re won­der­ing what the 1980s deliv­ered, then tune into Sci-Fi Radio, a series of 26 half-hour shows which aired on NPR Play­house, start­ing in 1989. Some of the adapt­ed sto­ries include: “Sales Pitch” and “Imposter” by Philip K. Dick, “Diary of the Rose” and “Field of Vision” by Ursu­la K. LeGuin, “Wall of Dark­ness” by Arthur C. Clarke, and “Frost and Fire” by Ray Brad­bury.

You can stream all episodes below, or over at Archive.org. Sci-Fi Radio will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Hope you enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

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

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

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

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

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

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How Russian Artists Imagined in 1914 What Moscow Would Look Like in 2259

in History, Sci Fi | June 14th, 2017

In the days of pop­u­lar retro­fu­tur­ism—say, the first half of the twen­ti­eth century—people tend­ed to imag­ine the world of tomor­row look­ing very much like the world of today, only with a lot more fly­ing cars, mono­rails, and video­phones. This is true whether those doing the imag­in­ing were titans of indus­try, mar­ket­ing mavens, ide­al­is­tic Sovi­ets, or sub­jects of the Tsar, though we might think that peo­ple liv­ing under an ancient monar­chi­cal sys­tem might not expect much change. In some ways we might be right, but as we can see in the 1914 post­cards here—printed as Rus­sia entered World War I—the coun­try did antic­i­pate a mod­ern, tech­no­log­i­cal future, though one that still close­ly resem­bled its present.

Per­haps few but the most far-sight­ed of Rus­sians pre­dict­ed what the ail­ing empire would endure in the years to come—the dis­as­ter of the Great War, and the waves of Rev­o­lu­tion and Civ­il War. Cer­tain­ly, who­ev­er paint­ed these images fore­saw no such cat­a­stroph­ic upheaval.

Although pur­port­ing to show us a view of Moscow in the 23rd cen­tu­ry, they show the city very hap­pi­ly “still under monar­chi­cal rule,” writes A Jour­ney Through Russ­ian Cul­ture, going about its dai­ly life just as it did over three hun­dred years ear­li­er, “with the addi­tion of every­thing from sub­ways to air­borne pub­lic trans­porta­tion, things prob­a­bly seen as stan­dard meth­ods of trans­port for the future.”

Of course, there would be hot-rod­ded sleds on St. Peters­burg High­way with head­lights, fan­cy wind­shields, and what look like Christ­mas elves perched in them. Lubyan­s­ka Square, fur­ther up, would still host mil­i­tary parades of men on horse­back, as chil­dren whizzed by on motor­bikes and sub­way trains rum­bled under­neath. The Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion, above, might seem entire­ly unchanged, until one looks up, and sees ele­vat­ed trams stream­ing out of the ter­mi­nal like spider’s silk. Red Square, how­ev­er, just below, would appar­ent­ly host drag races, while peo­ple in trams and giant diri­gi­bles looked on from above.

The images have a children’s book qual­i­ty about them and the fes­tive air of hol­i­day cards. (If you read Russ­ian, you can learn more about them here and here.) They were appar­ent­ly redis­cov­ered only recent­ly when a choco­late com­pa­ny called Eyinem reprint­ed them on their pack­ag­ing. Like so much retro­fu­tur­ism, these seem—in their bustling, yet safe, cheer­ful orderliness—tailor-made for nos­tal­gic trips through Petro­vsky Park, rather than imag­i­na­tive leaps into the great unknown. For that, we must turn to Russ­ian Futur­ism, which, both before and after World War and the Rev­o­lu­tion, imag­ined, helped bring about, but did­n’t quite sur­vive the mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion of the next two decades.

See more of these Tsarist-futur­ist post­cards at the site Meet the Slavs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

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

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Omni, the Iconic Sci-Fi Magazine, Now Digitized in High-Resolution and Available Online

in Magazines, Sci Fi, Science | June 5th, 2017

There was a time, not so long ago, when not only could a block­buster Hol­ly­wood com­e­dy make a ref­er­ence to a sci­ence mag­a­zine, but every­one in the audi­ence would get that ref­er­ence. It hap­pened in Ghost­busters, right after the tit­u­lar boys in gray hit it big with their first high-pro­file bust­ing of a ghost. In true 1980s style, a suc­cess mon­tage fol­lowed, in the mid­dle of which appeared the cov­er of Omni mag­a­zine’s Octo­ber 1984 issue which, accord­ing to the Ghost­busters Wiki, “fea­tured a Pro­ton Pack and Par­ti­cle Throw­er. The tagline read, ‘Quan­tum Leaps: Ghost­busters’ Tools of the Trade.’ ”

The movie made up that cov­er, but it did­n’t make up the pub­li­ca­tion. In real­i­ty, the cov­er of Omni’s Octo­ber 1984 issue, a spe­cial anniver­sary edi­tion which appears at the top of the mag­a­zine’s Wikipedia page today, promised pre­dic­tions of “Love, Work & Play in the 21st Cen­tu­ry” from the likes of beloved sci-fi writer Ray Brad­bury, social psy­chol­o­gist Stan­ley Mil­gram, physi­cist Ger­ard O’Neill, trend-watch­er John Nais­bitt — and, of course, Ronald Rea­gan. Now you can find that issue of Omni, as well as every oth­er from its 1978-to-1995 run, dig­i­tized in high-res­o­lu­tion and made avail­able on Ama­zon.

“Omni was a mag­a­zine about the future,” writes Moth­er­board­’s Claire Evans, telling the sto­ry of “the best sci­ence mag­a­zine that ever was.” In its hey­day, it blew minds by reg­u­lar­ly fea­tur­ing exten­sive Q&As with some of the top sci­en­tists of the 20th century–E.O. Wil­son, Fran­cis Crick, Jonas Salk–tales of the para­nor­mal, and some of the most impor­tant sci­ence fic­tion to ever see mag­a­zine pub­li­ca­tion” by William Gib­son, Orson Scott Card, Har­lan Elli­son, George R. R. Mar­tin — and even the likes of Stephen King, Joyce Car­ol Oates, and William S. Bur­roughs. “By cou­pling sci­ence fic­tion and cut­ting-edge sci­ence news, the mag­a­zine cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of pos­si­bil­i­ty, where even the most out­ra­geous ideas seemed to have basis in fact.”

Orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by Kathy Kee­ton (for­mer­ly, accord­ing to Evans, “a South African bal­le­ri­na who went from being one of the high­est-paid strip­pers in Europe”) and Pent­house pub­lish­er Bob Guc­cione, Omni not only had an impact in unex­pect­ed areas (the eccen­tric musi­cal per­former Klaus Nomi, him­self a cul­tur­al inno­va­tor, took his name in part from the mag­a­zine’s) but took steps into the dig­i­tal realm long before oth­er print pub­li­ca­tions dared. It first estab­lished its online pres­ence on Com­puserve in 1986; sev­en years lat­er, it opened up its archives, along with forums and new con­tent, on Amer­i­ca Online, a first for any major mag­a­zine. Now Ama­zon users can pur­chase Omni’s dig­i­tal back issues for $2.99 each, or read them for free if they have Kin­dle Unlim­it­ed accounts. (You can sign up for a 30-day free tri­al for Kin­dle Unlim­it­ed and start binge-read­ing Omni here.)

Jer­rick Media, own­ers of the Omni brand, have also begun to make avail­able on Vimeo on Demand episodes of Omni: The New Fron­tier, the 1980s syn­di­cat­ed tele­vi­sion series host­ed by Peter Usti­nov. And with­out pay­ing a dime, you can still browse the fas­ci­nat­ing Omni mate­r­i­al archived at Omni Mag­a­zine Online, an easy way to get a hit of the past’s idea of the future — and one pre­sent­ing, in the words of 1990s edi­tor-in-chief Kei­th Far­rell, “a fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence and spec­u­la­tion, lit­er­a­ture and art, phi­los­o­phy and quirk­i­ness, seri­ous spec­u­la­tion and gonzo spec­u­la­tion, the health of the plan­et and its cul­tures, our rela­tion­ship to the uni­verse and its (pos­si­ble) cul­tures, and a sense that what­ev­er else, tomor­row would be dif­fer­ent from today.”

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pop­u­lar Sci­ence Dig­i­tal Archive Lets You Explore Every Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy-Filled Edi­tion Since 1872

Down­load Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pio­neer­ing Pulp Hor­ror Mag­a­zine Fea­tures Orig­i­nal Sto­ries by Love­craft, Brad­bury & Many More

Spy Mag­a­zine (1986–1998) Now Online

Down­load Influ­en­tial Avant-Garde Mag­a­zines from the Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry: Dadaism, Sur­re­al­ism, Futur­ism & More

Rock Scene: Browse a Com­plete Online Archive of the Irrev­er­ent Mag­a­zine That Chron­i­cled the 1970s Rock & Punk Scene

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of the 1960s Mag­a­zine Avant Garde: From John Lennon’s Erot­ic Lith­o­graphs to Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Last Pho­tos

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Down­load the Com­plete Archive of Oz, “the Most Con­tro­ver­sial Mag­a­zine of the 60s,” Fea­tur­ing R. Crumb, Ger­maine Greer & 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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240 Hours of Relaxing, Sleep-Inducing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Runner to Star Wars

in Health, Sci Fi | June 2nd, 2017

Need to put a lit­tle geek in your sleep? We’ve got just what you need…

Back in 2009, the musi­cian dubbed Cheesy Nir­vosa” began exper­i­ment­ing with ambi­ent music, before launch­ing a YouTube chan­nel where he “com­pos­es long­form space and sci­fi ambi­ence,” much of it designed to help you relax, or ide­al­ly fall asleep. He calls the videos “ambi­ent geek sleep aids.”

You can sam­ple his work with the playlist above. Called “Video Game Relax­ation Sounds,” the playlist fea­tures “long relax­ing sound­scapes from video games.” Sci-fi video games, to be pre­cise. The playlist gives you access to 21 sound­scapes, run­ning more than 240 hours in total. Lull your­self to sleep, for exam­ple, with ambi­ent sounds from the 1997 Blade Run­ner video game, a “sid­e­quel” to the Rid­ley Scott film. Or de-stress with this ambi­ent noise pro­duced by the A/SF-01 B‑Wing Starfight­er. It’s tak­en from this 2001 Star Wars game cre­at­ed by LucasArts.

Stream the playlist above. And hope you enjoy dream­ing of elec­tric sheep.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

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Edward Gorey Illustrates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inimitable Gothic Style (1960)

in Art, Literature, Sci Fi | May 16th, 2017

The sto­ry of mali­cious space aliens invad­ing Earth has a res­o­nance that knows no nation­al bound­aries. In fact, many mod­ern ver­sions make explic­it the moral that only fight­ing off an exis­ten­tial threat from anoth­er plan­et could uni­fy the inher­ent­ly frac­tious human species. H.G. Wells’ 1898 nov­el The War of the Worlds, in many ways the arche­typ­al telling of the space-invaders tale, cer­tain­ly proved com­pelling on both sides of the pond: though set in Wells’ home­land of Eng­land, it made a last­ing impact on Amer­i­can cul­ture when Orson Welles pro­duced a thor­ough­ly local­ized ver­sion for radio, his infa­mous War of the Worlds Hal­loween 1938 broad­cast. (Lis­ten to it here.)

And so who bet­ter to illus­trate a mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry edi­tion of the nov­el than Edward Gorey? He was born in and spent near­ly all his life in Amer­i­ca, but devel­oped an artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty that struck its many appre­ci­a­tors as uncan­ni­ly mid-Atlantic. His work con­tin­ues to draw descrip­tions like “Vic­to­ri­an” and “goth­ic,” sure­ly under­scored by his asso­ci­a­tion with the British lit­er­a­ture-adapt­ing tele­vi­sion show Mys­tery!, for whose title sequences he drew char­ac­ters and set­tings, and the young-adult goth­ic mys­tery nov­els of Anglophile author John Bel­lairs. The Gorey-illus­trat­ed War of the Worlds came out in 1960 from Look­ing Glass Library, fea­tur­ing his draw­ings not just at the top of each chap­ter but on its wrap­around cov­er as well. Though out of print, you can find old copies for sale online.

Gorey had begun his career in the ear­ly 1950s at the art depart­ment of pub­lish­er Dou­ble­day Anchor, cre­at­ing book cov­ers and occa­sion­al­ly inte­ri­or illus­tra­tions. In addi­tion to Bel­lairs’ nov­els, he would also go on to put his artis­tic stamp on such lit­er­ary clas­sics as Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la and T.S. Eliot’s Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, bring­ing to each his sig­na­ture com­bi­na­tion of whim­sy and dread in just the right pro­por­tions. Giv­en the inher­ent omi­nous­ness and threat of The War of the Worlds, Gorey’s dark side comes to the fore as the sto­ry’s long-legged ter­rors arrive and wreak hav­oc on Earth, only to fall vic­tim to com­mon dis­ease.

Gorey’s War of the Worlds illus­tra­tions also seem to draw some inspi­ra­tion from the very first ones that accom­pa­nied the nov­el upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion as a Pear­son­’s Mag­a­zine ser­i­al in 1897. You can com­pare and con­trast them by brows­ing the high-res­o­lu­tion scans of the out-of-print 1960 Look­ing Glass Library War of the Worlds at this online exhi­bi­tion at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go Dig­i­tal Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, in part­ner­ship with the Edward Gorey Char­i­ta­ble Trust.

Though con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar to the illus­tra­tions in Pear­son’s, drawn by an artist (usu­al­ly of chil­dren’s books) named War­wick Gob­le, they don’t get into quite as much detail — but then, they don’t have to. To evoke a com­plex mix­ture of fas­ci­nat­ed antic­i­pa­tion and creep­ing fear, Gorey nev­er need­ed more than an old house, a hud­dle of sil­hou­ettes, or a pair of eyes glow­ing in the dark­ness.

via Heavy Met­al

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

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

Hear the Prog-Rock Adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Mil­lion Copies World­wide

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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The Official Trailer for Ridley Scott’s Long-Awaited Blade Runner Sequel Is Finally Out

in Film, Sci Fi | May 8th, 2017

Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner (1982) has pro­vid­ed us mate­r­i­al for many posts over the years (find some favorites below). If his upcom­ing sequel Blade Run­ner 2049 yields half as much, we’ll count our­selves lucky.

The offi­cial trail­er for the new film came out today. Look for the film in the­aters on Octo­ber 6th.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Orig­i­nal Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

How Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Illu­mi­nates the Cen­tral Prob­lem of Moder­ni­ty

Watch Tears In the Rain: A Blade Run­ner Short Film–A New, Unof­fi­cial Pre­quel to the Rid­ley Scott Film

Blade Run­ner Gets Re-Cre­at­ed, Shot for Shot, Using Only Microsoft Paint

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

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30 Hours of Doctor Who Audio Dramas Now Free to Stream Online

in Radio, Sci Fi | May 8th, 2017

“Yes, this should pro­vide ade­quate sus­te­nance for the Doc­tor Who marathon,” once said The Simp­sons’ Com­ic Book Guy while push­ing a wheel­bar­row full of fast-food tacos down the street. As the embod­i­ment of fan­dom for all things fan­ta­sy and sci-fi, he would cer­tain­ly know that Doc­tor Who, no longer an obscure BBC tele­vi­sion show but an ever-expand­ing fic­tion­al uni­verse with a glob­al fan base, con­sti­tutes the ide­al mate­r­i­al for binge-watch­ing, which he could now do at his con­ve­nience on a ser­vice like Brit­box. But it isn’t just watch­ing: now, on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here if you don’t have it already), you can binge-lis­ten to thir­ty straight hours of Doc­tor Who audio dra­mas as well.

“An icon of mod­ern British cul­ture and the longest-run­ning sci­ence-fic­tion TV show in his­to­ry, Doc­tor Who has nev­er been more pop­u­lar than it is today,” wrote Christo­pher Bahn in the AV Club’s 2010 primer on the series, which had relaunched five years ear­li­er after ini­tial­ly run­ning from 1963 to 1989. “No mat­ter who’s play­ing the lead, the basic premise has been essen­tial­ly the same since the show’s debut: A mys­te­ri­ous, eccen­tric alien known only as The Doc­tor (not ‘Doc­tor Who,’ in spite of the title) trav­els through time and space hav­ing adven­tures and fight­ing evil. He’s usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by one or two humans picked up along the way. They jour­ney with him in a time machine called a TARDIS, which looks like a blue phone booth.”

This for­mat “allowed the show to lit­er­al­ly go any­where in the uni­verse and some­times out­side it, with vir­tu­al­ly lim­it­less sto­ry­telling pos­si­bil­i­ties.” At its best, “Doc­tor Who relied on sol­id, imag­i­na­tive scripts to cre­ate smart sci­ence-fic­tion thrillers with a human­is­tic, anti-author­i­tar­i­an heart. Con­sis­tent­ly pop­u­lar through the 1960s and 1970s, the show began to fal­ter in the fol­low­ing decade as tight bud­gets and ques­tion­able artis­tic choic­es took their toll.” After its can­cel­la­tion in 1989, Doc­tor Who “lived on through the ’90s, as sci­ence-fic­tion shows often do, in the wilder­ness gen­res of semi-offi­cial nov­els and radio plays.”

The best known of these Doc­tor Who radio plays, which you can hear on this playlist, come pro­duced by a com­pa­ny called Big Fin­ish. Hav­ing acquired a license from the BBC in 1999 (and recent­ly renewed it into 2025), they’ve put out a range of audio dra­mas, both one-offs and series of var­i­ous lengths, using not just the char­ac­ters but many of the actu­al actors from the tele­vi­sion show, includ­ing six of those who have tak­en on the icon­ic Doc­tor role onscreen. Owing to the fact that Doc­tor Who offi­cial­ly has no canon and thus no need for con­ti­nu­ity, rig­or­ous or oth­er­wise, they can get even more imag­i­na­tive than their source mate­r­i­al, going so far as to explore coun­ter­fac­tu­al sto­ry­lines such as one where the Doc­tor nev­er leaves his home plan­et in the first place.

Below you’ll find a com­plete list, assem­bled by a fan on Red­dit, of the series and episodes of Big Fin­ish’s Doc­tor Who audio dra­mas now avail­able on Spo­ti­fy and are now housed to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. The mate­r­i­al comes to thir­ty hours in total, but the ques­tion of when to lis­ten to it falls sec­ond to a more impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion: what sort of sus­te­nance will best ensure that you can keep up with all of the Doc­tor’s audio adven­tures?

Main Range:

  1. The Sirens of Time
  2. Phan­tas­mago­ria
  3. Whis­pers of Ter­ror
  4. The Land of the Dead
  5. The Fear­mon­ger
  6. The Mar­i­an Con­spir­a­cy
  7. The Geno­cide Machine
  8. Red Dawn
  9. The Spec­tre of Lany­on Moor
  10. Win­ter for the Adept
  11. The Apoc­a­lypse Ele­ment
  12. The Fires of Vul­can
  13. The Shad­ow of the Scourge
  14. The Holy Ter­ror
  15. The Mutant Phase
  16. Storm Warn­ing
  17. Sword of Ori­on
  18. The Stones of Venice
  19. Min­uet in Hell
  20. Loups-Garoux
  21. Dust Breed­ing
  22. Blood­tide
  23. Project: Twi­light
  24. The Eye of the Scor­pi­on
  25. Colditz
  26. Primeval
  27. The One Doc­tor
  28. Invaders from Mars
  29. The Chimes of Mid­night
  30. Sea­sons of Fear
  31. Embrace the Dark­ness
  32. The Time of the Daleks
  33. Nev­er­land
  34. Spare Parts
  35. …ish
  36. The Rap­ture
  37. The Sand­man
  38. The Church and the Crown
  39. Bang-Bang-a-Boom!
  40. Jubilee
  41. Nekro­man­teia
  42. The Dark Flame
  43. Doc­tor Who and the Pirates
  44. Crea­tures of Beau­ty
  45. Project: Lazarus
  46. Flip-Flop
  47. Omega
  48. Davros
  49. Mas­ter
  50. Zagreus

Spe­cial Releas­es:

UNIT: Domin­ion

The Davros Mis­sion

Fourth Doc­tor Adven­tures:

1.01 Des­ti­na­tion: Ner­va

1.02 The Renais­sance Man

1.03 The Wrath of the Iceni

1.04 Ener­gy of the Daleks

1.05 Trail of the White Worm

1.06 The Osei­don Adven­ture

Eighth Doc­tor Adven­tures:

1.1 Blood of the Daleks, Part 1

1.2 Blood of the Daleks, Part 2

1.3 Hor­ror of Glam Rock

1.4 Immor­tal Beloved

1.5 Pho­bos

1.6 No More Lies

1.7 Human Resources, Part 1

1.8 Human Resources, Part 2

The Lost Sto­ries:

1.01 The Night­mare Fair

1.02 Mis­sion to Mag­nus

1.03 Leviathan

1.04 The Hol­lows of Time

1.05 Par­adise 5

1.06 Point of Entry

1.07 The Song of Megaptera

1.08 The Macros

Box 1. The Fourth Doc­tor Box Set

The Com­pan­ion Chron­i­cles:

2.1 Moth­er Rus­sia

2.2 Heli­con Prime

2.3 Old Sol­diers

2.4 The Cat­a­lyst

Des­tiny of the Doc­tor:

  1. Hunters of Earth
  2. Shad­ow of Death
  3. Vengeance of the Stones
  4. Bab­ble­sphere
  5. Smoke and Mir­rors
  6. Trou­ble in Par­adise
  7. Shock­wave
  8. Ene­my Aliens
  9. Night of the Whis­per
  10. Death’s Deal
  11. The Time Machine

Short Trips:

Vol­ume 1

Vol­ume 2

The Stage­plays:

  1. The Ulti­mate Adven­ture
  2. Sev­en Keys to Dooms­day
  3. The Curse of the Daleks

Ber­nice Sum­mer­field:

Box 2. Road Trip

Box 3. Legion

Box 4. New Fron­tiers

Box 5. Miss­ing Per­sons

Grace­less:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Dalek Empire:

  1. Inva­sion of the Daleks
  2. The Human Fac­tor
  3. “Death to the Daleks!”
  4. Project Infin­i­ty
  5. Dalek War: Chap­ter One
  6. Dalek War: Chap­ter Two
  7. Dalek War: Chap­ter Three
  8. Dalek War: Chap­ter Four

Jago & Lite­foot:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Counter-Mea­sures:

Series 1

Series 2

Iris Wildthyme:

2.1 The Sound of Fear

2.2 The Land of Won­der

2.3 The Two Iris­es

2.4 The Pan­da Inva­sion

2.5 The Claws of San­ta

Series 3

Series 4

UNIT:

  1. Time Heals
  2. Snake Head
  3. The Longest Night
  4. The Wast­ing

I, Davros:

  1. Inno­cence
  2. Puri­ty
  3. Cor­rup­tion
  4. Guilt

Cyber­man:

1.1 Scor­pius

1.2 Fear

1.3 Con­ver­sion

1.4 Telos

2.0 Cyber­man 2

Char­lotte Pol­lard:

Series 1

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brit­Box Now Stream­ing Now Stream­ing 550 Episodes of Doc­tor Who and Many Oth­er British TV Shows

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Doc­tor Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

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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