The Science Fiction Radio Show

The show originated in 1979, emerging from a proposed science fiction class at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas.[1] In the fall of that year, David Carson, a media-design specialist at the college, and Keith Johnson, the school's astronomer and planetarium director, offered a science fiction course that failed to attract a sufficient number of students. With the large amount of material already prepared for the class, the pair decided to work on a radio show. Carson came up with a format for the program and took it to Johnson. Wally Jackson, the head of the Communications Department and supervisor of the college radio station, gave the go ahead. Odessa College provided recording facilities and funds for tape and telephone expenses.

Daryl Lane (left) and David Carson (right) interview Jack Williamson

As work started on the project two more people were added: Daryl Lane, English professor and chair of the English Department at Odessa College; and David Crews, a production manager and digital musician from one of the local television stations. Besides functioning as an interviewer and on-air voice, Crews also created the synthesized digital score that served as background music to the show and provided its other-worldly mood.

The first show aired locally in June 1980 and the last, as a nationally syndicated production, on December 31, 1983. For the first few mo, ths the show consisted of thirty-minute presentations which aired Saturdays on KOCV-FM, the college's radio station. Employing selections from author interviews, these shows focused on such staple science fiction themes as time travel or robots, or subgenres like Space Opera or New Wave.[2]

Soon, however, the interview itself became the show's single concern and the format was converted to a simple question-and-answer pattern. Besides discussing their individual books, authors revealed how they started their careers as science fiction writers and why they were drawn to particular themes. Sometimes the producers traveled to an author's home to tape him or her directly, sometimes they went to science fiction conventions[3] and set up recording equipment in hotel rooms, but more often the interviews were taped during long telephone conversations.

Keith Johnson left the show when he took an astronomy position with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The show also lost David Crews a few months later when he left for a new job in Austin. However, in the spring of 1981 the show gained its final producer, William D. Vernon, a collector of science fiction paperbacks who was employed as a research chemist with El Paso Products Company in Odessa.

The show needed promotional backing if it was to reach a larger audience. Through Wally Jackson the producers contacted the Longhorn Radio Network in Austin, Texas, which agreed to syndicate the program. Longhorn required one significant change, however: switching from a thirty-minute show once a week to a five-minute production airing every weekday. Before the syndication process was complete, the show's producers formed a corporation to provide legal security. The corporation was called The Permian Basin Science Fiction Association; it was formed in 1982 and was dissolved in 1987.

The show went off the air for the fall of 1981 while preparations were made for the new format. The producers also expanded their interview targets to encompass individuals peripheral to science fiction, people who were not authors but were somehow related to science fiction and fantasy. Included among the new class of interviewees were movie critic Roger Ebert;[4] Muppet creator Jim Henson;[5] agent Richard Curtis;[6] Underwood Miller[7] publishers Chuck Miller and Tim Underwood; award-winning science fiction and fantasy artist Michael Whelan;[8] and scientist Robert Forward.[9]

In the spring of 1982 The Science Fiction Radio Show was back on the air, this time nationwide in its new syndicated format.[10] The show's remaining producers—Carson, Vernon, and Lane—formed the final team that carried the show through to its termination in 1983. Vernon and Lane conducted interviews and wrote the script for each show; Carson extracted selections from the raw interview tapes, spliced them into the recorded script, added theme music and segues, and mailed the finished product off to Longhorn, Any radio station in the country could subscribe to the show through Longhorn and many did. The Longhorn Radio Network estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 persons a week heard the program.[11]

The Science Fiction Radio Show had clear educational value. For newcomers, it provided an introduction to a vital literature of their time. For hardcore fans, it supplied insights and background to what they were reading in books and magazines or seeing on the screen. The show's interviewees also spanned the history of modern science fiction, from authors who began publishing pulp stories[12] in the 1920s to fans in the 1980s attempting to publish their first stories. In their interviews authors often spoke of the value of speculative fiction. By imagining possible futures science fiction authors prepare their readers for “future shock[13]”—the fear and confusion many people experience when confronted with the bewilderments of modern technology. Science fiction also expands readers’ minds by exploring scenarios of future warfare, environmental decay, and cosmic catastrophes.

The show's three-year tenure was also an exciting and fertile time for the genre of science fiction (and fantasy). The best of Golden Age science fiction[14] from the 1940s and 1950s, the best of New Wave science fiction of the 1960s, and the influx of excellent women writers into the field, all combined to produce some of the most remarkable science fiction in the history of the genre. Many significant events of early 1980s science fiction—including the appearance of major novels, stories, movies, and television productions—are reflected in The Science Fiction Radio Show's interviews.

Gordon R. Dickson[15] talked to radio show interviewers about his latest work, The Final Encyclopedia,[16] just as he sent it off to the publisher as a 1,400-page manuscript. Stephen R. Donaldson[17] discussed his new book White Gold Wielder,[18] which completed his second trilogy on Thomas Covenant. Philip José Farmer[19] reminisced over his Riverworld books as the fourth volume in the series, The Magic Labyrinth,[20] was published. Gregory Benford[21] talked about Timescape,[22] his multi-award-winning novel published a few months before the interview.

Michael Whelan, five-time Hugo-award[23]-winning artist, was interviewed at a convention[24] where he took the show's producers on a tour of his art exhibition—with commentary that became a week's worth of interviews. Sometimes movies became part of an interview, as when Ray Bradbury[25] discussed his book Something Wicked This Way Comes[26] as it debuted on the big screen; or when Muppet creator Jim Henson was working on his fantasy movie The Dark Crystal.[27]

In the summer of 1983 an associate dean at Odessa College, Judith Fleming, put the show's producers in touch with Oryx Press, who expressed interest in publishing the interviews.[28] Thus began the metamorphosis of radio show into a book.[29] The work required to prepare a book meant that there was no time to continue with the radio show; with reluctance, the producers were forced to drop it.

The book, The Sound of Wonder, came out in two volumes in late 1985 and has since gone out of print.[30] Science fiction researchers have found the publication a handy reference source. The Philip José Farmer interview from Volume 2, for instance, has recently been added to a reference work on Farmer for publication sometime in 2015.[31] The producers of the show have to release a Kindle version of the volumes on Amazon. Though The Science Fiction Radio Show went off the air in 1983, both Vernon and Carson were invited as guests to the New Orleans Science Fiction Fantasy Festival in June 1989 where they participated in various panel discussions.[32]

During its three-year tenure the producers of the radio show interviewed over eighty individuals, the great majority of them authors. A typical interview lasted between one and two hours. By the end of its run in December 1983 the interviews extended over 255 large reel-to-reel tapes. Members of the final radio show team (Carson, Vernon, and Lane) were well aware of the value of this archive and sought a way to both preserve it and make the information available to researchers. In 1995 they donated the entire archive (which also included 191 cassette tapes) to the Science Fiction Oral History Association,[33] headed by Lloyd Biggle Jr, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It was understood that the organization would digitize the tapes and distribute copies among public research institutions.

At the time of Biggle's death in 2002 very few of the tapes and been digitized and given to research facilities. A handful have shown up at the Vincent Voice Library[34] at the University of Michigan in East Lansing, Michigan, but the great majority of the tapes remain undigitized and unavailable. Their location and stewardship is uncertain. The Science Fiction Oral History Association presumably has custody of the tapes, but the organization has not been active for a number of years.

Lane and Carson retired from Odessa College and continue to pursue interests in Odessa. Vernon now lives in New Orleans and still collects, specializing in the works of Philip K. Dick[35]