Programming note: Tomorrow, Saturday, please join me for another edition of my Serenade Radio weekend music show, Mark Steyn on the Town. The fun starts at 5pm British Summer Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe and 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Ahead of that, welcome to the seventy-first audio entertainment in our series Tales for Our Time. As we begin our ninth season, we've built a spectacular archive that runs the gamut from A to Z ...well, not quite, but certainly A to W - Jane Austen to P G Wodehouse.
The newest addition to our collection is a short story from 1948 written by Fredric Brown (whom I discuss in my introduction) and with a most arresting opening:
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...
What follows is wry and occasionally profound, and not without its lessons for our own age. To hear "Knock" by Fredric Brown, prefaced by my own introduction, please click here and log-in.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club eight years ago, and I'm immensely heartened by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all my columns, audio output, video content, every movie feature and Song of the Week.
That said, we have introduced a few bonuses for our members - not locking up our regular content, which will always be free, but admitting members to a few experimental features, such as this series of audio adventures. In Tales for Our Time I revisit some classic fiction I've mentioned in books and columns over the years - old stories that nevertheless speak to our own age. Our first serialisation was The Tragedy of the Korosko by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes; next came The Time Machine by H G Wells; and then The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, and The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Two of those I've since updated in contemporary iterations. I always liked reading stories, and I did do a little of it professionally a zillion years ago. So, if it works, we may release them as audio books on CD or Audible a ways down the road. But for the moment they're an exclusive bonus for Mark Steyn Club members.
If you'd like to hear this Tale, all you need to do is join the Club - either for a full year or, if you suspect we're some fly-by-night shifty Canuck scamsters and you want to see how it goes, a mere experimental quarter. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and our other video content;
~Our video series of classic poetry;
~Advance booking for my live appearances such as our annual Mark Steyn Cruise;
~Customised email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our gift membership.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this Tale for Our Time, or consider my reading of it a bust, then feel free to comment away below. I weigh in on the comment threads myself from time to time, but I regard it as principally your turf, to have at it as you so desire. And do join us for a brand new full-length Tale for Our Time in seven days' time.
