When you say reading, do you mean recording? Try the librivox community. They have many readers, although I do not think the majority of them are actors? As for scifi playwrights, I think the place to find them is facebook groups or perhaps linkedin groups? I do not think it is correct that it is more difficult. However, there appear to be so many doing this that finding "professionals" (if that is your intention) in this crowd is hard. There are also many amateur writing sites, booksie was one in the old days, and they have thousands of wannabe scifi writers, some who write long fan novels of many hundred pages just as a hobby. Then there is the star trek community, almost a cult, that produces many audio plays and even tv episodes and movies made entirely by enthusiasts. Did you know that the film The Martian starring Matt Daemon was based on a self published novel? Which means that the author may have been one of these enthusiasts himself before he was discovered. There are so many scifi podcasts (check in any podcast directory), presenting home made scifi drama that i think you will be overwhelmed. I made even made one myself :) It was great fun, but i hope to re-edit it.

https://historyradio.org/2018/12/30/listen-to-our-new-original-radio-play/

There are many excellent readings of Clarke, Wells, Verne, Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Lewis and Wyndham to be found on Youtube.

I generally prefer readings of the original books to radio 'dramatisations'. I know that Bradbury wrote a theater version of Fahrenheit 451 which provides some additional background information about the characters but I do not know where to find it.

I think that Star Trek TOS and other (sci-fi /horror) series from the same era provide the best incarnation of "sci-fi theater" (although with due acknowledgment to their debt to earlier films).

Here is bradbury, first post in google

https://archive.org/details/RayBradbury_Fahrenheit451

The most respected radio drama was in fact, Dimension X and X- minus one, that is where you will find bradbury and the others of that generation. Aldous Huxley also narrated is own version of Brave new world on CBS. Welles of course made some version of Verne and Wells. There was a show called Tales of Tomorrow, that also appeared on tv. They made a version of Frankenstein. But the best radio version of that is fact a 3 hour version by the george edwards, an australian, in 1931. Many people these days edit it together, restore it and put in youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ0GNZelXu8

I have not seen Us versions of Mary Shelley's The Last Man, but Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and The Earth Abides, a smilar later story another writer, have been given fair treatments on radio.

In the Lux Radio Theater you will find radio versions of some of the classic scifi movies, at least The Day the Earth Stood Still. BBC radio4 made a version of The Thing (story by John W. Campbell, the title of the orginal story was "who goes there") in 1982, but there is also creative common sequel, by peter watts, I think? I haven't seen any radio versions of the best one, Jackie Finney' story, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But there is a radio version of Forbidden Planet, but that film is actually just Shakespeare's The Tempest relocated to space.

If you turn into the 60s, Pierre Boule's Planet of the Apes (kafka wrote a short precursor), I have not yet found a planet of the apes play, but there is one of Battlestar Galactica, actually also featuring Lorn Greene. Beware that some of the newer version are copyrighted. The BBC in particular are strict about this. However, in the Us the courts have ruled in favor of the old time radio community. But I would stay away from things by the BBC, CBC and abc australia. The concept of public radio is different in these countries. In the USA public radio is a bottom up thing, while in these countries it is imposed from above. Also "old time radio" as a term is defined by the actions of various large broadcasters in the US during the transition to TV. So you cannot just label anything old time radio.

Actually, we are a play reading group looking for actors. Our group is called Planet Zoom Players. We first record on Zoom, then publish to our YouTube Channel. This is not audiobooks. We have special effects and animations.

You can see some of this is the opening sequence for "The Crystal Egg."

I hope that is the right one that shows the opening with sound effects and animations.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m9r-Qvu-Fw&t=34s

I hope some of you reading this will be interest to join in.

The first play we are reading is my own adaptation of H. G. Wells's "The Crystal Egg."

SCRIPT ATTACHED

I can attach a copy here so I will. See the script. You will see that this is an actual play script, not a short story anymore. It has been adapted to a aplay.

Just message my at my profile to be added to our Planet Zoom Players announcements list.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHUlsmR9M8Nqco76JyZnU4w

There you can find our first play "Rock the Nuclear Clock" I wrote this play about a game show in the near future that solves the problem of nuclear war.

Cheers,

Gloria

Wonderful! Best of luck. Do you need amateurs, or do you hire? I can only find one play so far in your playlist. Also there is a soccer channel called planet zoom players, and that may make you harder to find. Whatever you do in life, you know you can't compete with prime time sports.

Have you checked gutenberg.org for scifi scripts? You could use theater plays, can't you? There is actually no shortage of hg wells radio plays, but i have not seen many version of the invisible man.

In the US, mitchel, bellamy, bierce and london would be scifi pioneers? In the public domain. Some of the pulp writers write great stuff. If you listen to the old radio serial versions of Buck Rogers (he is PD, at least in europe) you will notice that they dumbed it down in order to please children. The excellent gill gerard TV series is not that way. The first buck rogers story was published in 28, that makes it PD, next year. But wikipedia says metropolis is PD, thea von harbouo :) And then you have Gertrude Barrows Bennett, a female scifi pioneer from the US! I also notice that lovecraft published his scifi story the color of of space in 1927, which means that it is pd in the us. Weinbaum is more of a space man, but he published in 1934/5. Doesn't mean that there is copyright, just that you must check. There is a fantasically viasionary 1909 story by E.M. Forster called When the Machine Stops. That is probably PD in the US, but not in Europe. Also, in the Arabian Nights, you will find a scifi story about a mechanical horse (use the andrew lang version, he removed much of the annoying religious stuff from his translation). The first story about voyages to outer space that has survived intact was in fact written in Antiquity, but it was more a fantastic exploration story in the Munchausen line.

Thanks for your delightfully informative reply, Michael! We can't pay, alas. We're a worthy voluntary organization. If you are anyone else would like to come just message me here with your email address. Our next meeting is April 9th--next Sunday.

11 AM.

Until we really get going, we're averaging about one session permonth.

We just started in the fall last year so there is--you are correct--only "Rock the Nuclear Clock" on our YouTube page.

Here is the link to that short one-act, by me. Hope some reading will take a listen.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vljsqg1cToo&t=63s

Don't forget to message me here at RG with an email address if you want to join, anybody!