From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Static Frequency
This article concerns a 1994 Polish radio play. For the 2015 Bengali community radio series, see Static Frequency (Bengali community radio serial).
Static Frequency (Polish: Szum Stateczny) is a radio play of disputed provenance, alleged to have aired on Polish Radio 2 on 9 December 1994 —a year before the novel's publication. The broadcast, directed under a pseudonym, presents the Leif and Katita story as a layered, overlapping sequence of radio frequencies, with dialogue fragmented across multiple simultaneous channels and the Kármán resonance rendered as interference and feedback.
The work exists now only as a footnote in a 1997 fandom symposium (The Twelve Versions Proceedings), where Polish listener ██ reports transcribing fragments during the single transmission: "Katita's voice was split three ways across the dial, each one saying different things about the surgery, and underneath was this hum that hurt to listen to." No archive recording has surfaced; Polish Radio 2's logs are incomplete for that era. The play's director remains unknown—possibly a pseudonym, possibly a collective credit.
Fandom divides on whether Static Frequency predates the novel (the work summoned backward by the novel's eventual existence) or is a complete fabrication built from the symposium's single citation. The lack of verifiable script or recording makes independent assessment impossible. However, the specificity of the frequency-fragmentation concept—distinct from other early adaptations—suggests either genuine independent creation or a very detailed hoax.
The theoretical implications interest scholars of the glitch: if Static Frequency aired in 1994, it predates and possibly shaped the novel's own preoccupations with overlapping frequencies and temporal loops in audio media.