Radio Recap: Tales of Tomorrow

Science fiction for adults broke into the mainstream in the 1950s and on the radio, the major networks each made attempts at the genre in early 1950. However, CBS' Beyond Tomorrow lasted only 3 weeks; Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X each lasted 1 year; it wasn't until NBC's X Minus One arrived in 1955 that at last a science fiction program for adults settled in for a lengthy run.

Yet in the middle of those programs we have Tales of Tomorrow on ABC. Tales of Tomorrow is one of the rare instances of a television program being adapted to radio; the television version ran on ABC from 1951-1953. It was early science fiction, broadcast live. Many episodes still exist and although they're crude, Tales of Tomorrow retains some affection among science fiction fans as a pioneering piece of television science fiction. The radio version of Tales of Tomorrow popped up during the television version's final year. ABC ran the series only briefly from January 1 to April 9, 1953. It was sponsored by Galaxy Magazine, who had previously sponsored NBC's Dimension X (and later X Minus One).

The series was hosted by Raymond Edward Johnson as "Omentor." Johnson was, of course, the original host of Inner Sanctum Mysteries which gives the program a bit of campiness. The frequent use of trombone music also seems to suggest that ABC wanted the show to be received as a light-hearted program. A lot of familiar radio actors such as Leon Janney and Lawson Zerbe appeared in the productions. The list of episodes are (surviving episodes underlined):

1. January 1, 1953: "Made to Measure" by William C. Gault
2. January 8, 1953: "The Biography Project" by Dudley Dell
3. January 15, 1953: "Betelgeuse Bridge" by William Tenn
4. January 22, 1953: "The Other Now" by Murray Leinster
5. January 29, 1953: "The Stars Are the Styx" by Theodore Sturgeon
6. February 5, 1953: "Syndrome Johnny" by Katherine MacLean
7. February 12, 1953: "The Unimars Plot"
8. February 19, 1953: "Watchbird" by Robert Sheckley
9. February 26, 1953: "Inside Earth" by Poul Anderson
10. March 5, 1953: "The Moon Is Green" by Fritz Leiber
11. March 12, 1953: "Martians Never Die" by Lucius Daniel
12. March 19, 1953: "The Girls from Earth" by Frank M. Robinson
13. March 26, 1953: "The Old Die Rich" by H. L. Gold
14. April 2, 1953: "Morrow on Mars"
15. April 9, 1953: "The Drop" by John Christopher

Episodes with authors were adapted from stories in Galaxy Magazine; the two without authors appear to be original works.

If you know X Minus One you'll recognize a few episode titles from that series. I'm afraid those episodes that we can compare don't come off very well for Tales of Tomorrow. For example, "the Old Die Rich" was adapted on both shows; the X Minus One version features a protagonist who is forced to travel into the past to help a scientist amass a fortune through bets and investments. When he's brought back to the present and feels hungry he realizes since food can't be brought through time, the scientist intends to starve him to death. That's a great revelation in the radio drama, but it doesn't play as well in the Tales of Tomorrow version. In that series (which is much more faithful to Gold's original Galaxy story) the protagonist comes back from the past, then agrees to journey into the future to perform a heist. Once in the future, he quickly meets people who know all about the scientist's plans and tell him how to defeat the scientist. It's much less interesting than the X Minus One version because the protagonist lacks agency, requiring other characters to explain the villain's plot and what the stakes are; I much prefer the X Minus One version, where the protagonist surmises the stakes on his own.

But that's not to dismiss Tales of Tomorrow entirely -- "The Other Now" is a particularly good drama about a man whose wife dies in a car accident; the grieving husband soon discovers there's an alternate timeline where he was the one who died and becomes obsessed with piercing the void into the timeline where his wife still lives. I also enjoyed "Watchbird" in which mechanical constructs are built to police crimes but cause all kinds of new problems because they don't understand nuances.

You can hear the 7 surviving episodes of Tales of Tomorrow at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.