A Rich Find: The Hyacinth Disaster
With wonderful sound design and excellent cast, The Hyacinth Disaster is a highly-recommended audio drama podcast.
The Hyacinth Disaster is a narration-less audio drama that starts off slow with great character-building and then develops into a heart-stopping ride that keeps you hooked all the way to the end. It is set in 2151 CE in the the Jovian asteroid fields either aboard the MRS Hyacinth, a mining ship, or in exo-suits exploring outside in the blackness. Adventures set in space have the inherent dangers of working in an environment that is eminently hostile to living beings, and this drama makes use of that danger brilliantly.
One of my favorite things about this audio drama is that everything that we know or understand about the world of the Hyacinth Disaster is through the conversations of the characters. There is no narration to provide exposition or describe what is happening; the great use of dialogue and soundscape takes care of putting you firmly in the environment. At the same time, it never feels as if any of the characters take the role of “Exposition Person,” which could have spoiled the immersion in the setting. It takes a deft hand to craft a script that can stand on its own like that, but the writer, David Carlson (who also plays two of the main characters), does it very well.
The cast is great, and they play off of each other very well, giving the impression of a crew that have been working together for some time. I was surprised to learn that Carlson plays two characters, because the interactions between those characters never gave that away. The use of sound in the drama is also quite effective, especially as so much of the dialog occurs across multiple communications channels. And when the plot heats up, the audio effects ramp up accordingly.
I highly recommend this audio drama, and since it’s only 7 episodes, one can binge-listen quite easily. In fact, I’ll be listening to it again soon, I imagine, to catch details I missed the first time.
———————————
I’d like to give credit to the two photographers who took the images I used for the image for this post:
Photo by Lionel Hesry on Unsplash
Photo by Federico Beccari on Unsplash