Friday Radio: Child's Play & Venus Is a Man's World (X Minus One)

"Child's Play"

Based on the story by William Tenn, originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1947.

Originally broadcast on NBC, October 20, 1955.

"Venus Is a Man's World"

Based on the story by William Tenn, originally published in Galaxy, July 1951.

Originally broadcast on NBC, February 6, 1957.

Philip Klass, who, under his pseudonym William Tenn, was one of the greatest short fiction writers, and probably the greatest satirist of the Golden Age, died last Sunday at the age of 89. In his memory, we present radio adaptations of two of his stories.

Klass/Tenn wrote only two novels, both expansions of shorter works, and his entire output as a science fiction writer fills only two volumes, but he produced far more than his proportionate share of classics.

To name two... "The Liberation of Earth" (written in 1950) was a satire on the Korean War in which two warring alien races repeatedly "liberate" from each other the people of Earth... until there are none left. "Time in Advance" (written in 1956) explored the fascinating idea of gaining the right to commit a crime--even murder--provided a person serves the sentence first. Once he gets out... watch out.

According to Tenn/Klass in his 2001 collection Immodest Proposals, he wrote "Child's Play" in 1946 on a dare while serving as a purser on a cargo ship.

My brother had sent me the May issue of Astounding, containing my first published story, "Alexander the Bait," and... I showed it around quite proudly. My fellow officers, however, wondered why I made such a fuss over a printed tale by someone named William Tenn; again and again, I had to explain the concept of a pen name....

The first mate... took me to the purser's cabin and dumped me in a chair in front of my typewriter desk. "If you are really William Tenn and can write stories that get published," he said, waving a wobbly forefinger in the air, "prove it. Write one now."

And so he did, and "Child's Play" became Klass/Tenn's "second published story and... first science-fiction 'success,'" and his first anthologized story. It was also his first to be adapted for radio, on NBC's Dimension X in 1951. So why are we presenting the X Minus One version from over four years later? Well, I'll get to that reason in, oh, seven or eight weeks...

I was already considering doing "Venus Is a Man's World" (written in 1951) soon on Friday Radio, because, you know... Venus... our new edition of Between Worlds... etc., etc.

Tenn/Klass had this to say in 2001 about the story:

[Galaxy editor] Horace Gold was worried about publishing this one. He said it was a bit too much of a feminist story. He was not sure that feminist stories belonged in science fiction. As I said, it was 1951.

My favorite part of the story is how, in typical Tenn fashion, it turns the accepted on its head, and we realize how traditionally "feminine" qualities like emotionalism and intuition can just as easily be pinned on men instead.

Since this is, after all, the Thrilling Wonder Stories website, I'll point out that Klass/Tenn wrote four stories for the magazine, three of them in consecutive issues in 1948. Or maybe I should just say that Klass did, since the first, "Dud" (April 1948) went out as by Kenneth Putnam instead of William Tenn. The Tenn three (as it were) were "Consulate" (June 1948), "The Ionian Cycle" (August 1948), and "The Jester" (August 1951).

Friday Radio: Nightfall (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Isaac Asimov, originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1941.

Originally broadcast on NBC, December 7, 1955.

A previously uncollected story by Isaac Asimov, "The Portable Star," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1.

Last week, we had a 1955 adaptation by Ernest Kinoy from X Minus One which was different from his adaptation of the same story for Dimension X in 1951.

This week, well... not so much. I haven't listened to all of the Dimension X version, but the first few minutes are the same, word for word. The X Minus One recording is vastly better than the available one of Dimension X, which sounds like someone recorded it from across a very large room. (Also, there's another reason I didn't use the Dimension X version, and I'll get to that reason in, oh, eight or nine weeks...)

"Nightfall" is, of course, one of the most popular science fiction stories of all time. According to Wikipedia, it has appeared in some four dozen anthologies. "In 1968," they add, "the Science Fiction Writers of America [SFWA] voted Nightfall the best science fiction short story written prior to the establishment of the Nebula Awards in 1965."

Asimov himself, in the 1979 first volume of his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, declared "Nightfall" only his fourth-best story, after "The Last Question," "The Bicentennial Man," and "The Ugly Little Boy," respectively. Besides all its honors, "Nightfall" outdid "The Bicentennial Man" in being made into two sub-mediocre movies (1988 and 2000) instead of one (1999).

In the same volume, Asimov recounts a meeting on March 17, 1941, with Astounding editor John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell handed Asimov the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson which ended up opening both story and radio episode.

Campbell asked me to read it and said, "What do you think would happen, Asimov, if men were to see the stars for the first time in a thousand years?"

I thought, and drew a blank. I said, "I don't know."

Campbell said, "I think they would go mad. I want you to write a story about that."

Asimov did, and got a bonus from Campbell, his biggest check yet as a writer ($166), the cover, and a new reputation as something "more than a steady and (perhaps) hopeful third-rater."

Enjoy X Minus One's adaptation of "Nightfall." Don't listen with the lights out.

Friday Radio: The Veldt (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Ray Bradbury, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1950.

Originally broadcast on NBC, August 4, 1955.

A previously uncollected story by Ray Bradbury, "The Irritated People," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1.

Yes, it's virtual reality, imagined about forty years before "virtual reality." (I just checked Wikipedia to make sure I had the time right, and found this: "An early short science fiction story--'The Veldt'--about an all too real 'virtual reality' was included in the 1951 book The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury and may be the first fictional work to fully describe the concept.")

Even though the same writer, Ernest Kinoy, adapted "The Veldt" for Dimension X in 1951, he didn't simply reuse his script for X Minus One. This adaptation includes a new envelope about the "New Chicago Institute of Human Engineering," which allows the character of George Abbott to deliver as dialogue what was narration in the first version. Unfortunately, it seriously blunts the impact of the story's end.

(So why didn't I post the Dimension X version? Well, there's a reason behind that, and I'll get to it in, oh, nine or ten weeks...)

Friday Radio: The Time Machine (Favorite Story)

Based on the novella by H.G. Wells, originally published in The New Review, 1894-5.

Originally broadcast I know not where, May 28, 1949.

Although it's still having that problem where I can't see a list of the files I've uploaded, I'll go ahead and recommend the free service where I'm hosting the mp3 files: kiwi6.com.

According to Wikipedia, H.G. Wells invented the expression "time machine" in this novel, but was not the first person to write about one. That honor goes to the Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau for El anachronópete (1887). Wells himself previously wrote about a machine that travels through time in the short story "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888).

In his 1899 novel When the Sleeper Wakes, Wells wrote again about a 19th century man in the future. But in that novel, the protagonist, Graham, doesn't travel to the future, instead spending more than two centuries in an ageless trance. Wells wrote his dystopian When the Sleeper Wakes in response to Edward Bellamy's utopian 1888 novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887, and so simply borrowed the trance premise from Bellamy.

Yes, here's where I remind you that Thrilling Wonder has an edition of When the Sleeper Wakes, including all fifteen illustrations by H. Lanos from the 1899 first edition. (Read and/or download a preview chapter as a pdf file here.) You can currently get the book from us (thrilling_wonder) on Amazon for only $5.48, plus $3.99 s/h. Own the future today! Look slippy!

Friday Radio: The Country of the Blind (Escape)

Based on the novelette by H.G. Wells, originally published in The Strand, April 1904.

Originally broadcast on CBS, June 27, 1948.

Friday Radio is back... I hope. You see, I've found a new mp3 host, registered for it, logged in, the whole thing. But whenever I upload, it thinks the file is being uploaded by an unregistered user. Fortunately, you don't need to register to upload things, so here's hoping the file works.

And here's where I remind you that Thrilling Wonder has an edition of Wells' novel of 22nd-century monopolist dystopia, When the Sleeper Wakes, including all fifteen illustrations by H. Lanos from the 1899 first edition. (Read and/or download a preview chapter as a pdf file here.) You can currently get the book from us (thrilling_wonder) on Amazon for only $5.48, plus $3.99 s/h. Own the future today! Look slippy!

Friday Radio: Donovan's Brain (Suspense)

NOTE: My file host (HotlinkFiles.com) recently had some hacker trouble, and as of this writing, they're still picking up the pieces. So if you can't get the players to work, please try again later.

Based on the novel by Curt Siodmak, originally published 1942.

Originally broadcast on CBS, May 18 and 25, 1944.

For our first Friday Radio back from hiatus, I decided to shoot the works and do a two-parter!

Part One:

Part Two:

Although he wrote thirteen novels, Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) remains best known as a screenwriter. And although he worked in many genres, it was in science fiction and horror that he made his mark. Here are just some of his credits:

Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

The Wolf Man (1940)

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Son of Dracula (1943)

House of Frankenstein (1944)

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

The Magnetic Monster (1953)

Riders to the Stars (1954)

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

As it happens, though, he didn't write any of the three screen adaptations of Donovan's Brain: The Lady and the Monster (1944), Donovan's Brain (1953), and The Brain (1962). Nor the 1955 television adaptation on Studio One.

Suspense adapted the novel twice: this 1944 version, starring Orson Welles, and a one-hour version in 1948.

Speaking of Orson Welles, is it my imagination, or in his role as Dr. Patrick Cory, is he imitating George Coulouris? (Coulouris played the banker Walter P. "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper" Thatcher in Citizen Kane.) To me, Welles sounds so much like him that when I first heard the first episode, it took me a good five or ten minutes to realize Wells was playing Cory.

And speaking of this adaptation, when it was released on LP in 1982, it won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

Friday Radio: The Cave of Night (X Minus One)

Based on the story by James E. Gunn, originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1955.

Originally broadcast on NBC, February 1, 1956.

(An article by James E. Gunn, "Space Opera Revisited," appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1.)

I think this is my favorite X Minus One so far. I wonder how the adapter (Ernest Kinoy, according to Wikipedia; the credit is cut off on the file) got the idea to do it in the form of a non-fiction radio program in the process of assembly. The original story is written in a straightforward way. Kinoy could have done the script as typical X Minus One narration-and-dramatization, but the method he chose worked out much better for the material. Which, I suppose, just goes to show (as some critics have been moved to observe about the Watchmen film) that the best adaptation of a work to a new medium isn't necessarily the most "faithful."

Also according to Wikipedia, "The Cave of Night" was adapted for television's Desilu Playhouse in 1959. A more well-known adaptation is the 1969 TV movie and subsequent series The Immortal, rather loosely based on his 1964 novel The Immortals.

Speaking of Gunn, adaptation, and Desilu, Gunn adapted an unproduced Star Trek storyline by Theodore Sturgeon into the 1996 novel The Joy Machine, credited to both authors.

James E. Gunn is the only writer so far to produce new material for both the original run of Thrilling Wonder Stories and the revival. He wrote an article for Volume 1, as mentioned above, and for the original, co-wrote a short story, wrote another solo, and featured in the final issue with the novella "Name Your Pleasure," which became the last third of his 1961 novel The Joy Makers. (The middle third, "The Naked Sky," appeared in the final issue of what by then was called Startling Stories Combined with Thrilling Wonder and Fantastic Story, but we won't blame him for, in essence, closing out Thrilling Wonder Stories twice.)

He's edited six volumes so far of The Road to Science Fiction, which trace the development of the genre all of the way from the Epic of Gilgamesh with excerpts, full stories, and short essays. My father bought the second and third volumes at a used book sale once, and I learned a lot about the history of science fiction from them. So you have that partially to blame for the existence of this website today.

Friday Radio: Conquerors' Isle (Escape)

Based on the story by Nelson Bond, originally published in Blue Book, June 1946.

Originally broadcast on CBS 60 years ago yesterday, March 5, 1949.

Nelson Bond (1908-2006) wrote science fiction for only about twenty years of his nearly century-long life, from 1937 to the late 1950's. His fiction appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories eight times in 1940-43.

Several of his stories were adapted for radio, with "Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies" not only presented at least six times, but also made into a series in 1938. The adaptation of his stories led to a new career in that medium, first by adapting his stories himself, then by writing originals for such series as Dr. Kildare and Hot Copy.

Similarly, his first television script was an adaptation of "Lobblies." Although he couldn't have entered television any earlier—his was the first play ever broadcast by a television network, in 1946—it took him a few years to write for the medium regularly, since at the time radio paid better.

Marshall University houses not just his personal papers, donated in 2002, but a replica of his home office.

Bond's life closely coincided with Jack Williamson's. Born almost seven months after Williamson, in 1908, Bond died six days before him.

Considering Williamson was 98, and Bond was less than three weeks short of it, I've tried not to feel responsible that just as I was seeking them out for the first volume of the new Thrilling Wonder Stories, they were compelled to leave this earth.

Source: Wikipedia

I don't have a copy of the original story, but I hope this exchange from this radio episode doesn't appear in it:

"A gas, perhaps?"

"No, because it had no form, and no odor, no taste."

That's true of many gases.

This file is very clear. As with a couple others we've presented, you can clearly hear when the music records they were using had crackles and pops of their own. And, at about 19:24, there's the unmistakable sound of an actor turning the page of his script.

Friday Radio: The C-Chute (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Isaac Asimov, originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1951.

Originally broadcast on NBC, February 8, 1956.

(Another story by Isaac Asimov, "The Portable Star," is in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1—its first-ever appearance in an anthology.)

This is another one that doesn't work in the player, so you can just download it by clicking here.

In the first volume of his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, Asimov writes that Galaxy editor H.L. Gold "demanded some changes" to the draft Asimov turned in. "I argued about them," he continues, "and gave in on some but held out stubbornly on others." After Asimov turned in the revision, Gold accepted the story, but rejected Asimov's title, "Greater Love." (The title is presumably from John 15:13—"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.")

Asimov had a lot of arguments with Gold, and especially hated the editor's "personal and vilifying" style. He relates this anecdote about getting back in his own way:

Horace once said to me, concerning one of my submissions, "This story is meretricious." "It's what?" said I. "Meretricious," he said, proud of the word (the meaning of which I knew perfectly well). "And a Happy New Year to you," I said. Would you believe he got annoyed?

Asimov got even more out of the argument over "The C-Chute": he made a humorous story out of the incident, called "The Monkey's Fingers."

Incidentally, Windham seems to say "Dash it!" an awful damn lot in this episode. I looked over the story again, and there, he says "dash it" twice, and "burn it" once. Windham's amusing dismissal of the C-Chute plan as "a video sort of idea" (meaning silly or crazy) is from Asimov.

Friday Radio: Dwellers in Silence (Dimension X)

Based on the story by Ray Bradbury, originally published in Maclean's, September 15, 1948.

Originally broadcast on NBC, July 19, 1951.

(Another story by Ray Bradbury, "The Irritated People," is in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1—its first-ever appearance in an anthology.)

According to Wikipedia, only the first 13 episodes of Dimension X were broadcast live. I mention that because a couple of times in this episode, the fortieth in the series, the actors trip over their lines. At this time, shows were already being recorded and edited on magnetic tape, so I wonder why they didn't go back and re-record the lines.

This copy of the episode has a rather variable speed, starting out slow, and briefly getting very slow around 22:30. (The file runs 31 minutes, 21 seconds, so it may all be slow to some degree.)

Friday Radio: The Stars Are the Styx (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Theodore Sturgeon, published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950.

Originally broadcast on NBC, July 24, 1956.

(A novella by Theodore Sturgeon, "The Golden Helix," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.)

UPDATE: It looks like this is one of those files that won't work in the player for some reason. So click here to download the mp3 file, and listen to it however you can.

Did Theodore Sturgeon have a thing for albinos? I ask because there's a beautiful albino woman in this episode*, and there's also one in the above-mentioned "The Golden Helix." I can't find anything about it via Google.

The narration in this episode seems extraordinarily clumsy to me, with Charon narrating action at one point literally while he's in the midst of performing it, gasping with the effort. It kind of kills suspension of disbelief when you picture him continually giving a past-tense account of his present activity to no one. (After all, we're not there, are we?)

And incidentally, "Charon" is the name, like the (then-undiscovered) moon of Pluto. The scene in which Flower apparently recognizes the mythical source points up the differences between text and audio. In text, we're less likely to ask ourselves why no one who hears the name Charon asks, "Karen? What, were your parents expecting a girl?"

Note that at the end, the announcer misattributes the story to H.L. Gold. They'd just done his "The Old Die Rich" the previous week, so maybe the staff accidentally handed the announcer the wrong copy to read.

One last thing: This copy of the episode is so clear that you can tell how worn-down the stock-music records were. The music sounds distinctly crackly and lacking in range.

*- I have to admit, I haven't read the story, and I don't have any magazine or book it appeared in, but I assume she's in the story, too. If not, perhaps it was adapter Ernest Kinoy who had a thing for albinos.

Friday Radio: Zero Hour (Suspense)

Based on the story by Ray Bradbury, published in Planet Stories, Fall 1947.

Originally broadcast on CBS, May 18, 1958.

(Another story by Ray Bradbury, "The Irritated People," is in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1—its first-ever appearance in an anthology.)

"Zero Hour" is one of the science fiction stories most adapted for radio. During the Golden Age of Radio, it appeared on Dimension X, Escape, Lights Out, twice on X Minus One, and three times on Suspense. There were later adaptations on Experiment in Drama (1973), Future Tense (1974), and RadioWest (2006). And these are just the ones I knew about, and found with a quick Google search.

This one, as you can tell from the introduction, was its second performance on Suspense.

I wonder how old the actors playing the children were. For radio of the time, they sounded surprisingly genuine, which helps the production immensely. It just wouldn't be half so creepy with obviously-adult actors.

Friday Radio: A Saucer of Loneliness (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Theodore Sturgeon, published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1953.

Originally broadcast on NBC, January 9, 1957.

(A novella by Theodore Sturgeon, "The Golden Helix," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.)

I know I keep saying things that other people have observed for decades, but my goodness, that Sturgeon could string words together that wring you right out, couldn't he?

I've read "The Golden Helix" several times—once (when I scanned the text into QuarkXPress, then went over it to correct every scanning mistake and turn every straight quotation mark into a curly one) pretty much in slow motion. And I misted up every time.

Needless to say, in dramatizing his prose, you lose some of the effect, but if you don't feel the odd pang while listening to this adaptation of "A Saucer of Loneliness," you might want to get a DNA test so you know just which non-human species you belong to.

A note about the adaptation: the first-person narrator isn't a reporter in the original story. In fact, he's only in it at all at the beginning and end—the rest is his account of what the woman told him on the beach. I suppose the change makes sense from a structural point of view. What was description can now be dialogue—between him and the woman, between him and his editor—but it does kind of turn it into his story. And I think there's something poignant about his only knowing her from the accounts in the papers, and her message in a bottle, and yet feeling such a connection that it brought him to that beach. The impact isn't so great if he's known her personally since the day the saucer arrived.

Speaking of poignancy, the title "A Saucer of Loneliness" is so evocative in itself that I'd read the whole story before it struck me that it referred to the flying saucer. I just had this image in my head of a dish full of loneliness. I pictured it inky and black, thin and cold.

Friday Radio: Honeymoon in Hell (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Fredric Brown, published in Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950.

Originally broadcast on NBC, December 26, 1956.

(Another story by Fredric Brown, "Arena," the basis for the Star Trek episode, appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.)

I told you I might repay your patience for sticking around while I forsook regular website updates for actually getting Volume 2 finished and uploaded to the printers. Today, I start to make good, catching up with Friday Radio with two installments.

Sometimes, my fellow members of Generation X like to believe they invented irony and self-referential humor. Well, check out this episode at about 14:20. Being the Gen-Xer I am, I anticipated the gag, and yet was surprised that they actually did it. At least, I think it was a joke.

The radio version of "Honeymoon in Hell" kind of shortchanges us on the hell... in two ways. First, cutting for the timeslot left the story pretty much all setup and resolution, with very little left to our heroes' adventure on the Moon. Second, it leaves out the explanation of the title. Their landing is in Hell Crater, a real place really named, as the story states, after the astronomer Father Maximilian Hell.

The radio version also cuts the information that the disparity between female and male births is quickly getting greater, thus leaving listeners to have to deduce it for themselves, based on the statement that at this rate, the human race has a generation and a half left.

And in a really bizarre change, the justice of the peace who marries our heroes in the story becomes the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who I don't think is empowered to perform weddings.

The notion that there would have been several manned missions to the Moon by 1962 must have seemed like wishful thinking when the story was originally published in 1950. (Most estimates in science fiction of the era proved instead to be on the far side of the actual date.) By late 1956, it must have seemed ludicrously so. And yet, that, the show kept just as it was.

Friday Radio: Pebble in the Sky (Dimension X)

Based on the novel by Isaac Asimov, published by Doubleday in 1950.

Originally broadcast on NBC, June 17, 1951.

(A story by Isaac Asimov, "The Portable Star," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1, its first-ever publication in a book.)

Yes, based on the novel. We saw with "Mr. Costello, Hero," how a novelette lost some of its power in being cut to fit the radio timeslot. I have to wonder what made the producers of Dimension X even attempt to adapt an entire novel into a 24-minute radio episode. In the actual event, though, it turned out pretty well.

An amusing result of boiling down the plot to its absolute essentials is that the main character of the novel went by the wayside. That character was a 62-year-old retired tailor from the 20th century whom a nuclear laboratory accident sends into the far future. Needless to say, his presence makes "the Sixty" more of a pressing issue than it is in the radio version.

Pebble in the Sky started out as a short novel called "Grow Old with Me!" which was rejected by Thrilling Wonder Stories' sister magazine Startling Stories. This version was rediscovered in Asimov's papers in the 1980's, and was finally published as part of The Alternate Asimovs.  I haven't read it, but I'm guessing that the tailor's story is even more important there. In Pebble, it starts out as the central element, only to be pushed further and further to the sidelines... to the point that, when I read it, I wondered what the point had been of starting with the tailor at all. Whatever the reason for that is, Dimension X essentially did the job that Asimov's editor at Doubleday should have had him do.

Incidentally, another major change in the radio version is the ending. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say that the title doesn't get a chance to gain that meaning at the end of the novel.

I wonder what the origin is of this particular recording. There's a laugh at the beginning, a sneeze part way through, and a small coughing fit near the end, all far too clear compared to the main audio to have been part of it. It sounds like someone with a cold recorded it off the radio with a microphone.

Friday Radio: The Rocket (NBC Short Story)

Based on the story by Ray Bradbury, published in Super Science Stories, March 1950.

Guess which network it was originally broadcast on, January 4, 1952.

A story by Ray Bradbury called "The Irritated People," not found in any other collection, appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1. Hint, hint.

Is it my imagination, or is the introduction to this episode basically saying, "Sure, we all know science fiction sucks. But Ray Bradbury is such a fine writer, he actually redeems this crap!"?

It's a real, real commonplace observation that in a time when most science fiction writers wrote about the intellectual puzzles faced by Campbellian engineers and other members of the professional class, Ray Bradbury found his voice and his power in writing about "common" people, and their deep emotions that run closer to the surface. Certainly, it's difficult picturing an Asimov or Heinlein hero feeling the almost primal need of Bradbury's protagonist here to go into space. And it's appropriate that the characters are almost entirely recent-generation immigrants, since no doubt it takes a need something like that to leave everything you know, and cross the Atlantic to start over again with nothing in a country where you probably can't speak the language.

For my own part, I think that had I been around in one of the times and places of the great European emigrations that helped build the America we know... I would have been that spineless guy you never hear about, who considered it, thought about the hardships, and stayed home.

Or maybe I'm just assuming the Italian-named characters are recent-generation immigrants. Only the lead actor seems to make a serious attempt at an accent. And the story does, after all, take place somewhere in the neighborhood of 2035. But it's probably missing the point to get all literalist with a Bradbury story, which are often what you could call magic unrealism: they're real life in a metaphorical setting... the way that The Martian Chronicles was more about Manifest Destiny than it was about Mars.

Anyway, "The Rocket" is a very simple story, but it generated probably more tension in me than any of the other shows I've posted, and that's because, for a change, I really felt for the hero of this story.

It was probably a good adaptation choice for a series that apparently found the regular run of science fiction a bit juvenile.

Friday Radio: Mr. Costello, Hero (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Theodore Sturgeon, published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1953.

Originally broadcast on NBC, July 3, 1956.

Another story by Theodore Sturgeon, "The Golden Helix," appears in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.

(For some reason, this file won't work with the usual embedded player. So just click here to download the file.)

You may remember from a couple of weeks ago that the adaptation of Fredric Brown's "The Last Martian" had some filler that announced itself as such to me by being a bit wrong.

Well, with this episode, the adapter, George Lefferts, had the opposite problem: "Mr. Costello, Hero" was a bit too long of a story for a half hour. As a result, the radio version is missing some of the creepiness of the story. Here's a little bit from the story about the making of Costello's "perfect" society:

"What happened to the ones who wouldn't come to Centrals?"

"People made fun of them. They lost their jobs, the schools wouldn't take their children, the stores wouldn't honor their ration cards. Then the police started to pick up soloists—like they did you." She looked around again, a sort of contented familiarity in her gaze. "It didn't take long."

The adaptation, by contrast, makes it seem like it was just the quoting out of context that did it, and missed the point that it was a sort of social snowball effect. In the story, these quotes are spread via 3-D TV by "the Lucilles," a commentator replicated into four images (presumably to make her/their statements seem more authoritative). Pretty soon...

"Believe it? Well, it's true, isn't it? Can't you see it's true? Everybody knows it's true."

Just like "everyone knows" that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, or Sarah Palin said she can see Russia from her house. Because pundits who knew better—but, being pundits, had an investment in a cause, and no compunction about lying to further it—said so, alone and in chorus, over and over until people who didn't know better never heard it any other way. And voilá, "everybody knows it's true."

You know you're dealing with a good science fiction story when it seems more timely 55 years after it was first published.

Friday Radio: With Folded Hands... (Dimension X)

Based on the story by Jack Williamson, published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1947.

Originally broadcast live on NBC, April 15, 1950.

The author of today's adapted story, Jack Williamson, wrote, among many, many other things over eight decades, "The Moon Era," reprinted in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 1.

But enough of that. What goodies did you get for Christmas? An iPod Touch? An iRobot Roomba? A Humanoid from planet Wing IV to take on all the onerous drudgery of living?

What's a Humanoid? Come on, they've been out since 2006. Don't you feel left out at parties when everyone else is going on about their Humanoid? What are you going to do on February 17, 2009, after the federally-mandated conversion to all-digital labor?

Of course, I should talk. I finally bought an HDTV last week. My latest iPod is three years old. I don't even have a Humanoid.

Oops, excuse me. That's the doorbell.

Please enjoy today's completely dated and utterly fictional radio program. Rest assured that nothing like this will ever happen to you. Robot labor-saving devices are the wave of the future, and a boon to humankind.

The Editor would tell you this himself, but monitor eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome from keyboards can be serious problems, and we want to preserve him from any harm.

-Humanoid 64-J-L-19

Friday Radio: The Last Martian (X Minus One)

Based on the story by Fredric Brown, published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950.

Originally broadcast on NBC, August 7, 1956.

I'm not an editor by training, although I started making magazines when I was seven. I've always had kind of a knack for it, mentally holding a blue pencil as I read. But since I worry about everything, I sometimes ask myself who died and made me a science fiction editor.

Enter this week's Friday Radio. I picked it because I have a story by Fredric Brown in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, and I like to say Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 to you as much as possible. But as it happens, I'd never read this particular Brown story.

When I listened to the episode, I noticed that it changes point of view character for a while, about two-thirds of the way through, and it just struck me as wrong... particularly because, up till then, it was narrated in the first person by a character who was suddenly no longer present. I also thought it wasted rather casually what should have been the big twist punchline/reveal.

So afterwards, I opened up my copy of From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown, and found, to no surprise whatsoever, that the section that had rubbed me the wrong way wasn't in it; it was made up by George Lefferts, the radio scriptwriter, probably to add a couple of plot beats to a fairly short story. And the twist was in the last scene, where it belonged.

Now I'm feeling better. And it'll probably last for, oh, a day, day and a half.

Friday Radio: The Incident at Switchpath (Beyond Tomorrow)

Based on the story "The Sky Was Full of Ships" (aka "The Cave of History") by Theodore Sturgeon, published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947.

Remember when I said we'd run through all the stories from Thrilling Wonder adapted for radio? Well...

I've read "The Sky Was Full of Ships," and seen the television adaptation from Tales of Tomorrow. So when I started listening to this episode, it seemed kind of... familiar. Oddly, the announcer twice says that "The Incident at Switchpath" is the title of Sturgeon's story.  But there's no such story, and this is clearly "The Sky Was Full of Ships."

This episode was intended for radio, but there's no evidence it was ever broadcast. Beyond Tomorrow recorded a pilot and three episodes (one of them a re-recording of the pilot). All the sources show that this episode was recorded on April 11, 1950, but it doesn't seem right to me. Dimension X premiered on April 8, 1950 with an adaptation of "The Outer Limit." But the fourth and final recording of Beyond Tomorrow, supposedly set to disc ten days later, was... "The Outer Limit." Go figure.

Another Theodore Sturgeon story from the original Thrilling Wonder appears in our upcoming Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2. See a preview of "The Golden Helix" here.