Visions of Shadow and Light

The Adventures of Ruby are a series of modern radio plays produced by the ZBS Foundation. These are some of the best audio plays you’ll ever find! Each Ruby story is quite long and involved. These aren’t shorts, but rather are multi-segment affairs. Ruby 1 is 3 CDs, Ruby 4 is 8 CDs. You can almost think of them as books on tape, but with multiple voices, sound effects and music.

Ruby is a Galactic Gumshoe, a good one! She is a rough-and-tumble gumshoe in the style of the old San Francisco pulp stories, but in a far future on another planet in the galaxy. Her adventures are both action-packed and quite cerebral. In each story she gets hired to investigate or solve what amount to metaphysical tasks, or at least that’s how things end up.

I should also note that there is a substantial subtext in the stories. This is political, economic and environmental. Since I very much enjoy discourse in these areas, having such themes intertwined within the stories really works for me. I suppose others may find it distracting – you’ll have to decide for yourself. I find it thought provoking.

The Ruby plays are groundbreaking in their use of music as a voice. Unlike most radio plays where music is used sparingly for things like transitions or to set the mood early in a scene, in Ruby the music is an integral part of the storytelling experience and often takes the place of a voice. It is widely regarded that Ruby redefined the use of music in this regard.

You can listen to Ruby 1 on the Internet via Quicktime streaming audio, and you can order the CDs from the ZBS Foundation.

Ruby 1 is awesome. It was produced quite some time ago now, and really revolutionized radio plays in many ways. I was introduced to it by my most excellent friend Tim when we were in college together.

Ruby 2 has a different voice for Ruby and is worth skipping. I’m afraid Ruby 2 just didn’t have the sultry yet playful voice quality required to make the story work.

Fortunately the real Ruby returned for Ruby 3, which is an absolutely awesome bit of work. Ruby 3 remains my favorite, as it combines galactic high adventure with Sumerian mythology and modern social commentary. The story is complex, almost surreal. Best of all, I first listened to Ruby 3 around the same time that Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash came out, and it too uses Sumerian mythology. A coincidence, but it worked for me!

At this point I’m half way through Ruby 4 and loving every minute of it. It doesn’t have the mythology of Ruby 3, but there’s a harder edge to some of the story that I’m enjoying.

Sitting on my shelf are Ruby 5, 6 and 6.5 just waiting to be heard.

I strongly recommend Ruby for any fan of sci fi, radio plays, political progressives or lovers of pulp gumshoe stories. You just haven’t lived until you’ve heard The Android Sisters work their magic, or listened to TJ Terue espouse his passion for plastic (you’ll understand ).