EPISODE NOTES:
Released Friday 23rd June 2017
Story Etc. Episode 4: Science is produced and presented by Tom Crowley, Jenny Redmond and Eleanor Rushton. The supervising editor was Odinn Orn Hilmarsson, who also composed the music.
INTRODUCTION:
- Tom's favourite science fiction novels include A Scanner Darkly, the Callahan's stories and anything by Philip K Dick.
- Jenny's favourite sci-fi novel is Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, part of the Discworld series.
MARGARET CAVENDISH:
- Olivia Smith, interviewed here, is a Wellcome Trust researcher at the University of Oxford. She can be found on Twitter at @OliveFSmith.
- Olivia Onyehara, who reads the extracts from Cavendish's writing, is a London-based actor. You can find her on Twitter at @oonyehara and you can hear her interviewed in our first episode, Inclusion, here.
- A small gallery of original plates of Cavendish's books can be found here.
- Margaret Cavendish was the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, born 1623, died 1673. More information on her and her work can be found here.
- Margaret Cavendish's novel The Blazing World, full title The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World is a utopian romance, widely considered to be one of the first science fiction novels.
- Olivia S also discusses one of Cavendish's non-fiction works, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy.
- Olivia S refers to The Royal Society, a society for scientific experimentation for the UK and Commonwealth, which still exists today. You can find their website here.
- Olivia S refers to the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Pepys was one of the most notable chroniclers of London society in the mid-17th Century.
MARGARET CAVENDISH FOOTNOTES:
- Tom refers to The Twilight Zone, an American science fiction anthology television series created by Rod Serling. Specifically, he is referring to the first episode, Where Is Everybody?, from 1959.
- Tom refers to the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov, and the claim that Asimov predicted the creation of the Internet. This claim has been examined in a blog post on SF Signal, here.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM:
- Saturday Night in the Solar System was written by Olly Allsopp and is performed by Jamie Laird. It was directed and recorded by Tom Crowley.
- An archive of Olly Allsopp's comedy writing can be found here.
ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION:
- Jenny refers to living in a carpet, a reference to Terry Pratchett's novel The Carpet People.
- Tom refers to Weyland-Yutani and the xenomorph, from the Alien series of films, video games, books and comics.
- Tom refers to Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's film adaptation of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
- Tom talks about the shininess of the Star Wars prequels, also known as Episodes I, II and III.
- Tom refers to Black Mirror, a British sci-fi anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker.
ADAM ROBERTS:
- Adam Roberts is the author of a plethora of science fiction novels and reference books about the history of science fiction, and is an academic at Royal Holloway. His website can be found here, and he is on Twitter at @arrroberts.
- Adam speaks about Hugo Gernsback, the man who coined the term 'science fiction' and the founder of Amazing Stories, the first sci-fi magazine.
- Other contenders for the earliest sci-fi authors mentioned by Adam are HG Welles, Jules Verne and Mary Shelley.
- Adam thinks the first ever sci-fi work was Somnium, written by astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1608.
- The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy of epic high-fantasy novels written by JRR Tolkien, published between 1954-1955, in which the character of Saruman appears.
- Adam also mentions CS Lewis, the writer of the Chronicles of Narnia books, a series of seven novels published between 1950-1956.
- Adam also discusses the fantasy novels of Terry Pratchett.
- Adam says that everybody watches Doctor Who, Star Wars films, Avatar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- Star Trek, which featured sliding doors and the first interracial TV kiss, was Star Trek: The Original Series, created by Gene Roddenberry.
- Popular dystopias mentioned by Adam are those featured in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and the Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin.
- 2000AD is a weekly British horror and sci-fi anthology comic founded in 1977. Futuristic fascist cop Judge Dredd is its flagship character. Both Dredd and 2000AD are still going strong today.
- Cyberpunk is a trend in science fiction writing which began in earnest in the 1980s, crystallised in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer. Adam cites Blade Runner as its key visual text.
- Golden Age science fiction authors include Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.
GEMMA ARROWSMITH:
- Gemma can be found on Twitter at @mmaarrow, her YouTube channel can be found here, and her viral hit sketch for Tracey Ullman's Show is What Were You Wearing?
- Gemma's live sketches were performed at the Wenlock & Essex in Islington, London at our Story Etc. Live fundraiser on Thursday 25th May 2017 and were recorded by Odinn Orn Hilmarsson.
- The first time Gemma went to London, she saw Starlight Express, a musical about trains by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe.
- One of Gemma's earliest comic influences was Fawlty Towers, specifically the episode The Builders.
- Gemma's three solo comedy shows are Defender of Earth, Everything That's Wrong With The Universe and her latest, Earthling, which is currently touring.
- Gemma's mother's sci-fi favourites are Star Trek, Quantum Leap and Philip K Dick.
- Gemma's latest show, Earthling, is about the NASA Voyager mission. More information on the mission can be found here. Her research involved reading the writings of Carl Sagan, most notably Murmurs of Earth, his account of the Golden Record project. Gemma also mentions Sagan's novel Contact.
- Gemma mentions FOTSN, or Festival of the Spoken Nerd, a science comedy troupe which tours the UK regularly and also hosts mixed-bill lecture and comedy nights.