A season exploring science fiction writing on Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7. Hear new dramas, plus dramatisations and readings of groundbreaking books.
You can listen online to each programme for seven days after it is broadcast.
PROGRAMMES
- 22 Feb 200918:00
–18:30BBC Radio 71/4. Author Professor Dunning and Inspector Lionheart team up to unravel spooky mysteries.
Repeated: 23 Feb 2009 at 00:00. - 22 Feb 200920:00–21:30BBC Radio 3Adaptation of HG Wells' story, by Philip Osment.
- 28 Feb 200921:30–22:00BBC Radio 3A group of male researchers, on a quest to discover the secret of the bizarre planet Porno, become sexual objects themselves.
- 28 Feb 200909:00–11:00BBC Radio 7A re-imagining of the classic British sci-fi series.
Repeated: 28 Feb 2009 at 20:00 and 1 Mar 2009 at 03:00 - 28 Feb 200918:00–18:40BBC Radio 76/16 Unexpected science fiction and horror tales - new adaptations based on the classic TV series.
Repeated 1 Mar 2009 at 00:00. - 28 Feb 200918:40–19:00BBC Radio 71/8. Nigel Anthony reads Temple of the Winds by James Follett, the first book in The Silent Vulcan trilogy.
Repeated: 28 Feb 2009 at 00:40. - 1 Mar 200923:30–00:00BBC Radio 71/6. New to Radio 7, a comedy series starring Nick Frost. It is said that those who sit on the Sofa of Time can be transported anywhere and to any time.
- 1 Mar 200915:00–00:35BBC Radio 4An adaptation of the late Arthur C Clarke's novel. In the 22nd century an enormous alien spaceship hovers over the earth.
Repeated: 7 Mar 2009 at 21:00 - 1 Mar 200918:30–19:00BBC Radio 7Adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel. London becomes a primordial swamp as global warming melts the ice-caps.
Repeated: 7 Mar 2009 at 00:30 - 2 Mar 200919.45–00:35BBC Radio 4All the grass in the world has been attacked by a deadly virus. The world's staple foods are dying. The Custance family flee to a safe haven in the Lake District and descend into barbarism as they try to escape starvation and civil war.
- 2 Mar 200918:00–18:30BBC Radio 7Ten-part series, weekdays from 2nd March.
When John's girlfriend Lioba dies, he logs into her virtual world to grieve, but begins to suspect she's still alive in there. Offered the choice of committing to live there and find her, or log out and lose her, he leaps in.
Little does he care that the fantasy game sites, where the worst of humanity is played out, will become his reality. He will feel pain, and he might die there. In each episode he is plunged into a new world.
Planet B is also available as a podcast. - 2 Mar 200918:30–19:00BBC Radio 71/5 Atmospheric sci-fi series, involving UFOs, alien abduction, alchemy, biblical prophecy, cutting-edge physics and a giant ravenous fridge!
Repeated: 3 Mar 2009 at 00:30 - 3 Mar 200911:00–12:00BBC Radio 7Drama about a computer so powerful, and so all-knowing that it may be said to have an independent life of its own - despite the fact that it is a man-made creation.
Alpha, won a Sony Radio Academy Award in 2001 for Best Drama. - 4 Mar 200911:00–12:00BBC Radio 7A sister play to Alpha, Omega takes us into a fascinating and disturbing vision of the near future, where the most human and endearing character we meet has, it transpires, no real existence at all.
- 5 Mar 200911:00–12:00BBC Radio 7Two-part serial set in a future when lives are ruled by computers, and artificial intelligence has become a reality.
- 5 Mar 200914:15–14:30BBC Radio 4Dramatisation of an Iain M banks story in which the Culture, a spacebound utopian civilisation, encounters Earth.
- 7 Mar 200909:00–12:00BBC Radio 7A three-hour commemoration of the classic seventies sci-fi TV show and its subsequent audio revival, hosted by Now Show alumni and musical comic Mitch Benn, who is not averse to a bit of sci-fi himself.
- 08 March 200920:00–21.30BBC Radio 3A darkly disturbing and surreal vision of contemporary America where faith, national security and the very fabric of time are under attack from an unlikely and terrifying weapon.
Invented by a shadowy research unit inside the Pentagon, the android head of Philip K. Dick is on the loose and wreaking havoc. - 9 Mar 200914:15–00:35BBC Radio 4A satire on cryogenics - the life of a child who is periodically frozen to suit parental lifestyle choices, which don't always chime with childcare.
- 9 Mar 200918:30–19:00BBC Radio 71/13. Fantastical comic serial about the mindbending netherworld of Brighton, as adapted from Robert Rankin's best selling novels.
Repeated: 10 Mar 2009 at 00:30. - 11 Mar 200914:15–00:35BBC Radio 4Jeff has always lived in Worcester with his agoraphobic mother. One day, while fitting a satellite dish, he is struck by an actual bolt from the blue and starts to hear a voice speaking in another language.
- 13 Mar 200914:15–00:35BBC Radio 4When a message from outer-space is received, how does this revelation affect one man and his immediate group of friends and relations?
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