Sci-Fi Blindness
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
From Victorian novels to the latest Hollywood blockbusters, sci-fi regularly returns to the theme of blindness. Peter White, who was heavily influenced as a child by one of the classics, sets out to explore the impact of these explorations of sight on blind and visually impaired people. He believes a scene in The Day pf the Triffids by John Wyndham imbued him with a strange confidence - and he considers the power of science fiction to present an alternative reality for blind readers precisely at a time when lockdown and social distancing has seen visually impaired people marginalised. He talks to technology producer Dave Williams about Star Trek The Next Generation's Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, Dr Sheri Wells-Jensen talks about Birdbox and world-building from a blind point of view in James L Cambias's A Darkling Sea. Professor Hannah Thompson of Royal Holloway University of London takes us back to 1910 to consider The Blue Peril - a novel which in some ways is more forward thinking in its depiction of blindness than Hollywood now. And Doctor Who actor Ellie Wallwork gives us her take on why blindness is so fascinating to the creators of science fiction. Presenter: Peter White Producer: Kevin Core
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, this is Jane Garvey, and with my broadcasting friend, Fie Glover, come in Fie. |
| 0:44.0 | Oh, thank you, how are you? |
| 0:47.0 | Oh, all right. |
| 0:48.0 | We do a podcast together called Fortunately. |
| 0:50.0 | It has been surprisingly successful and you'd be honestly you'd be really quite |
| 0:56.6 | choked with emotion to discover that other people have found us some of them have |
| 1:00.3 | quite enjoyed it other people like carping we welcome comers. We don't care who you are, |
| 1:04.8 | where you are, what you do or what you think as long as you're prepared to join with us in, well, what do we do fee? |
| 1:11.3 | We kind of unravel, we unburden, we unload, what do we do fee? We kind of unravel, we unburden, we unload, what do we do? |
| 1:15.0 | We're a self-help group of two that other people quite like to witness and we don't really mind if you laugh with us or at us. |
| 1:21.0 | You're just welcome aboard a slightly rickety midlife ship which |
| 1:25.4 | occasionally has guests who are far more successful than us but we try not to let that get |
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