New Podcast Episode: Radio Classics - Dimension X / X Minus One

  

Here's another new episode of Bradbury 100, and this time I return to Ray's stories in the golden age of radio, looking at the classic science fiction drama series Dimension X and X Minus One.

I've mentioned these shows before on the podcast, but I figured it was time to make them the focus.

Although Ray Bradbury was himself a scriptwriter and dramatist, he didn't do any writing specifically for these two shows. And unlike the series Suspense (which I looked it in episode 61), Dimension X and X Minus One only produced adaptations of stories which had already been published.

But what terrific adaptations they were! With scripts by future Emmy Award winners Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, these series never put a foot wrong. The scripts are pretty close to the original stories, without being simple, lazy transcriptions.

In this episode I include clips of many of the Bradbury-based episodes, the most striking of which is the run of episodes based on stories from The Martian Chronicles. But if you've never listened to a Dimension X or X Minus One in its entirety, I would urge you to do so. Go to a darkened room, and let your mind conjure up... well, something like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits... or wherever your imagination takes you.

You can find all episodes of Dimension X and X Minus One online for free. Here are the best links for them, with the best available quality:

 

Links to DIMENSION X episodes (via Old Time Radio Researchers website, OTRR.org)

1. To the Future
   
2. There Will Come Soft Rains/Zero Hour  
3. Mars is Heaven! 
   
4. The Martian Chronicles  
5. And the Moon Be Still As Bright  
6. Dwellers in Silence
7. The Veldt
8. Marionettes, Inc.  
9. Kaleidoscope

Links to X MINUS ONE episodes (via Old Time Radio Researchers website, OTRR.org)

1. And The Moon Be Still As Bright
2. Mars is Heaven!
3. The Veldt
4. Dwellers in Silence
5. There Will Come Soft Rains/Zero Hour
6. To The Future
7. Marionettes, Inc.

 

And here's the podcast episode. Enjoy!

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 65 - Radio Classics: Dimension X / X Minus One

 

 

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Happy Listening

There's a lot of Bradbury audio material freely available out there, especially radio drama adaptations from the 1950s. Many of these are of a dubious copyright status: series such as Dimension X are generally regarded as being in the public domain in the US simply because of their age and lack of copyright renewal at the appropriate time; but in most cases the underlying Bradbury short story is still in copyright and will remain so for many years.

My own audio listings give details on all the known productions, and in some cases I have provided links to Archive.org and other places where the shows can be heard. However, I'm not too diligent lately in keeping these links up to date, so don't be surprised if some of these are broken.

Another convenient resource is this little collection of embedded links from Sci-Fi-London. If you have nothing better to do this festive season, why not just click, sit back, and listen.

New Year, New Stuff

I haven't seen James Cameron's Avatar, and nor do I know much about it - or have much interest in it, for that matter. However, I have seen a few blogs where Cameron's inspirations are catalogued, including this one which sees a link with a couple of X Minus One radio shows, including Bradbury's "And The Moon Be Still As Bright".

Thanks to another blog, Chasing Ray, I have been alerted to a new graphic novel by Brian Fies called Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow. It's full of iconography familiar from World's Fairs of the early twentieth century - the kind of Fairs that inspired the young Ray Bradbury. There is a detailed review of the book, with lots of images, on Forbidden Planet's site. Brian Fies is a blogger himself - you can find him here.

Bradbury's own recent connection to graphic novels, Tim Hamilton's adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, gets a mention in "New Books from Old" from Publisher's Weekly.