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

in Audio Books, Books, Sci Fi | March 26th, 2012

Today we’re bring­ing you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web. And what bet­ter way to get start­ed than with Aldous Hux­ley read­ing a dra­ma­tized record­ing of his 1932 nov­el, Brave New World. The read­ing aired on the CBS Radio Work­shop in 1956. You can lis­ten to Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

(FYI: You can down­load Hux­ley’s orig­i­nal work — as opposed to the dra­ma­tized ver­sion — in audio by sign­ing up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com, and that applies to oth­er books men­tioned here as well.)


Lit­tle known fact. Aldous Hux­ley once gave George Orwell French lessons at Eton. And, 17 years after the release of Brave New World, Hux­ley’s pupil pub­lished 1984. The sem­i­nal dystopi­an work may be one of the most influ­en­tial nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and it’s almost cer­tain­ly the most impor­tant polit­i­cal nov­el from that peri­od. You can find it avail­able on the web in three for­mats: Free eText — Free Audio Book – Free Movie.

In 1910, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shelley’s clas­sic mon­ster tale (text — audio) was ever adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein film was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

lovecraft hp

Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates — they both pay homage to H.P. Love­craft and his great tales. And you can too by spend­ing time with his col­lect­ed works, avail­able in etext for­mats here and audio for­mats here (Free Mp3 Zip File – Free Stream).

Philip K. Dick pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 sto­ries dur­ing his short life­time, solid­i­fy­ing his posi­tion as one of Amer­i­ca’s top sci-fi writ­ers. If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you almost cer­tain­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­ly and  Minor­i­ty Report. To get you acquaint­ed with PKD’s writ­ing, we have culled togeth­er 14 short sto­ries for your enjoy­ment.

eTexts (find down­load instruc­tions here)

Audio

Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, a radio pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing dra­mat­ic, the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves. The show had a fair­ly short run, last­ing from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. Dur­ing these few years, The Mer­cury The­atre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode nar­rat­ed by Welles that led many Amer­i­cans to believe their coun­try was under Mar­t­ian attack. The leg­endary pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most famous ever aired on Amer­i­can radio, was based on H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, and you can lis­ten to the broad­cast right here.

Between 1951 and 1953, Isaac Asi­mov pub­lished three books that formed the now famous Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. Many con­sid­ered it a mas­ter­work in sci­ence fic­tion, and that view became offi­cial doc­trine in 1966 when the tril­o­gy received a spe­cial Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, notably beat­ing out Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Even­tu­al­ly, the BBC decid­ed to adapt Asimov’s tril­o­gy to the radio, dra­ma­tiz­ing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Thanks to The Inter­net Archive you can down­load the full pro­gram as a zip file, or stream it online:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide.

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed.

Neil Gaiman has emerged as one of today’s best fan­ta­sy writ­ers. He has made comics respectable and pub­lished nov­els, includ­ing one that will be adapt­ed by HBO. A great deal of his out­put, though, has been in the form of short sto­ries, some avail­able on the web in text for­mat, oth­ers in audio.

Audio & Video

  • “Har­le­quin Valen­tine” – Free Audio at Last.FM
  • “How to Talk to Girls at Par­ties” – Free MP3
  • “Orange” (read live) – Free Video
  • “Oth­er Peo­ple” (read live) – Free Video
  • The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Moun­tains – Free Audio
  • The Grave­yard Book (a nov­el read live with illus­tra­tions) – Free Video
  • “Troll Bridge” (read live, starts at 4:00 mark) – Free iTunes
  • “A Study in Emer­ald” – Free iTunes

Oth­er Gaiman works can be down­load via Audible.com’s spe­cial Free Tri­al. More details here.

Text

Between 1982 and 2000, Rudy Ruck­er wrote a series of four sci-fi nov­els that formed The Ware Tetral­o­gy. The first two books in the series – Soft­ware and Wet­ware – won the Philip K. Dick Award for best nov­el. And William Gib­son has called Ruck­er “a nat­ur­al-born Amer­i­can street sur­re­al­ist” or, more sim­ply, one sui gener­is dude. And now the even bet­ter part: Ruck­er (who hap­pens to be the great-great-great-grand­son of Hegel) has released The Ware Tetral­o­gy under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and you can down­load the full text for free in PDF and RTF for­mats. In total, the col­lec­tion runs 800+ pages.

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Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | January 23rd, 2012

In 2009, Brook­lyn-based Web devel­op­er Casey Pugh was look­ing for a new way to explore the poten­tial of crowd-sourc­ing when he hit upon an idea of galac­tic pro­por­tions. He took the orig­i­nal 1977 Star Wars film (lat­er known as Episode IV: A New Hope in the chrono­log­i­cal­ly ordered six-part series) and chopped it into 15-sec­ond pieces, invit­ing fans from around the world to choose a piece and re-cre­ate it in what­ev­er medi­um they liked: live-action, pup­petry, ani­ma­tion, you name it. Three years and one Emmy Award lat­er, Pugh and his team have put the best pieces togeth­er and (with the bless­ing of Star Wars cre­ator George Lucas) released the fin­ished film, Star Wars Uncut: The Direc­tor’s Cut. It runs a fun two hours and five min­utes. You can watch the com­plete movie above and learn more on the offi­cial web­site.

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 Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

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Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Sci Fi | January 3rd, 2012

Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 short sto­ries dur­ing his life­time and solid­i­fied his posi­tion as arguably the most lit­er­ary of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers. His nov­el Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els, and Dick is the only sci­ence fic­tion writer to get hon­ored in the pres­ti­gious Library of Amer­i­ca series, a kind of pan­theon of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you assured­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­lyand Minor­i­ty Report. Today, we bring you anoth­er way to get acquaint­ed with his writ­ing. We’re pre­sent­ing a selec­tion of Dick­’s sto­ries avail­able for free on the web. Below we have culled togeth­er 11 short sto­ries from our col­lec­tions. Some of the sto­ries col­lect­ed here have also found their way into the recent­ly-pub­lished book, Select­ed Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick, which fea­tures an intro­duc­tion by Jonathan Lethem.

eTexts 

Audio

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

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

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

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The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

in Sci Fi, Television | December 28th, 2011

Let’s do the time warp today and revis­it the Not-S0-Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped Amer­i­ca, and the Vari­ety Show TV for­mat would­n’t say die. So, pro­duc­ing The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial was a no-brain­er. The two-hour show takes you inside the domes­tic world of Chew­bac­ca and his fam­i­ly — his father Itchy, his wife Mal­la, and his son Lumpy — and fea­tures guest appear­ances by Jef­fer­son Star­ship, Har­vey Kor­man and Bea Arthur, plus a lit­tle stock footage of Alec Guin­ness. As for the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and spe­cial effects? They’re all text­book kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this was­n’t the finest hour for the Star Wars fran­chise. One crit­ic called it the “the worst two hours of tele­vi­sion ever.” And, when he’s will­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of the TV spe­cial, George Lucas read­i­ly admits that turn­ing Star Wars into a vari­ety show “was­n’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entire­ty, the hol­i­day spe­cial has gained some­thing of a cult sta­tus and cir­cu­lates “under­ground” on the web. Van­i­ty Fair has more on this mis­ad­ven­ture in tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming here. H/T goes to Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

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The Mechanical Monsters: Seminal Superman Animated Film from 1941

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | October 4th, 2011

In 1941, direc­tor Dave Fleis­ch­er and Para­mount Pic­tures ani­ma­tors Steve Muf­fati and George Ger­manet­ti pro­duced Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters — a big-bud­get ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar Super­man comics of that peri­od, in which a mad sci­en­tist unleash­es robots to rob banks and loot muse­ums, and Super­man, nat­u­ral­ly, saves the day. It was one of sev­en­teen films that raised the bar for the­atri­cal shorts and are even con­sid­ered by some to have giv­en rise to the entire Ani­me genre.

More than a mere treat of vin­tage ani­ma­tion, the film cap­tures the era’s char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence in rec­on­cil­ing the need for progress with the fear of tech­nol­o­gy in a cul­ture on the brink of incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. It was the dawn of the tech­no-para­noia that per­sist­ed through the 1970s, famous­ly cap­tured in the TV series Future Shock nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, and even through today. Take for exam­ple books like Nicholas Car­r’s The Shal­lows and Sher­ry Turkle’s Alone Togeth­er: Why We Expect More from Tech­nol­o­gy and Less from Each Oth­er.

Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters is avail­able for down­load on The Inter­net Archive, and Toon­a­mi Dig­i­tal Arse­nal has the com­plete series of all sev­en­teen films. Find more vin­tage ani­ma­tion in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

in Sci Fi | September 4th, 2011

In 1964, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci-fi writer best known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, peered into the future, to the year 2000, and described what he saw. And a pret­ty good guess it was. Ours would be a world in which…

We could be in instant con­tact with each oth­er, wher­ev­er we may be, where we can con­tact our friends any­where on earth, even if we don’t know their actu­al phys­i­cal loca­tion. It will be pos­si­ble in that age, per­haps only 50 years from now, for a man to con­duct his busi­ness from Tahi­ti or Bali just as well as he could from Lon­don.… Almost any exec­u­tive skill, any admin­is­tra­tive skill, even any phys­i­cal skill, could be made inde­pen­dent of dis­tance. I am per­fect­ly seri­ous when I sug­gest that one day we may have brain sur­geons in Edin­burgh oper­at­ing on patients in New Zealand.

By 2001, Cal­i­for­nia doc­tors were already con­duct­ing vir­tu­al surgery on patients in Rome. And, by 2005, Thomas Fried­man pub­lished his best­seller, The World is Flat, which pret­ty much told us that us that Clarke’s imag­ined world had arrived — with, of course, one big excep­tion. Cities? They’re still stand­ing…

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:

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty

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The Blade Runner Promotional Film

in Film, Sci Fi | September 1st, 2011

A quick addi­tion to yes­ter­day’s look back at Siskel & Ebert’s 1982 review of Blade Run­ner.

As we were say­ing, the film got off to a very shaky start. The pro­duc­tion was a mess. Crit­ics panned the film. Film­go­ers went to see ET. And all of the rest.

It was time to pull out the stops. So, M. K. Pro­duc­tions was enlist­ed to shoot a 16 mm pro­mo­tion­al fea­turette that cir­cu­lat­ed through Amer­i­ca’s hor­ror, fan­ta­sy and sci-fi con­ven­tions. Fea­tur­ing inter­views with Rid­ley Scott, Syd Mead (visu­al futur­ist), and Dou­glas Trum­bull (spe­cial effects), the short pro­mo­tion­al film let view­ers peer inside the mak­ing of the mag­i­cal Blade Run­ner uni­verse. And now you can do the same.

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:

The Mak­ing of the Shin­ing

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

in Film, Sci Fi | August 31st, 2011

It’s per­haps hard to imag­ine now, but Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film, Blade Run­ner, saw some hard days when it was first released in 1982. Pre­view screen­ings went bad­ly. Crowds flocked instead to see Steven Spielberg’s block­buster, ET. The film lost mon­ey. And crit­ics gave the film mixed reviews.

Case in point, Siskel & Ebert’s review on nation­al tele­vi­sion. Roger finds some redeem­ing qual­i­ties — the spe­cial effects. Siskel calls it a “waste of time.” One thumb up grudg­ing­ly; anoth­er firm­ly down. A decid­ed­ly mixed review.

Siskel died, of course, in 1999. If you’re won­der­ing if Ebert ever changed his posi­tion, you can find this reap­praisal writ­ten in 2007, on the 25th anniver­sary of the film’s release.

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:

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

What is a Blade Run­ner? How Rid­ley Scott’s Movie Has Ori­gins in William S. Bur­roughs’ Novel­la, Blade Run­ner: A Movie

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

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