Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Prolific author and master of science fiction; co-founder of the new wave of British sci-fi in the 1960s.
On the island
Eight records
Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Nicolai Malko
Well, I think we'll begin with Boradin's Symphony No. two, for its superb romantic melancholy plus challenge plus Oriental landscapes.
The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid
Bing Crosby, Jack Teagarden and Mary Martin
Oh, well, this has got a story which is connected with the Far East, really. ... It's extremely cheery, and I heard it once when I was in Calcutta crossing the Hooghly River in a rowing boat...
Branislav Simonović and Danica Obrenić
Well, from the fore east you're going to Yugoslavia now. And this is a Macedonian folk song called Kaji Vaska.
Violin Sonata in A major, D. 574Favourite
Well, this time what I regard as a piece of pure music, it's not programme music or anything special. It's just a violin and a piano talking to each other.
Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra
And this bit of jazz represents all the jazz and blues and black music that uh I ever listened to and enjoyed.
Easter Hymn (from Cavalleria rusticana)
Victoria de los Ángeles, with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Rome Opera House
Well, record number six is really a great favourite. It's Vittoria de Los Angeles singing the Easter hymn from Cavallera Rusticana. It's supposed, of course, to be a sacred song, but I obstinately persist in hearing all sorts of delightful carnal overtones to it.
Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age (from The Planets)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Well, this is by an Englishman. I realized belatedly that I hadn't got anything by any English composer. ... And it's Saturn, the bringer of old age.
This is one that would stand for all the the fun and satire and whoopee of life, really.
Old RiversFavourite
I think it sort of epitomizes the way I feel about myself. For years I just wrote and wrote for the pleasure of it ... But then suddenly I got the bug. The idea that I could write better ... Great error in my ways, because I immediately became much more ambitious and therefore less happy. And that's where I connect with Old Rivers.
Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)
It balances on the very edge of boredom ... while at the same time being hypnotic. It's an extraordinary piece. It seems to go on forever.
Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots
Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots singing an absolutely wacky song called Kao Cow Boogie.
In the Steppes of Central Asia
It's the sort of thing that travellers might play. It's part of Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia. It's a little tone poem.
The King of the Boeotians (from Orpheus in the Underworld)
I've always loved Offenbach, his his marvellous operas. And from Orpheus in the Underworld uh there's a song sung by Charon ... this is the melancholy little Kind of a love song that he sings to one of the women as they're going across the steps.
You realize I don't have an English work here. They're all foreign ... you'll be able to hear a Croatian folk song. From the days of Yugoslavia, called Olulomoya.
So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)
when something particularly sentimental and ghastly was happening in England ... you'd need a dose of Private Eye or Tom Lehrer, who could be awful about anything, including uh a song for World War Three, So Long Mom.
Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age (from The Planets)
It's a record that I've long loved, and finally I've realized the whole gravity of the situation. It's uh Saturn, the bringer of old age.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34How well do you think you could endure loneliness?
Well, I've been rather a solitary person in many ways, so I suppose I would put up with it. ... I would miss my family and all the adjuncts of civilization that I suppose all your castaways say they would miss.
Presenter asks
3:19What were you good at at school?
Well, subversion and humour is my general idea. I wasn't very good at anything much, except ... when dormitory lights were out, you see, there was a strictly enforced no-talking rule. But to while away those beak hours we used to tell stories round the dormitory. ... and eventually the the champion storytellers in the dormitory were a friend of mine, B.B. Jingel, and I.
Presenter asks
8:14What plans had you been making for the days when you were demobilized?
Well, I didn't really know what exactly would happen when I came back. ... I really lost two worlds at once, as it were, the the Far East and the world of my childhood. ... I did want to write well for one thing, I wanted to write a novel about my Sumatran experiences.
The keepsakes
The book
John Osborne: The Authorized Biography
John Lahr
I knew John Osborne and I could see the awful mess that his life was in... And how perfectly Halpen has understood him. So it's more than a biography, it's a philosophy.
The luxury
Presenter asks
10:13Where had you studied all the basic elements of science [for writing science fiction]?
Well, I mean, I think you'd have to say I was a science fan, although I was no good at maths. I liked popular science. I was mad about astronomy, for instance, and would read um all the astronomical books and people like Sir Arthur Eddington and so on and so on. So I gave myself a fair grounding in that.
Presenter asks
14:32How far did you track [the history of science fiction] back?
I believe that science fiction should be regarded as. The literature, as it were, of the Industrial Revolution and after. ... And conveniently to hand was Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, published in 1818. Yes. So I start with that.
Presenter asks
1:06What is the message, Brian, that you want to get over to your reader when you're writing?
Well, I don't agree with those people who think that science fiction is some kind of prediction of the future. It may or it may not be. I think it's a metaphor, and it's a metaphor for the human condition.
Presenter asks
2:26Why do you think people have that view of [science fiction not being worthy of attention]?
Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, people don't like tomatoes. You can't explain why they don't like tomatoes. You just feel that in some cases they're missing something. I actually think that the great days of science fiction have perhaps passed now. But the fact is ... That science fiction gave me an umbrella and it gave me endless friends.
Presenter asks
5:01Tell me about when you very first started writing. How old were you?
Four. And I illustrated my stories ... prompted by the fact That my mother at the time was in an awful few. Because Her firstborn daughter had been stillborn. and she had set up a defence mechanism. that the child had lived. And so I had to live with that child, this perfect child. And I could never be. As her. And so I think the idea of pretence was in the air.
Presenter asks
17:35What was it about you then, where many young men would have found great hardship and just longed to be home, what was it about you that thrived in that environment [in the army]?
Well, you know, if you don't wash or have your hair cut for s six months, it's absolute paradise when you're nineteen. There was always something interesting and extraordinary, often very frightening, it's true.
Presenter asks
26:19During the most difficult periods of your life, do you continue to write? Are you always writing?
No, I don't think so. I I think that I always write, because um well, it got me out of many scrapes, for one thing. Um yes, I I kept on writing. I always wrote.
Presenter asks
29:52What was it that you wanted to say about that experience [of Margaret's death] in writing?
You see, this terrible drama goes on for some time. Ah and one is seized by it. But after the funeral. A curtain falls silence falls. Well, I found that on Margaret's computer She had kept her a little department. Characteristically called my health. About her cancer. And so, assisted by that and novels that I had kept, I wrote When the Feast is Finished and the book was published, and still People write to me or phone me, or appear on my doorstep. to say how grateful they are for that book.
“My first payment were kicks and not halfpens. But ever since then I've been grateful for the fact that however rude the reviewers were, they never actually beat me like my old housemaster.”
“I really lost two worlds at once, as it were, the the Far East and the world of my childhood.”
“I don't think there's really much distinction or I don't like making much distinction between uh the critical pieces and the fiction. Both are in a sense criticisms of life.”
“I have suffered from loss from a very early age, and although I have recovered from it, in theory, this is the sort of stamp that has been put on me.”
“I lived hard, then? On a hard mattress. and on that sort of mattress To use a metaphor. I lived for the next twenty years.”
“You must never tell anyone how much you enjoy writing. You must always make out that it's really hard work. Well, it is hard work, but it's also. The second most enjoyable thing you can do. in life.”
“If you feel that you're not loved, the corollary is that you feel you're not worth loving.”