Ad Astral Science Fiction Podcast · DJ Burnham

Ad Astral Episode 2: The Radical Intergalactic Travel Agency

·44 min·3 clips

Zaiton reveals a ten-foot alien body with four legs, six limbs, and hundreds of blinking eyes.

1. Ad Astral Episode 2 adapts DJ Burnham's short story The Radical Intergalactic Travel Agency, first published on Silverthought.com in 2006 and in Test Drive in 2007. 2. DJ Burnham narrates and voices President Sam Walker, while John Wood voices Doug Mountjoy, Maurice Hunter voices Commander Zaiton, and Anand voices Jiklian. 3. The episode asks what happens when an alien travel agency treats Earth as a commercial holiday destination rather than a sovereign planet. 4. Every television screen on Earth is blocked for five minutes before Globalcom News resumes with a forced broadcast. 5. Alien Commander Zaiton uses Globalcom News to announce that the R.I.T.A. has requisitioned the studio and controls Earth's transmissions. 6. Zaiton demonstrates the alien weapons by evaporating Lake Erie and later returning its water with little damage to the lakebed. 7. Zaiton tells Doug Mountjoy that the alien ship outguns the entire planet by a billion to one. 8. President Sam Walker is awakened from tranquilizers after the collapse of talks on global unification and brought into the broadcast. 9. Sam acknowledges that Earth launched nuclear warheads, which the alien ship destroys shortly after they leave the atmosphere. 10. Zaiton identifies R.I.T.A. as the Radical Intergalactic Travel Agency and calls Earth an ideal destination for intergalactic tourism. 11. Zaiton's Holographic Shellsuit Shield hides a ten-foot Ikhuvian body with four legs, six limbs, and hundreds of blinking eyes. 12. Zaiton explains that Skelexians living with Ikhuvians regulate body temperature and balance inhaled gases. 13. The alien regulations prohibit pollution, non-biodegradable waste, war, violence, genetic manipulation, and most animal killing. 14. Zaiton threatens to transfer people who violate the regulations to an off-world penal colony. 15. Zaiton promises zero-emission transport, pollution-free industry, waste-free consumption, and negotiation without conflict. 16. Zaiton frames fossil fuels as both an environmental danger and a source of unequal political power. 17. The aliens offer Sam the position of Chief Human in Management Protocol, making him their Earth representative. 18. The production combines multiple voice actors, sound effects, and music from The Fold and Mandragora around a broadcast-interruption format. 19. Fans of satirical science-fiction audio drama and ecological political allegory may enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners seeking realistic alien-contact drama or non-fiction policy analysis might skip it.

As heard by us

An alien invasion becomes a tense negotiation through blacked-out screens, atomized missiles, and one dangerously candid answer.

"The Radical Intergalactic Travel Agency" turns an alien invasion into a controlled test of language, nerve, and political instinct. After every home vid screen goes black, President Sam Walker is left facing Ziton, Commander-in-Chief of the RITA, while Earth's nuclear reply is…

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Why you'd press play

You want an alien invasion where Earth's warheads are stopped almost immediately, and the next danger has to be handled in conversation.

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