Product Description

William Hope reads the complete and unabridged novelisation of Charles Chilton's hugely successful radio series, "Journey Into Space Destination - the Moon!" No other adventurers had ever faced greater hazards than the crew of the rocket-ship Luna when she hurtled into space. Jet Morgan, ace pilot, was her captain. With him were her Australian designer, Mitch; Lemmy, the Cockney radio operator; and Doc, whose diary astonished everyone...Charles Chilton's classic science fiction radio serial stormed the BBC airwaves between 1953 and 1958. With its gripping storylines and tense cliffhangers, it kept a devoted audience of almost eight million people enthralled during its three series. So popular were the radio serials that Chilton was inspired to write a trilogy of bestselling novels featuring Captain Jet Morgan and his crew. First published in 1954, this thrilling first story is read by Aliens star William Hope, and tells how the Luna's adventures began.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191753 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-08
• Released on: 2008-05-08
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

Journey Into Space CDs
I remembered listening in great wonder to the series on the radio when I was a lad and being quite terrified at times. Unfortunately, this is not a recording of the series so there was an element of disappointment and why I felt I couldn't give 5 stars. Nevertheless, this is a well produced set of CDs and William Hope makes a very good job of reading the novel. He does all 4 of the different accents(American, Scottish, Australian and Cockney) very well,I think, so you always know who is speaking. The sound effects are quite good and are in keeping with those used all those years ago in the original broadcast. I enjoyed listening to it and am now looking for a recording of the original series - if it exists.

Great story, shame about the accents...
Where do I begin? Well, I'm too young to remember the original radio broadcast of Charles Chilton's first "Journey Into Space" (JIS) adventure in the early Fifties, but I picked up a copy of the story novelisation many years ago. I found it hard to get into, as there was a lot of dialogue (as you might expect from what was originally a radio drama!) and it was difficult to get the measure of the characters. Following the discovery at the BBC in 1986 of disc recordings of the three JIS series (which had been re-recorded in 1957 for overseas sales), the BBC broadcast these series on Radio 2 in the 1980s and, since then, on their digital channel BBC7 at regular intervals. All adventures have also been issued on audio tape and/or CD. I heard the BBC7 broadcasts and was hooked! The quality of the stories and the ensemble playing of the 4 main characters (Jet, Doc, Mitch and Lemmy) is such that the episodes can be listened to again and again. But anyone who has followed JIS on the radio, or on the commercially issued recordings, will undoubtedly connect the voices of Jet, Doc, Mitch and Lemmy with the actors who played. Jet, strident, English accent, at times verging on the hysterical; Doc, the even-tempered Canadian narrator; Mitch, the impatient Aussie engineer; and Lemmy, the good-natured, down-to-earth, cockney radio operator.

And that's the problem with this audio book I'm afraid. If you never knew the series, it's unlikely that you would want to buy it. If you're already a fan, then this reading will, I think, disappoint. William Hope, a native Canadian, is fine as Doc Matthews, but the voicing of the other characters leaves a lot to be desired. The main problem is Jet, who is portrayed with a lazy, laid-back Scottish accent! Admittedly, Jet's origins are Scottish, as portrayed in this story with the "timeslip" incident back to his childhood, but as the character of Dr McTaggart replied to Tony Hancock in "The Blood Donor" in immaculate received pronunciation: `Well, we're not all Rob Roys'. If the JIS radio series had a figurehead, it was Andrew Faulds as Jet, and the characterisation on this reading just doesn't work. Hope's Mitch is not bad, and his Lemmy is far from Dick Van Dyke cock-er-nee, but there is no sense of the rapport between the characters that drove the pace in the radio series. And where Hope is voicing all four characters in one passage, well, you get the impression he is winging it and hoping for the best. I can't help feeling that someone like Kerry Shale (a Canadian like William Hope and the original Doc, Guy Kingsley Pointer) could have made a better job of it.

Charles Chilton's "Journey Into Space" trilogy of stories were great radio series, and the spin-off novels are excellent. But I can only give this audio book 2 out of 5. Cue David Jacobs...