Steve Martin on the Legendary Bluegrass Musician Earl Scruggs

in Music | March 29th, 2012

The great blue­grass ban­jo play­er Earl Scrug­gs died Wednes­day at the age of 88. Short­ly after­ward, Steve Mar­tin sent out a tweet call­ing Scrug­gs the most impor­tant ban­jo play­er who ever lived. “Few play­ers have changed the way we hear an instru­ment the way Earl has,” wrote Mar­tin ear­li­er this year in The New York­er, “putting him in a cat­e­go­ry with Miles Davis, Louis Arm­strong, Chet Atkins, and Jimi Hen­drix.”

Mar­tin writes of Scrug­gs:

Some nights he had the stars of North Car­oli­na shoot­ing from his fin­ger­tips. Before him, no one had ever played the ban­jo like he did. After him, every­one played the ban­jo like he did, or at least tried. In 1945, when he first stood on the stage at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in Nashville and played ban­jo the way no one had heard before, the audi­ence respond­ed with shouts, whoops, and ova­tions. He per­formed tunes he wrote as well as songs they knew, with clar­i­ty and speed like no one could imag­ine, except him. When the singer came to the end of a phrase, he filled the the­atre with sparkling runs of notes that became a sig­na­ture for all blue­grass music since. He wore a suit and a Stet­son hat, and when he played he smiled at the audi­ence like what he was doing was effort­less. There aren’t many earth­quakes in Ten­nessee, but that night there was.

You can con­tin­ue read­ing the essay at The New York­er Web­site.

In Novem­ber of 2001 Mar­tin had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play the ban­jo along­side his hero on the David Let­ter­man show. (See above.) They played Scrug­gs’s clas­sic, “Fog­gy Moun­tain Break­down,” with Scrug­gs’s sons Randy on acoustic gui­tar and Gary on Har­mon­i­ca, and a stel­lar group that includ­ed Vince Gill and Albert lee on elec­tric gui­tar, Mar­ty Stew­art on man­dolin, Glen Dun­can on fid­dle, Jer­ry Dou­glas on Dobro, Glenn Wolf on bass, Har­ry Stin­son on drums, Leon Rus­sell on organ and Paul Shaf­fer on piano.

The Wondrous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Morrison

in Music | March 29th, 2012

Depend­ing on which cir­cles you run in, you might have first spot­ted singer-song­writer-actor Glen Hansard as the leader of the rock band The Frames, as an actor in Alan Park­er’s film The Com­mit­ments, or, more recent­ly, as one half of the folk-rock duo The Swell Sea­son. But if the suc­cess of John Car­ney’s movie Once is any­thing to go by, you may well have become aware of Glen Hansard while watch­ing it. Car­ney, The Frames’ for­mer bassist, knew that Hansard had accu­mu­lat­ed just the kind sto­ries in his youth spent busk­ing around Dublin to shape his film’s down-and-out musi­cian pro­tag­o­nist. By shoot­ing time, Hansard had tak­en on the role him­self, ensur­ing that a whole new, large audi­ence would soon learn of a sec­ond inim­itable Irish voice to put on their playlists.

The first, of course, would have to be Van Mor­ri­son, whose artis­tic cap­ti­va­tion of gen­er­a­tions of lis­ten­ers extends to Hansard him­self. Invit­ed to Mor­rison’s birth­day par­ty by a Guin­ness heiress whom he befriend­ed while busk­ing, Hansard seized the chance to get near his favorite singer. Like some brave fans, he found a way to approach the reput­ed­ly brusque and tem­pera­men­tal Mor­ri­son. Unlike most of those fans, Hansard’s expe­ri­ence turned into a unique­ly close and per­son­al one. Watch the clip from Kevin Pol­lak’s Chat Show below and hear him tell the sto­ry of how he inad­ver­tent­ly par­layed a brushed-off song request (“You don’t know me!” was Mor­rison’s dev­as­tat­ing dis­missal) into an entire night spent exchang­ing songs alone with his musi­cal idol.

Hansard likens this mem­o­ry to one of “jam­ming with a Bea­t­le,” before cor­rect­ing him­self: “No, bet­ter than a Bea­t­le — it’s Van Mor­ri­son!” Though Hansard hails from Dublin and Mor­ri­son from Belfast — the root of such innate dif­fer­ence, Hansard explains, that he can’t even imi­tate Mor­rison’s accent — it seems only to make good sense that the two artists could engage in such a brief yet intense con­nec­tion. Despite com­ing from sep­a­rate gen­er­a­tions and sub­cul­tures, these two imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able Irish musi­cians sound pos­sessed of, or pos­sessed by, some­thing unusu­al. In both cas­es, their pecu­liar­ly expres­sive vocal and rhyth­mic ener­gies defy easy descrip­tion. In his book When That Rough God Goes Rid­ing: Lis­ten­ing to Van Mor­ri­son, crit­ic Greil Mar­cus describes this qual­i­ty in Mor­ri­son as “the yarragh.” Lis­ten to the cov­er of Mor­rison’s “Astral Weeks” above and won­der: what to call it in Hansard? H/T Metafil­ter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Bayeux Tapestry Animated

in Animation, History | March 29th, 2012

We had to do it. We had to bring back a won­der­ful lit­tle ani­ma­tion of The Bayeux Tapes­try — you know, the famous embroi­dery that offers a pic­to­r­i­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land (1066) and the events lead­ing up to this piv­otal moment in medieval his­to­ry. Cur­rent­ly resid­ing in France, the tapes­try mea­sures 20 inch­es by 230 feet, and you can now see an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the sto­ry it nar­rates. The clip above starts rough­ly halfway through the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, with the appear­ance of Hal­ley’s Comet, and it con­cludes with the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066. The video cre­at­ed by David New­ton began as a stu­dent project at Gold­smiths Col­lege.

P.S. Don’t miss the many cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. They’re all from top flight uni­ver­si­ties.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Art in the Era of the Internet (and Why Open Education Matters)

in Art, Technology | March 28th, 2012

Dur­ing the late 1990s, when the inter­net first boomed, we talked a lot about cre­ative destruc­tion — about how old busi­ness­es would col­lapse, mak­ing way for new ones to emerge. And, indeed, com­pa­nies like Ama­zon, Dell.com, and eBay changed the way we buy our books, com­put­ers and every­day items. Years lat­er, we’re see­ing new inter­net tech­nolo­gies chang­ing the arts world. Kick­starter, a plat­form that uses crowd­sourc­ing to fund cre­ative projects, may even­tu­al­ly bring more fund­ing to the arts than the NEA, pro­vid­ing sup­port for count­less new artists. Cre­ative Com­mons and its lib­er­at­ing copy­right regime already lets artists dis­trib­ute their cre­ative works to the broad­est audi­ence pos­si­ble. And The Cre­ators Project, a glob­al arts ini­tia­tive cre­at­ed by Intel and Vice, is redefin­ing our con­cept of the art stu­dio and art exhi­bi­tion. That’s the sto­ry told by Art in the Era of the Inter­net, a video cre­at­ed by PBS’ Off Book web series.

Speak­ing of Cre­ative Com­mons, the Cal­i­for­nia non­prof­it (along with the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the Open Soci­ety Insti­tute) has launched the Why Open Edu­ca­tion Mat­ters Video Com­pe­ti­tion. The com­pe­ti­tion will award cash prizes for the best short videos explain­ing the use of Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources and the oppor­tu­ni­ties these mate­ri­als cre­ate for teach­ers, stu­dents and schools. Cre­ate a great video (by June 5th) and you can win $25,000. Get more details at WhyOpenEdMatters.org

via Brain­Pick­ings

Wim Wenders and Celebrated Directors Talk About the Future of Cinema (1982)

in Film | March 28th, 2012

His inter­est stoked by the sight of a majes­tic old tree beside the road to Cannes, one which lived before any­one made films and may well live after any­one makes films, Wim Wen­ders con­sult­ed fif­teen of his col­leagues for their thoughts on the future of cin­e­ma. This being the time and place of the 35th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, he man­aged to round up cel­e­brat­ed inter­na­tion­al auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Wern­er Her­zog, Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder, and Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni — names cinephiles now men­tion along­side Wen­ders’ own — as well as less­er-known film­mak­ers like Mike De Leon, Romain Goupil, and Ana Car­oli­na. Alone in a hotel room in front of the rolling cam­era, a tape recorder cap­tur­ing their voice to their right and a silent tele­vi­sion spout­ing images to their left, they each respond to ques­tions on a sheet that fol­low from the same prompt: “Is cin­e­ma a lan­guage about to get lost, an art about to die?” Their reac­tions make up Room 666, which you can watch free online.

You may be famil­iar with the hand-wring­ing hap­pen­ing over this ques­tion even today, 30 years on. While our cur­rent anx­i­ety has to do with whether on-demand, inter­net-based deliv­ery mech­a­nisms will ren­der movies as we know them obso­lete, sev­er­al of the film­mak­ing minds in Room 666 go straight to the then-loom­ing specter of home video. Some seem ner­vous about it; oth­ers — notably Goupil, who unhesi­tat­ing­ly denounces the incon­ve­nience of tra­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion tools, and Her­zog, who pref­aces his answer by tak­ing off his shoes and socks — seem untrou­bled. Late in the doc­u­men­tary, a cer­tain Steven Spiel­berg pops up to defend his posi­tion as “one of the last opti­mists” in cin­e­ma. Even more sur­pris­ing than his pres­ence, giv­en the con­text, is his view of the film artist’s strug­gle against the film indus­try. Hol­ly­wood, he claims, has always yearned to make that myth­i­cal, mon­ey-print­ing “movie for every­one.” He argues that, giv­en these demands, the trou­bled eco­nom­ic times, the strug­gling dol­lar, and the shaky atten­dance fig­ures — in 1982, remem­ber — film­mak­ers will just have to fight the good fight that much hard­er to tell their small, pecu­liar sto­ries in ways that seem big and broad­ly mar­ketable.

Pac­ing and ges­tic­u­lat­ing, Anto­nioni explains his con­fi­dence that mankind will adopt, adapt to, and improve upon whichev­er vari­ety of film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy comes its way, “mag­net­ic tape” or some­thing more futur­is­tic. But does this apply equal­ly to film­go­ers as to film­mak­ers? Anto­nioni and cer­tain oth­er of Wen­ders’ iso­lat­ed inter­vie­wees spec­u­late that, with the advent of per­son­al screen­ing tech­nolo­gies, the entire tra­di­tion­al cin­e­mat­ic view­ing infra­struc­ture — the­aters, pro­jec­tors, snack bars — will inevitably van­ish. When Two Lane Black­top direc­tor Monte Hell­man takes his seat in Room 666 and bemoans hav­ing taped hun­dreds of movies off tele­vi­sion with­out hav­ing watched a sin­gle one, he briefly comes off as more pre­scient, or at least as more of an illus­tra­tion of the future, than any­one else.

Yet in 2012’s mixed cin­e­mat­ic econ­o­my, amid an unprece­dent­ed­ly wide range of means to watch a movie, I still find myself in the­aters more often that not. In these the­aters, I often watch revivals of films by these very same film­mak­ers, or even by their elders. Since Antho­ny Lane wrote it in the New York­er, I’ve quot­ed it almost dai­ly: “There’s only one prob­lem with home cin­e­ma: it doesn’t exist. The very phrase is an oxy­moron. As you pause your film to answer the door or fetch a Coke, the expe­ri­ence ceas­es to be cin­e­ma. Even the act of choos­ing when to watch means you are no longer at the movies. Choice—preferably an exhaus­tive menu of it—pretty much defines our sta­tus as con­sumers, and has long been an unques­tioned tenet of the cap­i­tal­ist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cul­tur­al life (or any kind of life, for that mat­ter), and one thing that has nour­ished the the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, from the Athens of Aeschy­lus to the mul­ti­plex, is the ele­ment of com­pul­sion.” H/T Dan­ger­ous Minds

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Monty Python’s Away From it All: A Twisted Travelogue with John Cleese

in Comedy, Film | March 28th, 2012

And now for some­thing com­plete­ly deli­cious: a rare gem from the Mon­ty Python vault called Away From it All, fea­tur­ing John Cleese as Nigel Far­quhar-Ben­nett, a voice-over artist bad­ly in need of a hol­i­day.

The 13-minute film is a par­o­dy of the mind-numb­ing trav­el­ogues they used to show in movie the­aters. It was pro­duced in 1979 and screened in British and Aus­tralian the­aters as a warm-up for Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an.

The nar­ra­tion was writ­ten by Cleese, who Michael Palin once said was born with a sil­ver tongue in his mouth. “John loves words,” writes Palin in The Very Best of Mon­ty Python, “espe­cial­ly ‘neb­u­lous’, ‘tren­chant’ and ‘ortho­don­tic’. Though most chil­dren’s first word is ‘mama’, John’s was ‘eli­sion’. ‘Mama’ was third, after ‘hydraulics’.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin of Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed

Ballet in Super Slow Motion (And More Culture Around the Web)

in Random | March 27th, 2012

This does­n’t need much in the way of an intro­duc­tion, except to say that two pho­tog­ra­phers, Simon Ian­nel­li & Johannes Berg­er, caught Mari­na Kan­no and Gia­co­mo Bevilaqua, both from the Staats­bal­lett Berlin, per­form­ing sev­er­al jumps, each cap­tured in slow motion at 1000 frames per sec­ond. And it’s all set to Radio­head­’s “Every­thing In Its Right Place.” Enjoy that (h/t Kot­tke) and also …

More Cul­ture from Around the Web/Our Twit­ter Stream:

Google Doo­dle Cel­e­brates Mies Van Der Rohe’s Crown­ing Achieve­ment

Ter­ry Gross Talks With Matthew Wein­er (‘Mad Men’ Cre­ator) On What’s Next For Don Drap­er

Will One Researcher’s Dis­cov­ery in the Ama­zon Destroy Chom­sky’s The­o­ry of Lin­guis­tics?

The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse: 52 Lec­ture Intro to Physics by Cal­tech. Added to the Physics sec­tion of our Free Cours­es List

How to be an Aca­d­e­m­ic Fail­ure: A Guide for Begin­ners

Record­ing of William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize Speech

From Le Monde, “Back­stage with Char­lie Chap­lin,” a Hand­ful of Very Mov­ing Stills

Kurt Von­negut: The Paris Review Inter­view (1977)

A Reject­ed & Unpub­lished Kurt Von­negut Novel­la Gets Released as a $1.99 Kin­dle Sin­gle

Advice on Advice from Lit­er­ary Greats

Why Bilin­guals Are Smarter

First High-Res­o­lu­tion Images of the Wreck of the Titan­ic

Watch The Hitch-Hiker by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Director of a 1950s Noir Film)

in Film | March 27th, 2012

In our enlight­ened times, film direct­ing has become a rea­son­ably open pro­fes­sion, admit­ting men, women, and — giv­en the plum­met­ing cost of pro­duc­tion equip­ment — chil­dren alike. But imag­ine how it would’ve been in 1949, when the Eng­lish-born actress Ida Lupino took the reins of Not Want­ed from the pro­jec­t’s ail­ing direc­tor Elmer Clifton. This would­n’t have seemed nor­mal at the time, and it would’ve seemed even less nor­mal that she went on to direct six more pic­tures. Her fifth, 1953’s The Hitch-hik­er, even entered the tra­di­tion of noir, one rarely asso­ci­at­ed with female writ­ers or direc­tors. Femmes fatales, sure — these sto­ries could scarce­ly exist with­out them — but women behind the cam­era?

To add a lay­er of irony on top of the unlike­li­ness, The Hitch-hik­er does away with any trace of overt wom­an­ly pres­ence. By the time we get to know the film’s hap­less pro­tag­o­nists, a cou­ple of bud­dies who look and act like fresh-cut slabs of all-Amer­i­can bland­ness, they’ve already told their wives they’re off to a fish­ing trip, and they’ll get back when they get back.

Bear­ing straight south down the open road, no soon­er do they reach Mex­i­co than they pick up a hitch­hik­er. By the time they come to under­stand that this black-clad, lumpy-fea­tured fel­low has killed before, may well kill again, and intends to mount a cease­less cam­paign of psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion in order to get a ride to his free­dom, we under­stand why hitch­hik­ing has gone out of style. You can find out how things turn out for them by watch­ing the whole thing, free on YouTube.

Lupino’s film does­n’t just remove the women from the noir for­mu­la; it leaves aside most of the dark­ness implic­it in the gen­re’s very name. Apart from a few tense night­time scenes and a cli­mac­tic chase through an after-hours ship­yard, the bulk of The Hitch-hik­er’s action takes place under a harsh Mex­i­can sun that bleach­es out near­ly every­thing but the jagged shad­ows cast by unearth­ly rock for­ma­tions along the emp­ty road. Though actu­al­ly shot on the east­ern slopes of the Sier­ra Neva­da moun­tains, the movie takes its for­eign set­ting seri­ous­ly, offer­ing sev­er­al rel­a­tive­ly extend­ed sequences and exchanges con­duct­ed entire­ly in untrans­lat­ed Span­ish. By the stan­dards of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can genre film, this near­ly counts as an act of rad­i­cal artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion. Yes, The Hitch-hik­er plays a bit broad­ly today and leans on a few tropes that must have seemed creaky even in 1953, but it remains an unusu­al enough entry in noir his­to­ry to mer­it atten­tion — and not just because of the sex of the direc­tor.

You can find The Hitch-hik­er and oth­er films by Ida Lupino in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, and in our spe­cial col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Star Gazing from the International Space Station (and Free Astronomy Courses Online)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | March 26th, 2012

Don Pet­tit joined NASA in 1996 and has since logged more than 176 days in space, liv­ing abord the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) mul­ti­ple times, and always tak­ing his cam­era with him. In the past, he has shown us What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth, Views of the Auro­ra Bore­alis Seen from Space, and How to Drink Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty. Now we get an edit­ed ver­sion of what it looks like to star gaze from low orbit. Whether you look up or down, you can’t lose.

Look­ing to dig a lit­tle deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing out there in the cos­mos? Then you might want to spend some time with the cours­es list­ed in the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our Free Cours­es col­lec­tion.

• Astro­bi­ol­o­gy and Space Explo­ration – iTunes – YouTube – Lynn Rotschild, Stan­ford
• Astron­o­my 101 – iTunes – Web Site – Scott Miller, Mer­cedes Richards & Stephen Red­man, Penn State
• Explor­ing Black Holes: Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & Astro­physics –YouTube – iTunes Video — Web Site – Edmund Bertschinger, MIT
• Fron­tiers and Con­tro­ver­sies in Astro­physics - YouTube — iTunes Audio – iTunes Video – Down­load Course – Charles Bai­lyn, Yale
• Intro­duc­tion to Astro­physics — iTunes — Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and start shar­ing intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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.

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)

• “Beyond the Door”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Beyond Lies the Wub”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Mr. Space­ship”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Piper in the Woods”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Crys­tal Crypt”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Defend­ers”
  • iPhone/iPad – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Eyes Have It”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Gun”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Hang­ing Stranger”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Skull”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Vari­able Man”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Tony and the Bee­tles”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “We Can Remem­ber It For You Whole­sale”
  • iPad/iPhone

Audio

• “Beyond Lies the Wub” – Free MP3
• “Beyond the Door” – Free MP3
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
• “The Defend­ers” — Free MP3
• “The Hang­ing Stranger” – Free MP3
• “The Vari­able Man” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
• “Tony and the Bee­tles” – MP3 Part 1 – MP3 Part II

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

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.