Beyond Tomorrow was a CBS program produced by William N. Robson (Escape and Suspense), with consultations from John Campbell, the publisher of Astounding Science Fiction and would-be kingmaker of the science fiction genre. The series produced a pilot broadcast of "The Outer Limit" (under the series title Beyond This World), a story which Robson had just produced for Escape in February 1950 then broadcast just 3 episodes in April of 1950. From a certain perspective, Beyond Tomorrow was a spin-off of Escape. The three episodes were:
- April 5, 1950: "Requiem" by Robert A. Heinlein
- April 11, 1950: "Incident at Switchpath" by Theodore Sturgeon
- April 18, 1950: "The Outer Limit" by Graham Doar
As John Dunning put it in his book On the Air, Beyond Tomorrow "almost became radio's first science fiction series for adults." It had great promise behind it - one of radio's top producers, participation from one of science fiction's great magazines and stories of top caliber. Yet it fizzled.
I'd like to hear the story behind this - perhaps somewhere it was stated why CBS didn't continue with the program. It seems like one possibility is that the same month Beyond Tomorrow launched, NBC started their terrific program Dimension X. Perhaps radio audiences had enough fascination with science fiction to support one radio anthology program, but not two.
You can hear the 3 episodes of Beyond Tomorrow at the Internet Archive.
1 comment:
You also have Beyond Midnight which is a pretty decent show from South Africa but this show is a bit like 2000 Plus.
I notice in the suggested links below that you see SF68 which is an all-time great science fiction show. Most of the episodes however have dreadful audio similar to Exploring Tomorrow. It depends on your motivation to listen to these shows at night or in the background because several episodes are difficult to hear. Most recommended are Last Requiem which is simply haunting if not astonishing, Andover and the Android is excellent as is Grenville's Planet. Then there's A Sound of Thunder which is simply AAA, an all-time great OTR episode of a famous story about shooting a dinosaur. Those four are among my favorite OTR sci-fi shows of all time and the rest of the ones that you can hear are pretty damn good.
These episodes have absolutely nothing objectionable about them that I can see. Not counting England which has a very different but equally great audio radio history, in my opinion South Africa is sound to the U.S. in terms of quality of OTR production and shows and they also exported to Australia and presumably New Zealand, as the accents are fairly close, probably like Canadian and American English. I am constantly seeking OTR science fiction and horrible so again I thank you for bringing these things to mind. Lately I have had Molle Mystery Theater on shuffle and it's really pretty good with just a few bad audio shows although those are the currently extant ones. Finally I know how to pronounce Molle (Mo-lay). I figured it was Mole Mystery Theater before.
I would love to hear your opinion on circulating CBC OTR. My experience is that very very few have audio that is good enough to really involve yourself in the shows. Wendigo is supposed to be great but I usually listen at night and fall asleep in the middle. Modern Canadian OTR seems to be excellent but many only deem shows before 1963 as being part of the hobby.
I grew up with CBS Radio Mystery Theater which was great and terrifying with great performances but even though it's Human Brown from Inner Sanctum who seemed to live forever, some don't see this show as part of OTR. Nevertheless, it must be the most successful show of all-time both in terms of extant episodes--all- if I understand correctly and chockfull of famous OTR performers, McCambridge above all. I used to listen to my future university's basketball team and afterwards would come on that dreading CBSRMT musical opening with the creaking door and it too years before I didn't race to turn it off. The episodes were too long--45 minutes plus commercials would have been better but that's not how schedules worked. Even the commercials remain charming to many/most but they are substantial and not all episodes have them. A score or so even have news and a lot of it covers Watergate. EG Marshall was amazing and one of the more famous hosts of all time but he also was involved in one episode or two. In some ways he was like the whistler but without the schtick.
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