Radio 4s Cultural Exchange: The Sci-Fi & Fantasy Choices

For the past few week, Radio 4’s arts magazine show, Front Row , has been running a feature where they’ve been asking leading “creative minds” (writers, performers, designers, artists) to name their favourite works or culture or other creative minds that have influenced their lives. It can get unashamedly high brow (you’ll be happy to learn that Brian Sewell chose “Christ contemplated by the Christian Soul” by Diego Velázquez and not On The Buses so all is right with the world) but a fair few interesting SF and fantasy choices have been made.

Below we’ve listed all the relevant instalments with links so you can listen to them. Well worth an aural browse.

Riz Ahmed on Street Fighter II

Gemma Chan on The Princess Bride

James Blake on Stalker

CJ Sansom on William Hartnell as the First Doctor

Paul Franklin on The Thief Of Bagdad (1940)

Sarah Hall on Blade Runner

Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke by Richard Dadd

Philip Pullman on the Georges Brassens song “Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète”

Brian Aldiss on The Diary of Maria Bashkirtseff

Mohsin Hamid on Olaf Stapledon