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.
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