Solaris by Stanislaw Lem on BBC 4 Radio Full-Cast Drama (2007)
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I have also gotten stupidly, inexorably, and shamefully addicted to The Archers.
as well in such way AI to emerge.
Here's my "please read these Lem books" list:
- A Perfect Vacuum: A collection of Prefaces and Reviews of Non-Existent books (including one non-existent book called "A Perfect Vacuum") and of a fictional scientific talk. A lot of fun. One of my favorites: A review of a book written by an author who decides to write fiction without lying to the reader by affirming absolutely nothing existentially, confining itself to what did not occur, during the whole fictional book. The fictional book begins with the phrase "The train did not arrive. He did not come."
- Imaginary Magnitude: This one blew my mind. An exploration of fictional science models and books, including the idea of building an "AI" model out of bacteria, creating AI models to check how good or bad are novels and papers written by other AI due to their inhumane sizes (millions of pages to check... so little time...), as well as a conversation with the only AI that didn't get bored with us humans and decided to explain how things really work... Really clever stuff.
- The Futurological Congress: No spoilers here. One of the trippiest books ever written.
- His Master's Voice: A bit more serious than the previous three, but still more playful than Solaris. I always felt this was Carl Sagan's Contact but for Grownups. The book is told from the point of view of a Topologist (Combinatorics and Topology if I remember correctly). A signal from outer space is received, a multitude of scientists from many different branches are invited to get together at a certain location to try to decipher the message, among them our main character. The ideas and concepts of the limits of knowledge, the "micro-worlds" of science, the exploration of the human mind, and the origins of consciousness are all explored along the way. Mini-Spoilers: No"they're instructions to build a machine" here.
As a side note, if you like Lem, you'll also almost surely like anything by The Strugatsky Brothers. Their entry point is almost always Roadside Picnic (famous for a rather open adaptation as Tarkovsky's movie Stalker), but all of their books are really good.
That could easily pay for your NHS.
Netflix global revenue 2022 $32bn
UK NHS budget 2022 £153bn
The BBC generally doesn't have the rights to stream programmes outside the UK.
Even within the UK, they often don't have the rights to stream programmes they've acquired for linear broadcast (typically sport).
Often they don't have the rights to repeat programmes made by or for the BBC, because they sold those rights to other channels/companies. For example, for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, they repeated the first story, but could only broadcast it on linear TV, not on demand.
Also, the BBC is not the UK government and doesn't fund the NHS :)