Mindwebs
Various
FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapters
Reviews
Great show!
newdickmorris@yahoo.com
Very happy to see these episodes being shared in such high quality. Even happier to hear that Mr. Hanson's new performances are just as entertaining as his old ones. Does anyone have a comprehensive list of episodes? Just a simple list of titles. I want to make sure I don't miss any of them. A few comments on the episodes I've listened to so far: Light Of Other Days: I had never heard of this story before. It's beautiful. Kaleidoscope: Very good episode. I love the dramatized Suspense version as well. The Country Of The Kind: I'm not even a fan of this story but the reading was so well done that I still liked this episode. My Object All Sublime: Never read this one before. Nice twist. I picked up a collection of the author's short stories after listening to this episode. The Star: A classic story. Looking forward to hearing a HQ version. Earthmen Bearing Gifts: Again it's the performance that makes this slight story so memorable. The Last Question: Very good. One of my favorite Asimov stories. Feeding Time: Brilliant choice for the closing song! Made me laugh out loud. Nackles: The argument that Santa is a god is surprisingly convincing, I must admit. I had a chuckle at the description of Nackles' version of reindeer. Wasted On The Young is good. I knew the main character would come to a bad end, but I didn't anticipate just how bad. The Fog Horn. Excellent reading. I'm not too crazy about the music selections here though. I think some background sea sounds would have added some atmosphere. My dad really enjoyed this one. Dry Spell & The Third Level: I liked both stories. I thought the background music in Dry Spell was a little bit intrusive, but that may have been intentional given the nature of the story. Third Level reminded me of the Twilight Zone's nostalgic episodes like A Stop at Willoughby. Warning Signs: Very good reading. Good musical accompaniment too. Rust: The saddest story you will ever read featuring giant killer robots. It's like Wall-E mixed with the Terminator. Great reading. The Gun Without A Bang: Not every story needs to be a morality tale or feature pointed satire. This is is just a fun adventure story. It would have made a good episode of Escape. I also liked Sheckley's Petrified Forest. But As a Soldier for His Country: I caught this on Youtube a while back. Great stuff. The author expanded this story into a full length novel, but I think the shorter version is stronger. I don't understand either of the J.G. Ballard stories. Recommendations for fans of Mindwebs: Escape Pod: A science fiction short story podcast with a sizeable library. I would LOVE to see Mr. Hanson lend his talents to this podcast for an episode as a way to promote his own program. The Black Mass: Not science fiction but a quality OTR broadcast that features some very nice readings of classic horror stories. Thanks again for making and sharing this fantastic program!
One of the Best Series
sirdle
**************** *** UPDATE **** **************** A newer, higher-quality, version of this series has been posted by Darkman with 153 episodes! https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410 =================== Michael Hanson has a wonderful voice and he does a superb job reading these stories. This series provides a minimalist approach with often just Mr. Hanson, and occasionally a few other actors, reading the script. Rather than rely on sound effects, most episodes use music and character voices to shape the mood. A wide range of sound quality with some of the best episodes, unfortunately, the hardest to understand (e.g., "When It Changed", "The Night He Cried", and "Foghorn"). Several of the titles/authors listed below are inaccurate or incomplete. You can see a complete listing, along with plot summaries and reviews at: http://www.otrplotspot.com/mindWebs.html
Still sad about the recent news...
newdickmorris
...but I'm happy to hear that Mindwebs will continue. Some random thoughts: - I really enjoyed hearing Fredric Brown's "The Answer" in the recent three part episode. It reminds me of that famous story by Isaac Asimov, but it turns out that this one actually preceded it by a couple of years. - Damaged or not, I'm looking forward to hearing "The Star." It's a classic for a reason. - In a previous comment I expressed the opinion that the music was a bit too intrusive in the episode "Dry Spell." Well, after listening to it again with a better set of speakers I have to take that back; the sound is fine. My worn out old ears, on the other hand... - After hearing "The Gun Without a Bang" and "The Petrified World" I have recently gone on a huge Robert Sheckley bender. Turns out he wrote a ton of entertaining short stories. Thank you Mr. Hanson for introducing Mr. Sheckley to me. - I'm also happy to hear that "But As a Soldier to His Country" is coming up. It's kind of obscure but it's awesome. And finally - thanks for sharing the tribute episode. I'll try to give it a listen tomight.
Makes my working day last half as long
Crimson Hikari
Recently got recommended Mindwebs after becoming obsessed with collecting anthologies of short stories (in print, ebook, and audio format), and wish I'd discovered this collection sooner. I started listening with some apprehension, as I had recently attempted to get into some Librivox recordings, and quickly gotten sick of the varied quality and the monotonous, repetitive intro regarding the copyright details. Very quickly found myself sucked into listening story after story, and before I knew it, 5PM had rolled around and I was wondering where the time had gone. Of the ones I have listened to so far, I would highly recommend the very first one, The Carcinoma Angels, and Descending, and very much looking forward to devouring the rest of this collection. A great collection of short stories, read by a cast with wonderful voices, and the quality is better than some professional audiobooks I've had the (mis)fortune of listening to.
OTR scifi for adults by real writers
LibrivoxOrgFan
There really isnt much adult oriented scifi in otr. While most shows seem to have relied on terrible house writers, this showcases real authors and real stories from the 50s to 70s- and what a great narrator. interesting music no annoying sound effects no commercials excellent sound quality.
Pretty horrible encoding, broken MP3 files
Richard Wicks
Some of the files are broken. There's a more complete version without errors here: https://archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410
Best
West of Upton Cheyney
I was the person who posted this version. I had originally downloaded it from the Internet Archive (posted by someone else) and noticed it had been removed from IA later. I posted it myself, without alterations, after seeing that it had be removed, hoping it would be of value to others. I have been pleased to see that some folk seem to find it so. The stories are brilliant. Michael Hanson's readings are perfect. I wish I had more knowledge of the music involved, though.
I want to love it, but
Mi・ミシェル・미셸
the bgm can be like nails on blackboard. completely out of sync on top of being pointless and distracting. it just takes away from the quality of the stories ror me. A WALK IN...7 THE SENTINEL? foghorn, really bad quality; To see the invisible, poor quality