A beautiful alien city becomes a confession, then a warning.
A black sheep spaceman writes to the brother who became a psychiatrist, and the story slowly turns that family split into something stranger and more painful.
Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio
Michael Hanson
50 episodes listed below
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Speculative stories told in a haunted register.
The gist
Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio is a literary science-fiction narration series built around short stories and a measured delivery. Its episodes favor eerie transformations: a swamp that recalls a life too vividly, city streets giving way to butterflies, and inventions that disturb official certainty.
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About Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio
Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio is an anthology of narrated speculative short fiction, presented with literary radio patience. It does not hurry. The series often begins with a title, an author, and the printed source, then steps into a story as if opening a sealed document. From there, the voice settles into description. A swamp on another planet feels too harmless, and that harmlessness becomes the first warning. A remembered taste, a smell, a beach, a city, and a life of pleasures rush through a traveler’s mind until memory itself seems to be acting on him. In another story, a woman who believes herself entirely urban finds a tiny blue blossom in her hand and hears of white sand appearing where no beach should have been. The impossible is not announced with spectacle. It seeps in through touch, smell, repeated images, and the body’s first refusal to believe. The show is especially strong with stories where escape and danger resemble one another. Beauty can be a trap. Illusion can become more durable than the world that named it illusion. Scientific evidence can sound dry and official until a junk-built machine rises from the ground in a purplish glow. Even oddity keeps a grave edge, because the narration treats improbable events as evidence to be weighed, not jokes to be discarded. Across the sampled episodes, familiar science-fiction machinery appears: distant planets, spacefaring lives, altered perception, impossible materials, official observers, and handmade devices. Yet the series is less interested in hardware than in consciousness under pressure. It asks what a person will choose when another reality offers itself, and what remains of ordinary life once that offer has been felt. The style is measured, literate, and occasionally eerie. Dialogue can snap, but the dominant pleasure is immersion. It is a show for listeners who want the tale carried whole, with enough silence around it for the strangeness to gather weight.
Made for: For listeners who prefer literary science fiction, eerie short stories, and measured narration over casual chat or panel discussion. It suits late-night listening, solitary walks, and anyone drawn to uncanny premises handled with seriousness.
What sets it apart: Its distinction is the union of anthology fiction and controlled radio performance: stories are introduced through their authors and sources, then allowed to unfold through atmosphere, memory, and precise sensation. The show makes speculative ideas feel intimate before they become impossible.
In their own words
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions.
As heard by us
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio turns speculative premises into patient, voice-led studies of fear, temptation, isolation, and regret.
Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio gives published speculative fiction room to work through voice performance. Michael Hanson introduces stories by writers including Norman Spinrad, Brian W.
Why you'd press play
A coffin opens, a ladder rises, and your bedtime suddenly has teeth.
Press play if you want
- radio storytelling that lets you picture the coffin lid from the wrong side
- alien pleasure, resurrection, and human panic delivered with unsettling consequences
speculative short fictionaltered realitiesextraterrestrial landscapesmemory and perceptionimpossible inventionsurban escape fantasiesscientific observationuncanny beauty
Talks about
Best episodes of Mind Webs - Sleepy Radio
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A patient psychic tale where private visions seem to leave traces behind.
The Day of the Butterflies follows Diana as a daydream about flowers and butterflies appears to ripple outward, first in a hidden blossom and then in Jessie’s sharp memory of sand in her shoes.
A rusted ascent becomes a study in panic, abandonment, and height.
A man climbs a rusted iron ladder fixed to the side of a gasometer, and the unease comes from the body before it comes from the mind. Flagg's hands meet cold, gritty iron; rust marks him with red dust; his knees brace against the wood; and the height begins to tilt the whole…
John Woodford wakes in a coffin, and the story turns his return home into a slow, tightening dread.
John Woodford's awakening in utter darkness gives the episode its strongest jolt: he regains consciousness in a coffin, breathes the close, heavy air, and works out, piece by piece, that he may have been buried alive.
A patient, unsettling radio take on Aldiss's cold wit and collapsing certainties.
Mind Webs gives Brian W. Aldiss's "A Taste for Dostoevsky" a stern, pressure-cooked treatment. It begins with a rescue in brutal lunar conditions, then keeps widening into rooms, temples, river smoke, and conversations that stay courteous right up until the strain breaks…
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Episodes
- 1
Mind Webs - A Night In Elf Hill
Hidden gemSpence writes to his brother Fred after years apart.
Apr 19, 2026·29m·2 clips - 2
Mind Webs - The Day Of The Butterflies
Hidden gemDiana is shaken by a daydream she cannot quite let go of.
Apr 18, 2026·29m·2 clips - 3
Mind Webs - Power Of The Sentence
This episode of MindWebs presents a short speculative fiction story originally published in a 1971 fantasy and science fiction magazine.
Apr 17, 2026·28m - 4
Mind Webs - Day of the Butterflies - Marion Zimmer Bradley
This episode features Marion Zimmer Bradley's science fiction short story 'The Day of the Butterflies,' following a city girl named Diana as she navigates an urban environment.
Apr 16, 2026·29m - 5
Mind Webs - Light Of Other Days
This episode presents Bob Shaw's 1966 science fiction short story 'Light of Other Days' about a journey through a landscape featuring mysterious 'slow glass' farms.
Apr 15, 2026·24m - 6
Mind Webs - Wasted On The Young
A surreal sci-fi series presenting a speculative fiction story titled 'Wasted on the Young' by John Brunner.
Apr 14, 2026·29m - 7
Mind Webs - Look Homeward Spaceman
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs through cerebral journeys.
Apr 13, 2026·29m - 8
Mind Webs - The Available Data on the Worp Reaction - Lion Miller
Apr 12, 2026·13m - 9
Mind Webs - Rebel- From Time And Space
A reading of Ward Moore's 1962 sci-fi story 'Rebel' from Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Apr 11, 2026·27m - 10
Mind Webs - Petrified Forest
A personal injury lawyer ad recounting a truck accident case and promoting legal services.
Apr 10, 2026·30m - 11
Mind Webs - The Vertical Ladder
Hidden gemFlagg climbs.
Apr 9, 2026·27m·1 clip - 12
Mind Webs - The Man Who Returned
Hidden gemJohn Woodford wakes in darkness.
Apr 8, 2026·30m·2 clips - 13
Mind Webs - Great Slow Kings- Earthmen Bearing Gifts
Apr 7, 2026·29m - 14
Mind Webs - A Taste Of Dostiefsky
Hidden gemMindWebs presents Brian W.
Apr 6, 2026·30m·2 clips - 15
Mind Webs - Letter To The Phoenix
Apr 5, 2026·28m - 16
Mind Webs - The Bible After Apocolypse
Apr 4, 2026·28m - 17
Mind Webs - My Objective All Sublime
Apr 3, 2026·25m - 18
Mind Webs - Moth Race
Apr 2, 2026·28m - 19
Mind Webs - Subjectivity
Apr 1, 2026·28m - 20
Mind Webs - The Winner
Mar 31, 2026·24m - 21
Mind Webs - Or All the Seas with Oysters - Avram Davidson
This episode features Avram Davidson's Hugo Award-winning short story 'Or All the Seas with Oysters' about a mysterious encounter in a bike shop.
Mar 30, 2026·25m - 22
Mind Webs - Paxtons World
Mar 29, 2026·28m - 23
Mind Webs - The Rules Of The Road
Mar 28, 2026·28m - 24
Mind Webs - The End
Mar 27, 2026·30m - 25
Mind Webs - Over The Line
Mar 26, 2026·27m - 26
Mind Webs - The Top
Mar 25, 2026·27m - 27
Mind Webs - The Swimmer
Mar 24, 2026·29m - 28
Mind Webs - The Cage
Mar 23, 2026·29m - 29
Mind Webs - The Metal Man
Mar 22, 2026·30m - 30
Mind Webs - The Night Of The Nickel Beer
Mar 21, 2026·25m - 31
Mind Webs - Absalome
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs through narrative episodes.
Mar 20, 2026·29m - 32
Mind Webs - Phoenix
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts and philosophical what-ifs through narrative episodes.
Mar 19, 2026·28m - 33
Mind Webs - The Squirrel Cage
A surreal sci-fi audio drama exploring philosophical questions through a story about a man trapped in a white cube.
Mar 18, 2026·32m - 34
Mind Webs - The Word A N D Stair Trick
This episode presents a science fiction short story titled 'The Word' from a collection by Mildred Klingerman, preceded by a sponsor ad.
Mar 17, 2026·27m - 35
Mind Webs - That Only A Mother
A reading of Judith Merrill's classic sci-fi story 'That Only a Mother' about a mother, a child, and nuclear weaponry.
Mar 16, 2026·24m - 36
Mind Webs - A Walk In The Dark
A reading of Arthur C.
Mar 15, 2026·28m - 37
Mind Webs - Available On The Warp Reaction
Mar 14, 2026·13m - 38
Mind Webs - A Dream At Noon Day
A narrated science fiction short story about a dreamlike memory of sky and clouds.
Mar 13, 2026·31m - 39
Mind Webs - Kellermans Eye Piece
A listener orders a specific telescope eyepiece from a scientific company.
Mar 12, 2026·24m - 40
Mind Webs - A Child Is Crying
A narrated classic science fiction story about a mutant child with extraordinary abilities, set against the backdrop of atomic experimentation.
Mar 11, 2026·32m - 41
Mind Webs - Euremas Dream
A surreal sci-fi audio drama featuring a story by R.A.
Mar 10, 2026·27m - 42
Mind Webs - The Unfinished - Frank Belknap Long
A classic sci-fi story about a crew stranded on a jungle planet.
Mar 9, 2026·29m - 43
Mind Webs - The Worm
A narrated science fiction story about a miller and his dog staying in an abandoned Vermont valley.
Mar 8, 2026·28m - 44
Mind Webs - Doing Lennon
A narrated science fiction story about a man waking from cryosleep to find he is mistaken for John Lennon in a distant future.
Mar 7, 2026·29m - 45
Mind Webs - The Sound Machine
A narrated science fiction story about a man investigating a mysterious sound in his garden shed.
Mar 6, 2026·30m - 46
Mind Webs - In The Abyss
A reading of H.G.
Mar 5, 2026·30m - 47
Mind Webs - The Hall Of Machines
This episode explores the mysterious and vast Hall of Machines from Langdon Jones' book, discussing the conflicting analyses and unverified details about its appearance and contents.
Mar 4, 2026·28m - 48
Mind Webs - Nature Boy
This episode features a fictional story about a character named Arthur observing his mother's unusual activities, including taking bitters and consulting spirit guides.
Mar 3, 2026·25m - 49
Mind Webs - After The Myths Went Home
This episode features a story titled 'After the Myths Went Home' from Robert Silverberg's collection 'Moon Ferns and Star Songs', published by Ballantyne.
Mar 2, 2026·27m - 50
Mind Webs - The Tank And Its Wife
A fictional story about a tank driving around a mansion in California, originally designed for African guerrilla warfare.
Mar 1, 2026·29m