Maintained by Changesurfer Consulting
Speculative Fiction and
Future Politics
Space Colonization, SETI and the Politics of Space
THIS
PAGE IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED. THE GOALS OF THE PAGE HAVE SHIFTED OVER TO THE
CYBORG DEMOCRACY BLOG.
This page was dedicated to the premise that the radical democratic movements - for solidarity, equality and liberty - will need to incorporate, and be radically rethought in terms of, the acceleration of technology. The largest and most accessible space for the debate about these alternate futures is science fiction, and so I am attempting to bring together resources which ask radical democratic questions in utopian, fantastic and fictional ways. This page began as a resource to accompany my Politics of Science Fiction course. Do theories of complexity suggest new models of social change? Do technologies for gender modification suggest a post-gender world? What are the biological and cognitive limits of citizenship in a future world of hybrid animals, robots, cyborgs and post-humans?
This page is also dedicated to the memory of David Lasser (1902-1996), socialist, SF editor and space activist
- James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg
Speculative Political Organizations and
Models of Future Governance
World Government Creators and Reformers
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World Federalist Association, the largest federalist group |
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World government Web Issuer of the World Service Authority passport, recognized by 140 nations. |
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| Yahoo: World Government Groups |
| NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny, by Robert Wright |
| The End of Internationalism: Or World Governance? by J. Orstrom Moller, Jacques Santer |
Anarchists, Devolutionists
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Yahoo: Anarchist Groups |
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Extropians Libertarians who want to live forever |
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League of Secessionist States Micronations, also known as ephemeral states, imaginary states, model nations, counter-countries and unrecognized states, are a growing phenomenon. They range from the inventions of single individuals to (virtually) functioning societies with populations in the thousands, often spread across 'national' boundaries. What they have in common is the voluntary nature of citizenship, which is unrecognized by the established (Macro-)nations. |
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"T. A. Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism" Hakim Bey |
The Future of Work
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Why Work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery |
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Basic Income European Network (BIEN) - Working towards a basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. |
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Citizen's Dividend - U.S. organization working for a basic income |
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"Workers Have Nothing to Lose But Work Itself!" by J. Hughes, 1991 |
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The Jobless Future : Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work by Stanley Aronowitz, William Difazio, 1995 |
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Reclaiming Work : Beyond the Wage-Based Society by Andre Gorz, 2000 |
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Where Has All The Leisure Gone? The Industrialization of Lifestyle. by Richard R. Danielson and Karen F. Danielson, 1997 |
Socialists and Radical Democrats
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"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" Friederich Engels |
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New Party (USA) |
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Center for Economic and Social Justice - Promoting a radical redistribution of wealth, but private ownership of capital and "free markets" |
Ethnic Identity Politics
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Communalists
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Intentional Communities the journal of the communal movement |
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WWW Resources on Alternative and Utopian Communities |
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Arcosanti. An experimental city in Arizona. |
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Auroville. An experimental city in India. |
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Oceania -- The Atlantis Project. An attempt to found a libertarian sea-based country. |
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The Venus Project Good old- fashioned utopian socialists. |
Futurist Organizations
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Institute
for Alternative Futures - |
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Millennium Project - Initiated by the United Nations University, the aim of the project is to provide a global capacity for analysis of long-range issues and strategies. |
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RAND Corporation - Nonprofit think tank that attempts to improve public policy through research and analysis. |
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Strategic Futures International - A collection of links for organizations, people, and publications about the future. |
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World Game Institute. An organization devoted to R. Buckminster Fuller's vision of "make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, and without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." |
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World Future Society. A middle-of- the-road organization studying social and technological developments, for the corporate consultant who doesn't want to say anything exciting things about future lifestyle trends, but nothing too upsetting about the collapse of the political economy, to the executives in their seminars. |
Future of War and Conflict
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Liberation
Movements, Terrorist Organizations, |
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Futurewarfare.com - A collection of books and links on the future of war |
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The Future of Terrorism : Violence in the New Millennium by Harvey W. Kushner (Editor) |
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"Army develops prototype for 'wired' soldier of tomorrow" - April 19, 2000, CNN |
SF and Speculative Politics Syllabi
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Jim Dator's Politics of the Future Course |
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Creating Cultural Practices and Economic Structures for the Next Millenium Wendy Schultz, Oxford University |
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Imagining the Future: The Politics and Possibilities of Emerging Information Technologies , Ted Friedman, Duke University |
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Tonya Browning, Mafalda Stasi (U. Texas, Austin), Cyberpunk |
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Science Fiction and the Future Lorna S. Dils (Yale) |
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Becky DiBiasio (Assumpton C., Mass.), Science Fiction Seminar |
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J. Hughes' (Chicago Open University of the Left) Better Worlds Through Speculative Fiction: Politics of SF Course |
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Martin Irvine (Georgetown U.), Technoculture from Frankenstein to Cyberpunk |
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Futurist, SF and Speculative Politics Zines and Journals
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SF Magazines - Yahoo |
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Journal of Transhumanism - A peer-reviewed electronic journal publishing contemporary research into future science and philosophy. Published by the World Transhumanist Association. |
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New Renaissance - A progressive future-oriented journal, part of the policy.com network. |
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Science Fiction Studies Literary criticism, postmodernist critique of SF. |
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SF Eye Cuttingedge British post-cyberpunk journal with left leanings |
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SciFan, especially their colllection of bibliographies on SF Themes |
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Utopian Studies of the Society for Utopian Studies |
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Boing Boing A neat little magazine for the fun-loving anarcho-techno-phile under 30years old. |
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Extropy A "journal of transhumanist thought" dedicated to discussing life extension, artificial intelligence, smart drugs, nanotechnology, space habitation, evolution and spontaneous order. |
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Mondo2000 Virtual reality, artificial life, cybermusic, performance art, smart drugs, anarchist sensibilities, and oh so much more in each issue of this glossy guide to future. |
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Science as Culture Book-sized collections of articles on issues such as the computerization of the modern mind, the anti-nuke and AIDS movements, and images of science in the media. |
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Telepolis, a German webzine devoted to the emergent culture and polity |
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Foundation A British science fiction review |
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Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Published by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts |
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SFRA Review Published bimonthly by the Science Fiction Research Association, the oldest professional organization for the study of science fiction and fantasy literature and film. |
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Vector The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association |
Political Futurology
Future Studies
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Future Links Open Directory |
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Futurology at Anders Sandberg's Transhumanism site |
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The Futurist and Futures Research Quarterly, magazine and journal of the World Future Society |
| future-studies.com A site run by transhumanist Nick Bostrom, from London. |
Millenialism, Apocalypticism, Utopianism
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Singularity the social black hole, at Anders Sandberg's Transhumanism site |
| Transtopia A transhumanist site on the singularity. |
Theories of Social Change
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Principles of Social Ecology - J. Hughes' course syllabus |
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The Future of Humanity - form the Principia Cybernetica |
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The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism and the Future of the World-System. Terry Boswell, Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2000. |
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Radical Dimensions of Modern Systems Theory: Temporary structures, Parallel structures, underground structures, and conflict structures. T. R. Young, 1977, Red Feather Institute |
| Memetics at Anders Sandberg's Transhumanism site |
| THE FUTURE: stages in future evolution A comparison of the far future evolutionary schema of Stephen Baxter in his Xeelee series to those of other thinkers and writers |
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Artificial Culture: Experiments in Synthetic Anthropology by Nick Gessler. About anthropoligical and social studies of simulated systems, attempting to clarify studies of real systems. |
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"The Pinnochio Theory: A review of Kevin Kelly's 'Out of Control'" Richard Barbrook |
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"A review of Out of Control" by Anders Sandberg |
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"Human Values as Strange Attractors: Coevolution of classes of governance principles," by Anthony Judge. Prepared for the 13th World Conference of the World Futures Studies Federation (Finland, August 1993). |
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"Towards a futurology of the self: how to redefine the concept of "identity" in a hyper-technical world", Barton Kunstler, Chicago, 20/07/1998 |
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"Five Realities that will Shape 21st Century Politics," form the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group |
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"Creating Alternative Futures" (Bullfrog Films) 12 programs, 30 mins each, 3 video-cassettes/Grades10-Adult. Produced by Hazel Henderson |
Feminist Futurism
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"The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others" Donna Haraway, in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York; Routledge, 1992) , pp. 295-337. |
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"Women and Science Fiction" by Tonya Browning |
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"Science Fiction and the Feminist Movement," by Vida J. Maralani |
Politics of Science Fiction
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"High-Tech Heroes, Virtual Villains, and Jacked-In Justice: Visions of Law and Lawyers in Cyberpunk Science Fiction," by Walter Effross |
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"Science Fiction as a Form of Utopian Thought" David E. Romm, March 1996 Ethical Spectacle |
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"SF Consumption and SocioEthical Attitudes" by J. Hughes, published in Futures Research Quarterly |
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"War of the Words" - A Xian conservative take on how the Fabian science fiction writers gave rise to the socialism that rules America today |
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"The Ethics of Uplift" by Philip Tung Yep, The Ethical Spectacle, March 1996 - On the idea proposed by David Brin's Uplift novels that we have an ethical obligation to genetically engineer other species for intelligence |
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"Cyberpunks to Synners: Toward a Feminist Posthumanism?" by Shawn Wilbur |
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"'Administrative Nihilism': The Evolution of Ethics in Utopian (Science) Fiction After Darwin" Ann Graff |
The Politics of TransHumanism
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Transhumanism Anders' Page |
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Transhumanist Society Anders' Page |
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Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds, by Gregory Paul |
Life Extension
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Bruce Sterling's HolyFire about the politics of life extension |
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Nancy Kress' meditation on genetics, life extension and democracy Beggars Trilogy |
Genengineering
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"Embracing Change with All Four Arms: A Post-Humanist Defense of Human Genetic Engineering" J. Hughes |
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Genetic Engineering Bibliography (Fiction and Non-Fiction) |
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Nancy Kress' meditation on genetics, life extension and democracy Beggars Trilogy |
The Future of Sex and Gender
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Transgender.com - transcending gender |
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PostHuman Sex - transcending the limitations of flesh |
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Polyamory - transcending monogamy |
Luddism and Philosophy of Technology
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CyberPolitics
Effect of Net on Politics
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The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System by Richard Davis 1999 |
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Cyberpolitics by Kevin Hill and John Hughes 1998 |
Hackers
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The Hacker Crackdown Bruce Sterling 1993 |
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Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier 1995 |
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SF Bibliographies and Filmographies
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Left-Wing Movies - few of them SF or futurist, but some |
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Bibliography of Futurism at Mark/Space |
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Bibliography of Utopianism at Mark/Space |
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Bibliography of Alternative Histories What if the Nazis had won?, etc. |
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Lambda Literary Award for gay and lesbian SF |
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SF Organizations
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SF Organizations - Yahoo |
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Queer SF Fans - Yahoo |
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The International Organization of Science Fiction Professionals |
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Reading for the Future Project a literacy/SF appreciation project |
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The Society for the Furtherance & Study of Fantasy & Science Fiction "SF3" gives the feminist SF Tiptree award, and hosts the feminist SFCon in Madison, WI |
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WisCon - Annual Feminist SF Con, held Memorial Day weekend in May |
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SF, Science and Future Politics in Audio
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Explorations in Science, a nationally syndicated radio show with political radical and theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku |
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IDEAS, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation |
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Issues and Ideas, produced by professor Hugh LaFollette |
From the "Contemporary"
section of Jerry Stearns
Science Fiction on the Radio
| Mike Hodel's
Hour 25 - Mike Hodel's Hour 25 is a two hour radio program of science fiction and science interviews, with news, reviews, story readings and radio drama. It is broadcast on Friday nites from 10 pm to midnight in Los Angeles on KPFK, 90.7 fm. Hour 25 has been on the air 25 years. When the original host, Mike Hodel died, his friend author Harlan Ellison hosted the show for a year and renamed it Mike Hodel's Hour 25. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and others followed Harlan. The current host is TV personality and aerospace engineer Warren James. Their website lists upcoming and recent shows, links to the host and to interesting sites. |
| Hour of the Wolf
- Jim Freund has one of the most contemporary SF Radio shows around. Hour of the Wolf is still going on WBAI in New York City. He plays SF radio theater, but he also talks about what is going on in the field of SF literature and media, and interviews the writers and artists and other shakers of the industries that Science Fiction is a part of. |
| That Sci-Fi Show - A weekly radio program located in the Palm Beaches (Florida) that discusses all aspects of Science Fiction, Gaming, Anime, Comics and just plain goofiness. Tune your radio in to 1340 AM every 10pm on Sunday nights, or check out our archive of RealAudio Archived Shows. |
| SHOCKWAVE - http://www.visi.com/~romm A long-running radio show still going on KFAI in Minneapolis. |
| Seeing Ear Theatre - Part of The Dominion, the Sci-Fi Channel Web Site, Seeing Ear Theatre is a home for audio theater on-line. You can download and listen to classic SF radio, and new original programs. |
| Science Fiction
Theater - GAIN Radio - http://gain.simplenet.com/program/scifi.htm An On-Line radio station, specializing in Science Fiction radio. |