Metropolis Audio Sci-Fi: Utopias, Robots, Secrets & Oblivion

In science fiction, the Star Wars franchise may be struggling. Movie viewers may have tired of Jurassic Park films. The Mad Max franchise may simply be bad. Star Trek will have to cleanse itself from canceling Lower Decks on Paramount Plus and then making a Section 31 film that should have stayed top secret.

However, in independent podcasting, indie science fiction is at the top of its game. Witness the recent release of The White Vault  where a repair team sent to a remote arctic outpost and unravel what lies waiting in the ice below. Or Windfall, a science fiction audio drama with castles, witches, evil queens, and epic battles. 

Recently, Silvertongues debuted, sci-fi / tropical thriller about a young man who discovers he has no past. What follows is an increasingly twisted investigation as he discovers a brainwashed island. 

 

On the heels of those independent sci-fi dramas comes a new show that continues that trend of excellence. 

Metropolis is a murder mystery in neon utopia. The show runs thirteen episodes (the first six are currently out, the remainder releasing through Spring 2025), and is a thriller that speaks to a lot of currently relevant themes around technology and the people who control it.

"We think it's turning out to be something special, so it should be worth a look," says creator Daniel Koch.

The marketing pitch is strikingly short and sharpy worded: "Nobody ever dies in Metropolis. Spend a minute here. See if we’re not wrong."

 Here's the plot summary: While ace reporter Nan Kanally and the rest of the world struggle through post-war poverty, Metropolis has assembled a neon utopia on an icy, distant island. It’s an electronic heaven made possible by a fleet of astonishing autonomous robots.

But Metropolis holds its secrets tightly. The only word that gets out is from the few reporters they invite. One of them is Nan’s best friend, the sportswriter Stanley Bronfels. But when Stanley disappears, it falls to Nan to discover the secrets of Metropolis… or find oblivion herself.

 We asked creator Daniel Koch about Metropolis and how he created it.

"I've had an unusual road into audio drama. My career has actually been in tech.  I spent nearly twenty years as a software engineer and manager, including six and a half years as the CTO for TUNE and Tomo, responsible for the product for startups with tens of millions of dollars in venture funding and annual revenue."

Then, as often happens, our life is derailed, which is what happened to Daniel.

"In the spring of 2023, my father had a major stroke.  Life is finite – that much is obvious to most people, but it took a little longer to dawn on me.  I realized that I wanted to spend the next section of my life differently – focused on taking care of my family, focused on more mission-oriented technical work, and focused on producing art.  There is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait when you're taking care of family members, and that's when I had the opportunity to write Metropolis."

When I asked Daniel how he wrote the kernel of Metropolis, he answered, "It took form gradually over the course of years while I was off doing other things like 70+ hour workweeks.  It began with the image of a man on a beach on the edge of a massive city.  He's all alone, except for a robot in front of him, looking across the water.  It seems to him to be pining for something. What could it possibly be pining for?

"The rest of the story evolved from there.  Who is that man?  What is that city?  How did he come to be there, and what happens to him next?  Factor in my natural compulsion to make sense of life (and all those years in tech), and thus came Metropolis and all of its characters."

Koch then started Lux Radium, an enterprise based out of Seattle with a dual mission – producing audio drama (right now, Metropolis specifically), and also doing technical consulting for non-profits and other mission-based companies.

Daniel told Ear Worthy: "I handle the writing, production, sound editing, and technical side of the house.  I'm also fortunate enough to be married to Sally Ollove - one of the best dramaturges in the world (and current Associate Artistic Director for the Bearded Ladies Cabaret Company).  She story-edits my writing (something that she is profoundly talented at), and also directs the performances when we're recording in the studio."

As listeners might imagine, producing a 13-episode sci-fi audio drama is a massive undertaking.

Daniel explains: "I wanted to have a fully completed and polished script for the entire series in place before we spun up production, which turned out to be quite the endeavor for a story of this scope!  The combined script of Metropolis (all thirteen episodes) runs almost 750 script pages, and each of those thirteen scripts went through five or six revisions before being ready for recording. We sourced almost all of our cast from the Seattle theater community, and recorded in person at the Pierced Ears Recording Studio with Aaron C Schroeder as our recording engineer.  We recorded over fourteen days in-person in the studio, where it became incredibly clear that Aaron and our entire cast were beyond fantastic, that we were lucky as heck to find them, and that the show was going to turn out pretty darn well."

 

 For art, Koch notes: "Finding a great artist was easy – a friend of mine had produced the wonderful card game The Imposter Kings, with fantastic illustrations by Michael Hirshon, so my search began and ended there.

"For music, by happenstance, I had run across the pilot episode of The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne, which had a great theme song.  I looked up the artist behind it, which led me to ff00ff, whose music is incredible and perfect for the show."

As with almost all independent podcasters, the marketing is always the most challenging part of podcast production.

Daniel explains: "All parts of making a great audio drama are difficult, but I've always had enough faith in the story and my ability to tell it and produce it to know that the show was going to be pretty good.  But getting people to listen to it, regardless of how good it may be?  That's the challenge that will always be where my anxiety comes from."

Right now, the Lux Radium team is working on getting the seventh episode out. When asked about future plans, Daniel notes: "We have plenty of more places we want to go, and there's a bigger arc in this world we want to explore.  As with most things, it's about finding the audience and the backing to make it."

Much like many independent podcasters who worship the spirit of collaboration in the industry and connection to listeners, Daniel Koch observes: "I also just want to say a huge thank you to all the audiences who have listened to the show so far – there's been such an amazingly positive response, which has made the whole journey to date incredibly gratifying.  The audio drama community is incredible, and we already owe a lot to it, and it's warm welcome."

 

Check out Metropolis. The audio drama displays a continuity of excellence -- from great acting, compelling story arc, relevant themes, and synchronized music. It is a wildly imaginative sci-fi audio drama that first captures the ears of listeners. Then their hearts, and, finally, their minds.