Sci-Fi & Fantasy

This is the story of Rhysling, the blind singer of the spaceways. The character and his music (particularly this song) appears throughout Heinlein's "Future History".

I can't decide if I'm mad or happy that they replaced Rhysling's squeezebox with a guitar, but after a lifetime of Heinlein devotion, I finally got to hear some of Rhysling's songs as *songs*, rather than as poems. "The Green Hills of Earth" has always been words on a page to me... to hear Rhysling sing "We pray for one last landing...." produced an expected emotional reaction.

This is a wonderful adaptation of the story-- yes, the audio is a little lacking, but bear in mind that this show is fifty years old. You could probably clean it up, but this is how it was heard back then. I bet someone could adapt this, make it sound slick, and take the 1950's styrofoam cheese flavor out of it... but it would be a shame. This isn't just something that happened to take place in the fifties... this is a piece of 1955-- radio history, science fiction history, and American history.

I buy everything with Heinlein's name on it that I don't already have, and I suspect that after I am done with the Heinlein episodes of this series and the one that followed it, I will probably be checking out some of the others.

This short story predicted urban sprawl, and our dependence on the technology that makes it possible. This radio production is very faithful to the original source material, and very well done.

I bought this because it had Heinlein's name on it-- I saw the Vonnegut reference but assumed RAH had some hand it the adaptation. This does not appear to be the case-- Heinlein is not mentioned at all. But you know, Vonnegut doesn't stink.

If you're looking for post-fifties production values or acting styles, look elsewhere. But it's a good story, and pretty well done for the time.