Review by Oliver Wake
May and June saw the return of BBC Radio 4’s annual Dangerous Visions season of dystopian
science fiction, featuring both adaptations and original stories and dramas.
Joseph Wilde’s Produce was an effective but emotive drama about ‘designer babies’ and the danger of children being viewed as consumer products, with their attendant manufacturer liabilities. Equally intriguing but less dramatic was Your Perfect Summer, On Sale Here, by Ed Harris, which posited a world of addictive immersive videogames drawn from the memories of human subjects. Sarah Woods dramatised and updated William Morris’ socialistic 1890 novel News from Nowhere to present a future London as a bucolic post-capitalist utopia.
Joseph Wilde’s Produce was an effective but emotive drama about ‘designer babies’ and the danger of children being viewed as consumer products, with their attendant manufacturer liabilities. Equally intriguing but less dramatic was Your Perfect Summer, On Sale Here, by Ed Harris, which posited a world of addictive immersive videogames drawn from the memories of human subjects. Sarah Woods dramatised and updated William Morris’ socialistic 1890 novel News from Nowhere to present a future London as a bucolic post-capitalist utopia.
