Radio Recap: X Minus One

"Countdown for blast-off. X Minus Five, four, three, two. X Minus One. Fire."

X Minus One arrived on NBC in 1955, 4 years after Dimension X went off the air. It lasted until 1958 (plus a single episode revival in 1973) and produced about three times as many episodes as Dimension X did! Many of the same production and performing talent from Dimension X came back for X Minus One so some OTR fans treat them as basically the same series.

There are differences, however. As I noted yesterday, X Minus One had a slightly smaller timeslot (some episodes are just 20 minutes to make room for news and commercials). Also, the tone was much more light and jocular - they added author Robert Sheckley to those they adapted from and his work was mostly humorous. The original stories told on X Minus One were also fairly humorous; when they ran up against a Dimension X script with a gruesome ending (ie, "the Veldt,") they weren't afraid to rewrite the ending into something softer. X Minus One was, generally speaking, the softer, gentler program.

I do owe X Minus One for introducing me to Robert Sheckley. Some of the episodes of the series were adapted from him, especially the hilarious "Skulking Permit" about a human colony who try to prove how Earth-like they are by hiring a town criminal. He also penned "the Lifeboat Mutiny," "a Wind Is Rising" and "Bad Medicine."

Other great adaptations on X Minus One were Tom Godwin's "Cold Equations"; Clifford Simak's "Junkyard" and "Drop Dead"; L. Sprague De Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur"; Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air"; Milton Lesser's "the Sense of Wonder"; Gordon R. Dickson's "Lulungomeena"; Murray Leinster's "If You Was a Moklin"; Theodore Sturgeon's "Mr. Costello, Hero" and "Saucer of Loneliness"; Katherine MacLean's "Pictures Don't Lie"; Frederick's Pohl's "the Haunted Corpse"; and James H. Schmitz's moving story "Caretaker."

Ernest Kinoy adapted most of the stories and penned a few himself, including "Project Trojan" about an effort to fabricate inventions during World War II by using science fiction ideas; and "Real Gone" in which dee jay Al "Jazzbo" Collins portrayed himself (probably the nearest thing to a beat generation science fiction story on radio).

If you want your science fiction to learn a little on the hard side then these won't be for you - X Minus One didn't really tackle big ideas or realistic experiences with fantastic technologies - it was mostly played for fun. If it's fun you want, then X Minus One will likely deliver. I feel Dimension X was the stronger version but it's still a fine series.

Here is the Old Time Radio Researchers Group collection of X Minus One on YouTube!