Mind Webs: 49 hours Worth of Speculative Fiction Radio

Here’s an online treasure trove of audio files brought to you by the Internet Archive of the 1970s radio series Mind Webs. The show featured the greatest speculative fiction stories from top-notch authors of the day. You can find a summary of plotlines here. I’ve been listening to the shows for weeks in my car now, and enjoying them immensely.

Some of my personal favorites:

Harry Harrison’s The Ever Branching Tree, about an elementary school field trip back in time to observe evolution as it happens.

Robert Silverberg’s wonderfully satirical and observant When We Went to See the End of the World, which is even more relevant as a commentary on today’s world than the one it was written for 30 years ago.

Brian W. Aldiss’ The Night That All Time Broke Loose involves an alternate reality where “time gas” allows people to cause various elements of their surrounding reality, their dinner, home decor, even bodies, to travel back in time, dialing them to desired states. It seems like a miracle technology, until a gas line breaks at the time gas plant and starts de-evolving everything.