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Ruby:
The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe

Long ago and far away, I'd rush to the Sonic Drive-In at noon each day for my booster shot of culture. With a little luck, the stereo on my Mustang would pick up a distant college station and its three-minute ZBS broadcast of "Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe."

You had to listen to Ruby in three-minute increments because that's all most stations would play at one time. Radio drama has been a dying art in the closing decades of the 20th century. Working solely from donations, grants and whatever they can make from sales, the ZBS Foundation has been trying to reverse that trend for more than two decades.

It took about three months to tape the entire series from a staticky radio into a cheap reporter's tape recorder. I also got a good bit of engine noise and waitresses hawking French fries on squawk boxes, but I didn't care. I had the world's greatest radio series on tape. It took about six years before the tapes -- and the recorder -- gave up the ghost.

So, you can imagine my joy when I opened a care package from the ZBS Foundation this week and found the full, digitally mastered three-CD set cradled inside. Rushing to my study, I turned out all the lights, leaned back in my recliner and, for the first time in my life, heard the story the way it was meant to be told.

Take the best of Star Trek, the Maltese Falcon and Monty Python, mix them all together with a dose of Tangerine Dream and a pinch of Kafka, and you get the idea ... almost. Ruby is more than a fusion of film noir and science fiction. It's more than electronic music and avant garde poetry. It's a world unto itself filled with lush harmonies, incredible imagery and unforgettable characters.

The tale begins when Ruby spots an android being stalked by genetically engineered assassins on the surface of a six-mooned planet. There to investigate a suspected plot to use the media to manipulate reality, Ruby is soon drawn into a much bigger conspiracy which leaves her -- and at times the drama's listeners -- questioning their own views of reality.

Along the way, the hard-boiled private admits to using her "subtle feminine charms and other less subtle persuasions" to get her way, as in the following exchange with a suspect:

Suspect: "The answer to all your questions are philosophical, Ruby. Are you a philosopher?"
Ruby: "Is that a pig?"
Suspect: "Yes, a pig."
Sound of blaster fire,
Ruby: "Hmm ... are those parrots?"

In other segments Ruby waxes poetic when describing the joys of sailing from one utopian island to the next by riding the solar winds on futuristic glider wings or when speaking of the worlds she creates in her mind while playing black hole roulette.

In addition to Ruby, listeners will also encounter: the tookah, a mysterious green, four-tentacled alien with three eyes, a thin blue mustache and, for some reason, a red fez.; Angel Lips, a custom-made frankie (short for Frankenstein or android) designed for entertainment, who's developed a mind of her own; and a vast array of philosophers, programmers, artists and rogues, all determined to discover the secret to manipulating reality. They key, everyone agrees, is in controlling the electronic media.

And speaking of the electronic media, the series also introduced the Android Sisters, Angel and Angel. Weaving in and out of the plot, the twin frankies perform poetic readings to electric space music that offer dryly ironic commentaries on humanity and reality from an electronic perspective.

For example, in Electric Sheep, the Android Sister explain::

"Do you watch the nightly news?
Do you watch it faithfully?
When the anchorman goes, blah, blah, blah,
Do you go bah, bah, bah?
And you ask us do androids dream of electric sheep?
Yes. We dream of you."

Later, when examining the concept of reality, they point out that all explanations must be adjusted to fit the level of intelligence shown by the person asking the question. Then, they observe:

Reality is what everyone agrees exists.
What everyone agrees isn't real, doesn't exist."

The cast and crew at ZBS has done a wonderful job of melding over 60 individual three-minute episodes into a single listening experience. The engineering and sound quality are superb and the story line is guaranteed to transport listeners to another world. Listen to these recordings using stereo headphones and you'll actually have the illusion of being surrounded by the action. The ZBS engineers have taken great pains to update the classic concept of radio drama with state-of-the-art sound technology.

So, if you're looking for a though-provoking and entertaining story, by all means pick up a copy of Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe and slip away into a world where alien warrior-poets work their technomagic in the dark of night ... and that's hard to do on a plant with six moons.

To get a catalog or order call ZBS Foundation at 1-800-662-3345; check out their website at www.zbs.org (if you have Real Audio 5.0 or better you can listen to samples); or write: ZBS Foundation, RR#1, Fort Edward, N.Y. 12828-9702.

Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe is available on four cassettes or on three CDs.

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