| "Papa Joe & Co." - The Short Story and the Radio Play
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| Published as a short story in 1975 and produced as a science-fiction radio play in 1976, "Papa Joe & Co." is about a charismatic but aging American popular dictator, a super-great communicator. Papa Joe gives his people "bread and circuses" and speaks personally to them as a voice in their heads. In return he receives what appears to be genuine and nearly universal adulation. A group of European diplomats/spies tries to penetrate the world of the Papa Joe mass cult. One of them undergoes "baptism" into Papa Joe's religion and hears the voices too.... |
| Bavarian Broadcasting (Bayrischer Rundfunk) produced the story as a radio drama in 1976. The production was recorded and broadcast in binaural stereo ("Kunstkopfstereofonie" or, literally, "artificial head stereo"), a technique which was very appropriate to the theme of "Papa Joe & Co.," and not at all serendipitously chosen. |
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Note: Click on the small pictures below to view larger versions of the images.
Photographs © by William B. Fischer.
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Franke on a 1995 visit to Portland, Oregon |
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Bavarian Broadcasting (Bayrischer Rundfunk) headquarters (tall building with mast), just north of the main railroad station in München (Munich). Photo ca. 1982. |
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Dr. Dieter Hasselblatt, Director of the Radio Play Department at Bavarian Broadcasting when "Papa Joe & Co." was produced in binaural. Photo 1982.
Hasselblatt relates that he gathered some German science fiction authors, showed them the binaural technique, and challenged them to write texts that exploited it. Franke's short story "Papa Joe & Co.," he says, was the only text written in response. |
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Radio-play production studio at Bavarian Broadcasting, with Dr. Hasselblatt at left. |
