February 2, 2021
Los Angeles, California
Ground Hog Day
I dearly miss my brother, Mike. I came across the below photograph taken by Steven Moore showing Mike interviewing Ray Bradbury on his late night show, “Mike Hodel’s Hour 25” back in 1982.
Born and raised here, Mike was a true “Force for Good” in Los Angeles and devoted his life to “causes” and loved and was loved by his many listeners.
Brother Mike died way too young, taken from us at the age of 47 after being diagnosed with Cancer. Melanoma took him fast, just a few months from diagnosis to death. He passed on May 6, 1986.
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Mike Hodel & Ray Bradbury on “Hour 25 SFTV” (1982)
Mike Hodel era (1972-1986)
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Hour 25 was one of the longest-running science fiction radio programs, surpassed by only Hour of the Wolf, and surpassing Shockwave Radio Theater‘s 28 year run. In its first years, Hour 25 functioned almost as a science fiction “web page” for the Los Angeles area fan base, before computer technology made it much simpler to keep up-to-date on news and events in the relatively small world of science-fiction fandom. It was also one of the earliest programs to be taken seriously by both authors and publishers.
…
As the show became more of a fixture in the LA science-fiction community, noted authors began to make appearances on the show. Theodore Sturgeon was the first author to be interviewed by the show, in 1973; in the years following, Hour 25 interviewed virtually every major writer in the field. One well-known recorded interview was with author Philip K. Dick in 1976, in which Mike Hodel talked with Dick about his new book, “A Scanner Darkly“, and Dick read some passages which he said were inspired by his own use of drugs. The original recording was over three hours long, but the broadcast version was edited to be much shorter. Some time after being aired, Hodel realized that neither version of the interview could be found in the station archives, but a 75-minute version of the Dick interview is now available and a transcript is held on the Internet Archive. [1]
Here’s a much longer blog I did a few years back with additional details.
GOOD NIGHT MIKE!
The post Remembering My Brother Mike Hodel Host of KPFK’s “HOUR 25” appeared first on Steve Hodel.