Through Storm and Stone: Radio, Sound and the Imagined World

Abstract

In exploring imaginative radio, we begin by noting that some of the greatest dramatic writing before it existed seems to have predicted its intrinsic qualities, as in many of the speeches in Shakespeare’s plays. Early experiments in radio seemed to inhabit the borderlands between science and superstition, and the nature of sound, invisible, transient and suggestive, has always been one of its attractions for storytellers. At times, the reality behind the very scientific methods of it has been questioned, as in Marconi’s early transatlantic experiments, where fact and imagination seem to join hands. The sheer imaginative potential—and limitations—of sound narratives is examined, while the emotive power of statistics, as in weather forecasts, shows the true imaginative partnership between maker and listening mind.