SF Audio 101

Easterbrook, Neil. "SF Audio 101, or 'It’s Alive!'" SFRA Review #293 (Summer 2010): pp. 14-20.[1]

A "Feature" in this issue of SFRA Review introducing readers to SF in audio formats available ca. 2010: radio drama and audiobooks.

Easterbrook on Easterbrook's coverage of the topic in terms of forms:

There are perhaps four main analytic divisions in the larger category called audio drama or audio theater: (1) original audio plays; (2) full-cast adaptations; (3) audiobooks; and (4) podcasts. The first two categories have very similar sources and genesis. Original audio drama includes such things as radio plays (either new or OTR), CD audio plays, and fan produced web originals; full cast adaptations also come from the radio or from companies producing CDs or Webcasts. The term audiobooks usually designates single (but sometimes multiple) read- ers of abridged or unabridged print texts. Podcasts are varied and flexible, and might include any of the first three categories, but usually they are short programs of two types: either short stories read by fans or authors, or they are the web’s version of a chat-show, including interviews with authors.

In his overview — a term that reminds us how vision-centered much of English is — Easterbrook comments passim on, among other works, audio versions of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, Neal Stephenson's Anathem (sic), Dan Simmons's Hyperion cantos, "Orson Scott Card's Ender books, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, William Gibson's Burning Chrome story collection, STAR WARS (the initial trilogy), Doctor Who and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.

RDE, finishing, 31Mar21