Showing results by author "John Wyndham" in All Categories

Bill Nighy, Barbara Shelley and Peter Sallis are among the cast in six classic BBC Radio dramatisations of stories by one of Britain's most popular science fiction authors. 'The Day of the Triffids', first broadcast in 1968, is set in a world in which most people have been left blind after a meteor shower, and lethal carnivorous triffids are roaming the land. 'The Kraken Wakes', dramatised for radio in 1998, is a gripping story of monsters from the deep, alien invasion and ecological disaster.

Full-cast dramatisations of six masterpieces from the founding fathers of dystopian fiction. Dark and disturbing, provocative and prescient, dystopian literature has long captured our imagination with its nightmarish visions of forbidding future worlds. Included here are six classic novels of time-travel, totalitarianism and terror, written by some of the masters of speculative fiction and adapted for radio with all-star casts.

Matthew is a normal 11-year-old boy living with his parents and little sister in Surrey. He's too old and sensible to have an imaginary friend really. Yet when Matthew's parents keep finding him talking and arguing with a strange presence whom Matthew calls Chocky, that's what they believe it must be…at first. But Chocky is oddly sinister, and keeps asking Matthew all sorts of complicated questions about the world and making him behave in unusual and erratic ways. Then Matthew suddenly does something heroic, well beyond his capabilities; the media become interested and the interest in Matthew widens.

This full-cast drama, part of BBC Audiobooks' Classic Radio Sci-Fi series, is based on the classic post-war 'science fantasy' novel which made John Wyndham famous, and whose appeal endures to this day. Giles Cooper's six-part adaptation stars Gary Watson, Barbara Shelley and Peter Sallis, with appearances from Doctor Who names Peter Pratt, Christopher Bidmead and David Brierley. Divided by blindness and societal breakdown, humanity is at the mercy of the carniverous Triffids....

When young Matthew starts talking to himself, and introduces his invisible friend, Chocky, to the family, his parents decide it's just a phase he is going through. But when Matthew starts explaining binary maths and anti-gravity propulsion, they begin to worry. Is Chocky really just the product of an over-inactive imagination, or something more?

The author spent several years as an assistant district officer among the Yorubas in Nigeria, and was thus enabled to collect the folklore contained in this book from native sources. The reticence of the natives on religious subjects made it necessary to piece much together from incantations and chance remarks, but it is hoped that the notes will show that no great liberty has been taken with the beliefs of a tribe which inhabits a large area in West Africa.

At first, the fireballs seemed to be nothing more than a dazzling display of lights in the sky, plunging into the deepest oceans and disappearing without trace. But when ships started sinking inexplicably and the sea-lanes became impassable, it seemed that the world was facing a threat of unprecedented proportions.