Sudden question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Did either Australia or New Zealand have anything along the lines of an SF anthology radio show?

Comments

[zeborah]

My parents don't remember anything, fwiw.

[mab_browne]

I don't remember any SF anthology shows, although there was a radio play adaptation of one of Philip Mann's novels done in the eighties.

[james_davis_nicoll]

I wonder if for some reason this is an artform that at least in English appeals most to Americans?

[slothphil.livejournal.com]

I don't recall ever hearing of a New Zealand one.

Hmmm.

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

TL;DR:
Australia: at least one.
NZ: Maybe not a devoted SF anthology series, but some general anthology series did produce SF works on occasion.

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/radio

Australian commercial radio had actually had its own "Golden Age", but this consisted mainly of local adaptations of American shows, such as Superman and The Shadow. Original material was produced, however. The first Australian sf radio play was Radio 3DB's 25-part 1934 adaptation of Erle Cox's novel Out of the Silence (19 April-25 October 1919 The Argus; 1925; exp 1947). The best-known Australian commercial radio sf serial was The Stratosphere Patrol (1947) written by the Sydney Futurian Vol Molesworth. The ABC broadcast a series of children's sf programmes written by the New Zealander, G K {SAUNDERS}, beginning with The Moon Flower (1953). It produced a serialization of Colin Free's Limbo City in 1979 and a wide range of individual sf plays, often as parts of more general anthology series. The latter included original Australian work by writers such as Bill McKeown, Free, Barry Oakley, Alfred Behrens, John Blay, Louis Nowra and Damien Broderick. Broderick's radio adaptations of his novels Transmitters and Striped Holes were broadcast by the ABC in 1984 and 1986, and his plays written for radio – Time Zones and Schrödinger's Dog – in 1992 and 1995. Original ABC radio adaptations of sf classics included Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bed Bug (1981), Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (1985), Cordwainer Smith's A Planet Named Shayol (1986) and Karel Čapek's The Macropoulos Secret (1988). CBC broadcast dramatizations of Wells's The Time Machine in 1948 and of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in 1956. It produced an sf radio anthology series, The Vanishing Point, which ran from 1984 until 1991 and included versions of Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) and Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1974); and also the fantasy/horror anthology Nightfall, which ran from 1980 until 1983 and included some sf. CBC has also produced comedy sf, such as Johnny Chase, Secret Agent of Space, which ran from 1978 to 1981, and Canadia: 2056, which premiered in 2007.

Radio New Zealand broadcast a three-part dramatization of Doyle's The Lost World, produced by Peggy Wells and Barry Campbell, in 1980-1981. NPR produced highly acclaimed radio dramatizations of the first Star Wars trilogy, featuring some members of the original film cast: A New Hope in 1981, The Empire Strikes Back in 1983 and The Return of the Jedi in 1996. All three were produced as serials, adapted for radio by Brian Daley and given George Lucas's formal approval; all three were rebroadcast in Britain by the BBC. NPR's Radio Tales anthology series (1996-2002), created and produced by Winnie Waldron, included a number of sf plays, notably adaptations of Frankenstein and The Time Machine in 1999; "Time Warp" (1999), based on Wells's short story "The New Accelerator" (December 1901 Strand); adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1863; trans 1872) and Doyle's The Lost World, all in 2000; of Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (1870; trans 1872) and Wells's The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds, all in 2001; "Apocalypse" (2001), based on Frank L Pollack's story "Finis" (June 1906 Argosy; vt "The Last Dawn" August 1963 Magazine of Horror); "Asteroid" (2001), based on Wells's short story "The Star" (December 1897 The Graphic); and "Moon Voyager" (2001), based on Wells's The First Men in the Moon (1901).

Re: Hmmm.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Re: Hmmm.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be great to hear a Superman with an Australian accent?