Science Fiction . . . on the radio?

[Bud Brewster]

I love the old radio shows like X Minus One and Dimension X from the 1950s.

YouTube has a few hundred videos that allow you to enjoy them. And I've even seen a few simple fan-made efforts to create CGI visuals to go with the audio of the old radio programs. They were crude, but as a "proof of concept" they certainly showed it could be done.

Anybody else enjoy these? They're a pure form of science fiction that's hard to find these days. My own message board, All Sci-Fi, has a forum dedicated to sci-fi radio shows. Take a look it at. You'll like it. www.allsci-fi.us

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Radio sci-fi is what made me LOVE sci-fi as a genre. Before I got married, staying up to 1am was common - and so was listening to Those Old Radio Shows on local AM radio. SF anthology shows are a fantastic way to enjoy some really, really great stories without complaining about special effects. "Bad Writing" was a rare complaint for X-1 or the like... DEFINITELY recommended!

Mark

 

[Christopher]

I've been listening to Dimension X lately, and mostly the stories seem to be pretty faithful to the original prose works. But I remember listening to what I believe was an X Minus One adaptation of James Blish's "Surface Tension," and it was a completely different story that just had the same basic premise and setup. So was that the exception for the later show, or the rule?

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm very much looking forward to Welcome to our Village, please Invade carefully Season 2 coming out very soon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_To_Our_Village,_Please_Invade_Carefully

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Dimension X and X Minus One are definitely the Gold Standards of SF Radio. Have long been a listener. I would say 95 percent of the adaptations are very faithful to the prose stories (though I have not heard "Surface Tension"). Most of the time changes consisted of simply streamlining the story (especially if the source was a novella or novel), dropping/combining of secondary characters, etc. Some that jumped out at me with major deviations from the source material are the adaptations of Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe," Philip K. Dick's "The Defenders," and Frank M. Robinson's "The Girls From Earth."

Sir Rhosis

 

[Turtletrekker]

I loved the original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy radio show and NPR's adaptation of the Star Wars OT.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They made Radio plays for all 5 Hicthhikers books, and both Dirk Gentlys.

Salmon of Doubt was almost made into an audio play, but it wasn't.

 

[Christopher]

Dimension X and X Minus One are definitely the Gold Standards of SF Radio. Have long been a listener. I would say 95 percent of the adaptations are very faithful to the prose stories (though I have not heard "Surface Tension"). Most of the time changes consisted of simply streamlining the story (especially if the source was a novella or novel), dropping/combining of secondary characters, etc. Some that jumped out at me with major deviations from the source material are the adaptations of Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe," Philip K. Dick's "The Defenders," and Frank M. Robinson's "The Girls From Earth."

Dimension X's "A Logic Named Joe" (from Murray Leinster's story that basically predicted the Internet) is a fairly good example of an adaptation that changes things while still being true to the source material. It hits most of the beats from the story, but tightens things so that the narrator is a participant in events that he only described secondhand in the story, and adds a couple of original characters to provide exposition (as the narrator explains the Logics to them in a sales pitch) and to serve as catalysts in the story (since they're the ones who buy "Joe" and set things in motion).

 

[Sir Rhosis]

If memory serves, the two staff writers at both programs were named Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, both of whom went on to success in television and film. Good writers, both.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno... on Dimension X, at least, I've found most of the original stories by Kinoy or Lefferts to be more simplistic and predictable than the adapted stories by the greats. For instance, while other writers would do alien-invasion stories where the invasion was an allegory for some thematic statement about human nature, they'd do alien invasion stories where the invasion was just an invasion. Maybe there were occasional ones by them that rose above that, but they weren't on the same level as the prose authors.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Oh, sorry, I wasn't talking of them as great original writers, but as very adept adapters of the prose stories. Good writers who knew how to streamline, etc..

Sir Rhosis

 

[RJDiogenes]

Ah, I love OTR. I've got a ton of MP3s stashed on my backup drive (not to mention those old cassette collections-- anybody remember cassettes? They're pretty old time now, too). Not just Science Fiction, but Horror, Western, Detective, and Pulp heroes like The Shadow.

If you've got an iPhone, there are several apps that stream the old shows. I've got a great one called Vintage Radio, which streams all the above genres plus Comedy, Variety, Music, Anthologies, even Soap Operas and Sports. The free version comes with a ton of stuff, and the paid version is only four or five bucks. Well worth it.

Incidentally, for anyone interested, this is an homage to OTR. Some of the actors are old (or current) TrekBBS members. There's another episode in production as we speak.

YouTube has a few hundred videos that allow you to enjoy them. And I've even seen a few simple fan-made efforts to create CGI visuals to go with the audio of the old radio programs. They were crude, but as a "proof of concept" they certainly showed it could be done.

Do you have any links? That sounds kind of interesting.

 

[publiusr]

On the subject--it is still being made
http://www.mninter.net/~jstearns/SFradio.html

I miss Dee Sloan--of Radio Video Active
http://obits.al.com/obituaries/birmingham/obituary.aspx?pid=160980830

We all know Paul Frees work--but some of you may have missed Ken Nordine:
http://www.wordjazz.com/

 

[Shawnster]

We had a discussion about science fiction podcasts here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=209068&highlight=radio

There are some pretty good links.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

RJ, in answer to your question, here is an animated film built over X-1's version of Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven." There may be more, but this is one I remember stumbling upon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6eoqzFd-Ns

Sir Rhosis

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Sweet. Thank you. I'll try to watch that later today.

On the subject--it is still being made
http://www.mninter.net/~jstearns/SFradio.html

Thanks. I didn't realize that Hour 25 and Seeing Ear Theater were still "on the air."

 

[inflatabledalek]

One of my favourite radio SF series is Journey Into Space, a (loose) trilogy that was the last radio drama in the UK to beat television in the ratings. It feeds off a lot of the same sources as Trek and as such feels like a proto-British version of our favourite show, and the fact the writer strove to be scientifically accurate (albeit in a way that has dated somewhat over the half century since it was made) means it feels much more solid than a lot of pulp SF.

The second serial, The Red Planet, is the best and can be listened to without hearing the opener of Operation Luna, it's got some glorious and surreal nightmare imagery as characters fight the brainwashing that makes them thing they're in the middle of Australia rather than on Mars.

 

[RJDiogenes]

That's one of the shows available on the Vintage Radio app.

 

[publiusr]

I remember hearing some sci-fi radio the better part of a decade ago--one of the old tropes was an airliner whose passengers saw dinosaurs on the ground.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Wow. There was a 10-episode Fantastic Four radio show in 1975 that featured Bill Murray as the Human Torch! Who knew?