The Dolittle Machine
BBC Radio 4

The science fiction writer Matthew De Abaitua (inset) began this entertaining documentary (24 May) in his back garden with his cats (“basically my colleagues”) wondering what the chances were of being able to initiate a conversation that would “take us into the unknown”. A brief résumé of recent pop-cultural forays into inter-species communication (Rick and Morty with their conspiring squirrels, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) then swiftly returned us to the urtext, Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) and its various sequels.