A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 6

Al Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the famed 1952 story about a dinosaur safari gone wrong. Lots of other Bradbury and time travel tales get a look in, and Elisha reads the story at the front of the programme in case you haven’t.

Next - “The Tactful Saboteur” by Frank Herbert

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A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 5

Dave Queen joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about the outrageous 1927 short story “The Red Brain”, written by Donald Wandrei when he was supposedly 16 years old. Elisha reads the story at the front of the programme and music comes courtesy of Budgie, Rush and Bad Brains.

Next - “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

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because nothing says cosmic horror like a kitty in a flower

omg - best book cover ever designed??

i mean, aside from the fact that dashiell hammett never wrote a story called “the red brain”. a little misleading, that! anyhow, tonight’s episode of slugs and stars features the 1927 title story - which was already WELL retro by the time this book came out (1965)

via this excellent, high quality collection of old paperback covers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calenture/

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 4

Martin Skidmore joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss the first space-travel story of the series, and the first truly obscure find, “Beyond the Reach of Storms” by Donald Malcolm. As always, Elisha reads excerpts at the front of the programme. Music includes “Firekeeper” by Red Planet.

Next - “The Red Brain” by Donald Wandrei

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A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 3

Alan Trewartha joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss “Segregationist”, one of Isaac Asimov’s famous robot stories from 1967. Music includes “Nobody Loves a Computer Because a Computer Does Not Dance”, by Computer. Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Next week - “Beyond the Reach of Storms” by Donald Malcolm

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A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 2

Tom Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss Fritz Leiber’s “A Pail of Air”, written in 1951. It’s a short story about a kid, some rugs, and an Earth so cold that helium crawls. Will it crawl onto YOU? Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Next week: Isaac Asimov - “Segregationist”

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A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou - Episode 1

Sarah Clarke joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There”, a 1938 science fiction novella about ice-bound scientists confronted with an alien who can become them. Elisha reads from the book in case you haven’t. As originally broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London on April 1, 2008.

Next week: Fritz Leiber - “A Pail of Air”.

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Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Series 2, Week 18

Freaky the Trigger and Her Pop Lollards round off their run with a final show whose contents will come as no surprise to those with a keen sense of the Lollardry ethos. It’s a clip show, in other words. Kind of. Tim, Meg, Steve, Tom, Elisha, Mark, Magnus and Pete test the physical limits of the studio — this is science, after all — by all crowding round the mixing desk. The missing link between King Arthur’s round table and Jay-Z. “How We Do” by Trina feat. Fabolous (not the other way around). And on it goes. Until it stops.

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A dinner with the Pentecostals

I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a Pentecostal church service, or hung around Christians of that persuasion for any meaningful length of time. The last time I spoke with someone I knew was Pentecostal was back in Tennessee; apparently in the UK it’s the fastest-growing Christian denomination of belief. They’re not as insular as the Seventh Day Adventists, but they’re at least as driven — there’s still the faint whiff of the cult about them. The story of Pentecost is the story of true believers surviving a day of reckoning through God’s grace; a wind from heaven scorches the earth and, among flames, boiling smoke and a blood-red moon, His followers become prophesyers, visionaries and “dreamers”. Essentially, Pentecostalism promises its followers that when the sh1t hits the fan, they will be superheros. Or at least Aquarians. It’s a strange cocktail of doomsday science and unbridled narcissism that apparently proves irresistable to more Britons each year.

Unaware of these tendencies lurking so nearby, I found myself surprised that upon sitting down to a dinner party in Holloway, the pleasant Chinese couple to my right who were cracking flavoured sunflower hulls and sucking out the contents with nimble aplomb announced to me, apropos of absolutely nothing (which is how these things always come out), that they were “very religious”. And left it there, picking at their seeds intently.

There really is little I enjoy less than discussing my dinner companions’ religious predilictions, but you have to say something, so I did.

“We’re Pentecostals,” he said, the mound of hulls having now grown to the size of a small anthill. She looked at me and said “Christian!”

“For 15 years,” the man said, grimly, I thought. After dinner was over he went out to the back patio and smoked the rest of a half-finished cigar, by himself.

Before that, though — but after the sunflower seeds — the entire table tasted what our host called “1000-year-old egg”. A delicacy in China and Hong Kong, 1000-year-old eggs are created by essentially burying eggs in mud for several weeks or months, turning the shell black, the white a translucent amber, and the yolk a mysterious dark green. A bit like some crash-landed alien, thawed out only in order to be eaten. (But will it change us if we do?)

The Chinese Pentecostals dug in, and smiled at our giggles and hesitant sniffing. They had nothing to fear from a 1000-year-old egg.

that resonance fm time machine in full

Click on this tantalizing thumbnail for a full schematic. (Credit goes to goopymart.com)

For more on how this wormhole faff works, you know what to do. Just click here.