A Podcast Begins…
Each of these podcasts will examine a set of relationships between natural history and science fiction.
In this episode, I’m going to be exploring the idea of the fossil.
Why fossils? What do they have to do with science fiction?
Isn’t it a bit strange to talk about these specimens that relate to the distant past to think about a genre of storytelling that we normally associate with things to come?
Over the next few episodes, I’m going to think about a number of different relationships between fossils in the Horniman’s collection and science fiction. For now, I want to spend a bit of time thinking about what these things are, which I hope will lead to some sense of why I think fossils resonate with science fiction, or are in some way science fictional. Fossils have appeared in many ways in science fiction from the surreal psychic time travel of Cryptozoic, a wildly uneven novel by Brian Aldiss, to the image of life and memory of the fossil in Nicola Griffith’s sublime novel Ammonite, and in Michael Chriton’s bestseller Jurassic Park. I invite you to listen to this short podcast to find out more about the appeal of fossils as science fictional objects.
Click on the link below, or search Dan Byrne-Smith or Horniman Podcast Fossil at iTunes:
Or stream from Soundcloud below.
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
https://soundcloud.com/user-635937500/horniman-podcast-2-fossils-2
