Last summer, I was hooked on the "I Love Bees" (http://www.ilovebees.com) marketing campaign for Halo 2. It reminded me how much I missed radio plays; I haven't listened to any radio-based drama for years.

Anyone here make a point of catching radio drama?

Oh, yes. I loved the BBC Radio version of HHG2G.

There was also a "Ruby" SF Detective radio series. They've also made available on-line copies of the Mercury Theater of the Air shows from the 30's, 40's and 50's.

I love radio drama. I consume most of my fiction as book on tape, and some of it is dramatized to the point of qualify as radio drama.

I'm also a buff of the old stuff, and any of the new stuff. On www.wbai.org (99.5FM in NYC), you can catch "The Golden Age of Radio" on Sunday nights.

Ruby was cool, though I think the second series started to get weird. The Fourth Tower of Inverness stuff was interesting, but I kinda lost interest after a while (or was it because my MP3 player broke...). I liked that they left in the stuff that left the actors cracking up.

Books on tape are the refuge of the lazy and/or self-overburdened.

Simplify, you fuckers, and you wouldn't need your literature fed to you.

There's a _lot_ of stuff out there available on MP3. Some people sell the CD's, but you can almost always find it for free. The copyright is sort of dubious. Some of it really is public domain, but most of it is akin to abandonware gaming.

It's actually pretty easy to get, for example, every episode of Superman or X-1 or Suspense (my favorite) or The Shadow or whatever you like.

I listen to books on tape while I'm bike riding.

Do you mean to tell me that the oral tradition is somehow less valid than the written one?

People tend to listen to books on tape when they feel that they don't have enough time for reading. If you don't have enough time for reading, then there are other, underlying problems with your life.

There's nothing wrong with oral traditions.

No, muppet, people listen to books on tape when you're doing something (like driving) so you can't read, but you still want to be entertained, but you want to be entertained by hearing somebody reading a book.

Nothing wrong with it. Kids do it all the time.

So you're saying guilt leads people to listen to books on tape? I listen to books on tape for entertainment, riding my bike or long distance driving.

Seriously, your assumptions are baseless and stupid.

There's those folks, and then there are folks for whom books-on-tape supplant all or nearly all of their reading, and that's a shame.

And then there's the folks who make baseless accusations of dubious merit based on stupid assumptions and idiotic prejudices.

I'm pretty sure I've caught you doing that once or twice, Mark. Those people sure are bastards, aren't they? :-)

I never said people listen to books on tape out of guilt, it's more out of intellectual laziness.

So are you saying that people listen to books on tape "because they don't feel they have enough time for reading" or because they're lazy?

I've been known to make a baseless accusation or two. You just seem unusually trollish this morning.

They're unwilling to make time for reading, instead imagining themselves as clever or witty in their ability to multi-task instead of taking on the challenge of organizing their life in a fashion that allows them their enjoyable intellectual pursuits at a modicum of leisure.

So... guilt.

If you somehow see guilt in that scenario, then you must be Catholic.

Muppet, did you ever stop to consider that they might *actually* be busy? I've got four kids, and trust me it's not so easy to organise your life to the point that you can "waste" a few hours settling down with a book. At best I can grab 10 minutes here or there, but that's about it.

Maybe you shouldn't have had four kids if you can't handle it? Are you a mormon or just a lustful Catholic?

I've got a kid who easily requires the attention of three. I somehow still find time, a few hours after she's gone to bed, to read for an hour or two before passing out for the night.

If you're so busy that you haven't got an hour a day of leisure time then you are living beyond your means in a temporal, rather than financial, sense.

Radio drama is not talking books. I'm afraid your general lack of a decent radio station has restricted your conception of what is possible.

Listen to Radio 7 on the net, or Radio 4 if you want to listen to current output.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

Simon -

You're absolutely right. Radio drama is not books on tape. I was not arguing against radio drama, but rather against books on tape. Radio drama is a genre in and of itself and can be highly enjoyable (ie, HHGG). Books on tape, however well done, are still books on tape and you should just READ THE DAMNED BOOK.

Now, if the book were adapted as a radio play and you wanted to listen to it for the sake of enjoying it in that genre, that's something else. Reading the lines from a book out loud while somebody bangs coconuts together behind you is NOT radio drama.

I have one of my own and three step-kids. There's a world of difference between one kid who needs lots of looking after, and four kids of widely varying ages (the range is from just under 2 up to 13) -- they all have different places they need to be taken to/collected from at different times; there's four times the amount of laundry, food preparation, and general maintenance required; the staggered bed times means that it's quite late in the day before peace is restored, and once it IS then there's all the stuff I need to do for myself -- getting my shit together for work the next day, small jobs around the house, having a shower, etc. By the time that's all over I'm exhausted and haven't got the mental energy left to read a book.

You may still claim this is all down to a lack of organisational skill on my part, but trying doing it for a week and then get back to me...

Can't we just agree that muppet is trolling here and no matter what you say he'll disagree with you, so you might as well just stop feeding the troll?

Mat -

Shouldn't have married an idiot, then.

Case closed.

I was hoping that as he's such a time management genius he may be able to point out where my obvious deficiency lies. After all, if he's so sure that it's *easy* then he must have a solution?

Yep.

Divorce the bitch so that you are responsible for a reasonable number of children.

a) I'm not married.
b) You think that sacrificing being there while my daughter grows up is a fair trade for being able to read a book?
c) Moron.
d) That is all.

Actually:

e) If you call my girlfriend a bitch or an idiot again then I will hunt you down and kill you.

Come visit, Mat. I'd love to talk to you. :-)

I love threats of internet violence. It's so... camp.

muppet = troll.