Hour 25
| Title: | Hour 25 |
| Creator: | |
| Date(s): | |
| Medium: | radio show |
| Fandom: | science fiction |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | hour25online.com online here now; Wikipedia |
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Hour 25 is a radio program focusing on science fiction, fantasy, and science.
It was broadcast weekly on the radio station KPFK (90.7 FM) in Southern California from 1972 to 2000, and is now produced on an irregularly-scheduled basis (typically two or three episodes a year) and distributed over the Internet via hour25online.com.
It originally was aired on Fridays from 11 PM until 2 AM.
Theodore Sturgeon was the show's first interview guest.
The program was first hosted Katherine Calkin and Mitchell Harding, then by Mike Hodel (working with a series of co-hosts, two of whom were Katherine Calkin and John Henry) from 1972 to 1986; Hodel was succeeded by Harlan Ellison, who was the regular host in 1986-87. Notable science fiction authors Steven Barnes, Arthur Byron Cover, David Gerrold and J. Michael Straczynski also hosted the show at various times in the 1980s and 1990s. The show is now hosted by Warren James.
From a 1973 ad: "HOUR 25 is the first regularly scheduled Science and Science-Fiction program, and is, happily, well into its second year of bringing Southern California commercial-free coverage of the scene, past, present and future, in contemporary Science-Fiction, guests, old radio S-F, readings, and the latest S-F news."
The presenters would periodically stage a reading of "The Eye of Argon." In a March 8, 1984 interview with Jim Theis (the author), Theis stated that he was hurt that his story was being mocked:
The author was once interviewed on a Los Angeles sf show called Hour 25. The guys on that show used to read "Eye" periodically and mock mightily. The author was rather hurt that his story, which he wrote out of love (however misplaced) for the Howard genre, was so hooted at. He said he would never write anything again. [1]