Random radio news

[sawyl]

Today saw the fourth and final part of Imagining Albion focusing on space opera. A truly excellent program which managed to give a potted history of the sub-genre, from Wells to present day operaticians. It included comments from China Mieville on Wells, Iain Banks and Collin Greenland on the importance of space opera as an escape, but also as form capable of carrying serious ideas and characters. It ended with comments from Ken MacLeod, who says that he moved into space opera to escape his image as a writer of near future political novels, and Justina Robson, who talked about the Forged and the future of humanity. Well worth catching via listen again.

In other radio related news, I'm looking forward to hearing Umberto Eco's masterly The Name of the Rose, due to be broadcast as this week's Classic Serial. I'm sure it won't do justice to the labyrinthine complexities of the novel and the acute details of medieval monastic life, but I'm not complaining...