Golden Age Fiction

The war with the Ganymedeans has been going on for two months, and Terra has been unable to use the launch cradles at Ganymede to send space ships to its colonies at Proxima Centauri. The colonists at Proxima Centauri are slowly starving, and Terra is about to capitulate to the Ganymedeans' demands.

As a vote to capitulate is being taken in the Senate, an urgent message arrives; a new type of Ganymedean ship has been captured! General Groves, Commander Carmichel, Major Siller, and Dr. Basset volunteer to take it for a test flight to discover its secrets.

"Prize Ship" appeared in "Thrilling Wonder Stories," Winter 1954, pages 89 - 101.

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Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories. His fiction explored philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.

Dick's influence has been widespread, extending into Hollywood filmmaking. Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 and 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010). In 2015, The Man in the High Castle (1962) was a dapted into a multi-season television series, based on Dick's 1962 novel; and in 2017 Channel 4 produced the anthology series Electric Dreams, based on various Dick stories.

In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer included in The Library of America series.

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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

An account of a day in the busy life of Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith, proprietor of the Earth Chronicle, specifically, September 25th, 2889, in the city of Centropolis.

"In the Year 2889" appeared in "The Forum," February 1889, vol. 6, issue 6, pages 662 - 677.

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Jules Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. He has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. His novels are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games.

Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His literary reputation, which was not so good in the English-speaking world, has improved since the 1980s.

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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The skit-trees grew in neat rows as far as the eye could see. There were dams and irrigation systems, graded and terraced ground, and large clearings where, it was supposed, the cities in which lived those who planted the skit-trees would have been. But where were they? What had happened to them? Not one artifact, not one shaped rock or piece of metal remained. And why did the radio keep picking up static on a supposedly uninhabited planet?

Wentworth and Haynes, part of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition team, were about to find out...

"Skit-tree Planet" appeared in "Thrilling Wonder Stories," April 1947, pages 41 - 49.

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Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.

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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Something had caused Neptune to act erratically as it orbited far out in the solar system. And that something was coming nearer. Would it collide with the Earth? No one knew, although speculation abounded. Closer and closer it came, brightening the night skies across the globe. As the new star passed close to Jupiter, it's direction changed. Where would it end up? And what effect would it have on the Earth?

"The Star" appeared in "Tales of Space and Time," published by Harper & Brothers, 1900, pages 37 - 57.

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Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".

As a futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility and biological engineering before these subjects were common in the genre. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction."

Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption per work – dubbed "Wells's law." His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), which was his first novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907), and the dystopian When the Sleeper Wakes (1910).

Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (Diabetes UK) in 1934.

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If there is a story that you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].

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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Welcome to Golden Age Fiction.

My name is Paul and in this podcast, I will be introducing you to, and narrating, stories from the golden age of pulp fiction magazines. This is generally considered to be from the last two decades of the 19th century to around the middle of the 20th century.

Evolving from the earlier dime novels and boys' magazines, there were a plethora of these pulp fiction magazines, of varying quality, in a wide selection of genres, printed on cheap pulp paper, appearing on mostly US newsstands, during that period. 

Early notable examples of these magazines were The Argosy, Blue Book Magazine, and Adventure. Later came magazines such as Western Story Magazine, Detective Story Magazine, and Love Story Magazine, the three most popular genres. Later still came Weird Tales, Ghost Stories, and Astounding Stories of Super-Science - which is still with us today, although it is now called 'Analog Science Fiction and Fact.' 

Many famous writers, some household names, started their careers in these pulp fiction magazines, sometimes writing under pseudonyms to protect their reputations, as fiction writing, especially fantasy and science fiction, was not as well regarded as it is today; writers like Raymond Chandler, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Isaac Asimov.

While I will try to spread the stories evenly over genres, I have a personal preference for science fiction and fantasy, for which I make no apologies.

I plan to release one episode a week with a story of between 30 minutes and 1 hour, but occasionally, I may release an episode with two or more 10- to 15-minute stories. There may also be the odd episode that is longer than an hour.

If I release a story longer than an hour and a half; a novelette, novella, or full novel, it will be serialised into 1-hour installments over consecutive days. I'm not going to make you wait a week for that next chapter.

However, as the saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy, this schedule may have to be adjusted as and when life rears its ugly head.

Finally, if there is a particular story that you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, please email me to let me know at [email protected].

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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.