Classic SF with Andy Johnson
Exploring classic science fiction, with a focus on the 1950s to the 1990s.
Podcasting since 2020 • 179 episodes
Classic SF with Andy Johnson
Latest Episodes
#179 Walk like thunder: the mammoth trilogy (1999 - 2001) by Stephen Baxter
Published between 1999 and 2001, the Mammoth trilogy is a fascinating set of linked SF novels by Stephen Baxter. In reality, mammoths died out 4,000 years ago but Baxter imagines a different fate for them. Thoroughly researched and at ti...
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Episode 179
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8:49
#178 The new Argonauts: West of the Sun (1953) by Edgar Pangborn
A transitional 1950s novel of colonisationI'm somewhat sympathetic to Robert Silverberg's suggestion that the 1950s were the real "golden age of science fiction". In any case, that decade is notable for its fascinatingly transitio...
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Episode 178
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9:43
#177 Other ways to live: introducing the Hainish stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
A beginner’s guide to her groundbreaking SF settingBetween 1966 and 2000, Ursula K. Le Guin published seven novels and 17 stories in the Hainish setting, which together comprise a large proportion of her science fiction. Co...
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Episode 177
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16:23
#176 Silicon and steel: The Reproductive System (1968) by John Sladek
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia states that "there is a false belief that SF and humour do not mix." The SFE does concede, though, that the two are more successfully fused in short stories rather than in the novel form. Like Douglas Adam...
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Episode 176
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9:36
#175 Collision with the future: The Masks of Time (1968) by Robert Silverberg
The definitive time travel story, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), focuses on a protagonist who visits the extremely far future. Across over a century of time travel tales, in most cases it is the people of our own time who visit ...
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Episode 175
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7:48
