Untrue Stories

George Orwell has rented a Scottish cottage to complete his final novel. Unfortunately, he's been double-booked with the very last person he'd choose a holiday with.

The first season of Untrue Stories will visit the worlds of both H. G. Wells' The Time Machine and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, exploring how the infamous rivalry between two of Britain's greatest speculative fiction writers culminated in an astonishing, hilarious, and entirely untrue story of meddling with causality and bicycles.

In this episode, tea and tempers boil over as Orwell and his inadvertent roommate H. G. Wells argue over the fate that awaits humankind. Will society develop into Wells's steam-powered dream, or Orwell's dystopian nightmare? Wells' latest engineering project may allow them to settle their bet...

Starring Robin Johnson as George Orwell, Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells, and Joanna Lawrie as Mrs Watchett. Sound effects were sourced from freesound.org.

References:

• Orwell's essay on A Nice Cup of Tea

2022-09-09: This is episode 1, reuploaded and backdated to avert a catastrophe. Apologies for any confusion.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

If you've enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave us a rating on iTunes, Spotify, Podchaser or your favourite podcast site/app — and tell your friends!

Follow us on

• twitter: @untrue_stories
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If you would like to help cover our costs, you can tip us at ko-fi.com/untruestories or buy Untrue Stories merch at our zazzle store.

Robin can be contacted at [email protected]. Share and Enjoy!

Wells arrives in a distant future where humanity as we know it is extinct. How will he get his bicycle repaired now?

Following H. G. Wells' hurried departure from Orwell's world of 1984, his malfunctioning time-bicycle veers into the far and bizarre future that he will one day chronicle in his own novella, The Time Machine. Facing off against super-evolved pale blue cannibals, he's relieved to run into a couple of unexpected familiar faces.

CAST:

• Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells;
• Tara Court as Julia;
• Canavan Connolly as the Morlock;
• Robin Johnson as George Orwell and Liselle Nic Giollabháin as Thought Captain Rutherford.

Written and produced by Robin Johnson, with music by the author and sound effects sourced from freesound.org.

References:

• H. G. Wells' The Time Machine is in the public domain, and can be found at Project Gutenberg.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

If you've enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave us a rating on iTunes, Spotify, Podchaser or your favourite podcast site/app — and tell your friends!

Follow us on

• twitter: @untrue_stories
• facebook: untruestoriespodcast
• instagram: untrue.stories
• soundcloud: untrue-stories

If you would like to help cover our costs, you can tip us at ko-fi.com/untruestories or buy Untrue Stories merch at our zazzle store.

Robin can be contacted at [email protected]. Share and Enjoy!

Wells and Julia have changed the future, but can they be sure they've changed it for the better? No.

H. G. Wells' and Julia's tinkering with the timeline has unexpected (and, of course, untrue) results. Julia, born in the future they've just changed, experiences a strange transformation as the timeline ripples... but what does it mean? And all the while, their enemies' power grows ever stronger, leading to the arrival of a character who might finally be able to give them some answers — but if so, they'll be in the next episode.

Starring Robin Johnson as George Orwell, Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells, Tara Court as Julia, Liselle Nic Giollabhain as Captain Rutherford, and Joanna Lawrie as Mrs Watchett, plus special guest appearances by Lionel Ritchie, Annie Lennox, Roger Daltry, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Edwin Starr and Tony Fenelle. Sound effects were sourced from freesound.org.

2022-09-07: This episode has been updated to improve audio quality.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

If you've enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave us a rating on iTunes, Spotify, Podchaser or your favourite podcast site/app — and tell your friends!

Follow us on

• twitter: @untrue_stories
• facebook: untruestoriespodcast
• instagram: untrue.stories
• soundcloud: untrue-stories

If you would like to help cover our costs, you can tip us at ko-fi.com/untruestories or buy Untrue Stories merch at our zazzle store.

Robin can be contacted at [email protected]. Share and Enjoy!

H. G. Wells takes a wrong turn on his time-travelling bicycle, and finds that he and Orwell have both lost their bets.

Continuing the adventures of George Orwell and H. G. Wells, Wells' inaugural time-travel journey takes him a bit further into the future than he intended: instead of one week, he travels nearly forty years. What he finds matches neither his own predictions nor Orwell's – but is surprising, horrifying, and completely untrue.

Starring Robin Johnson as George Orwell and the telescreen voice, Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells, Joanna Lawrie as Mrs Watchett, Tara Court as Julia, and Liselle Nic Giollobhain as Captain Rutherford. Sound effects were sourced from freesound.org.

7 September 2022: This episode has been edited to enhance audio quality.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

If you've enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave us a rating on iTunes, Spotify, Podchaser or your favourite podcast site/app — and tell your friends!

Follow us on

• twitter: @untrue_stories
• facebook: untruestoriespodcast
• instagram: untrue.stories
• soundcloud: untrue-stories

If you would like to help cover our costs, you can tip us at ko-fi.com/untruestories or buy Untrue Stories merch at our zazzle store.

Robin can be contacted at [email protected]. Share and Enjoy!

How a power-crazed junta of 20th-century dystopian authors overthrew Western democracy — and what went wrong.

In the fourth exciting instalment of the time-travelling adventures of George Orwell and H. G. Wells, 1984's Big Brother himself has appeared before our heroes to relate the story of his rise to power at the head of a team of dystopian visionaries — Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin.

CAST

• Robin Johnson as George Orwell
• Patrick Spragg as H. G. Wells
• Tara Court as Julia
• Liselle Nic Giollabháin as Thought Deputy Chief Rutherford
• Eve Morris as the security guard

WITH SPECIAL GUEST DYSTOPIANS

• Alexander Paul Walsh as Yevgeny Zamyatin and the BBC Announcer
• Simon Beck as Aldous Huxley
• David Court as Ray Bradbury
• Alex Noussias as Margaret Atwood

Zamyatin's We, often credited as the inspiration for dystopia as a modern genre, is in the public domain and you can find an English translation at Project Gutenberg. Huxley claimed not to have read We before he wrote Brave New World. Orwell definitely read both. Huxley really was Orwell's French teacher at Eton.

The Oceanian National Anthem, Oceania, 'Tis For Thee, with lyrics extrapolated by Robin to the tune of The Internationale, can be heard on our soundcloud, sung by several of Robin and two of Eve.

While this episode was in production, the US Supreme Court struck down the federally protected right to abortion. This directly endangers and removes bodily autonomy from tens of millions of Americans, and sets a terrifying example for the rest of the world. Of all the dystopian novels discussed in the episode, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is now the most horribly relevant. Untrue Stories is free, but if you've enjoyed it as much as something you'd pay a few dollars for, you could donate those dollars to an organisation like the National Network of Abortion Funds, and/or perhaps to an organisation that will help the queer and trans people whose rights the Court has more or less promised to dismantle next. (You can even make those donations if you haven't enjoyed the show.) Love and anger.

2022-07-27: This episode has been updated to adjust volume levels.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

If you've enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you could leave us a rating on iTunes, Spotify, Podchaser or your favourite podcast site/app — and tell your friends!

Follow us on

• twitter: @untrue_stories
• facebook: untruestoriespodcast
• instagram: untrue.stories
• soundcloud: untrue-stories

If you would like to help cover our costs, you can tip us at ko-fi.com/untruestories or buy Untrue Stories...