Radio Recap: Dimension X

"Adventures in time and space told in future tense! Dimension X!"

There are some shows so well-known I haven't brought them up in my Radio Recap series before, but I think it's time I highlighted a few of them just so I can share my opinions about the shows. Let's talk Dimension X! I've blogged about the other contemporaneous science fiction radio shows of the time: Beyond Tomorrow, Tales of Tomorrow, Think, and 2000 Plus. Now, let's chat about what's arguably the best radio science fiction series!

Tomorrow I'll be looking at X Minus One so I won't get too deeply into that series except to acknowledge that yes, the majority of Dimension X episodes were also dramatized on X Minus One, but the latter program had a shorter running time and would often truncate the Dimension X scripts, even making substantial changes to the climax of "the Veldt," for instance!

Unlike X Minus One, Dimension X (April 1950-September 1951) was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties. Despite being an NBC series it had unique music that wasn't simply recycled from their library. And it featured a majority of programs that were adapted from recent science fiction publications, sprinkling in a mix of original stories written by NBC staffers (notably Ernest Kinoy).

In 2016 I blogged about Ray Bradbury's radio adaptations for Halloween, including "Kaleidoscope," "the Martian Chronicles," "Marionettes, Inc.," "the Veldt," "There Will Come Soft Rains," "Mars Is Heaven!," "Zero Hour," "And the Moon Be Still as Bright." They also adapted his stories "To the Future" and "Dwellers in Silence" and at that time, Bradbury was one of the biggest and best-known authors of science fiction.

Other famous authors on Dimension X who received great adaptations were Kurt Vonnegut ("the Barnhouse Effect"), Jack Williamson ("With Folded Hands"), Robert Bloch ("Almost Human"), Robert A. Heinlein ("the Green Hills of Earth" and "Requiem"), Murray Leinster ("A Logic Named Joe"), Donald Wollheim ("The Embassy"), H. Beam Piper ("Time and Time Again").

Of the original scripts presented on Dimension X I most enjoyed "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" (I recently blogged about it here); the space invasion story "No Contact'; the bittersweet "Martian Death March"; and the invasion-in-plain-sight story "The Parade."

Dimension X had a bit of humour in the shows I've listed above ("A Logic Named Joe" is a fairly wry bit of comedy) but not as much as X Minus One would. It was an early entry in the effort to prove adult audiences would listen to science fiction drama so Dimension X took itself fairly seriously; I think that paid off for the series - it still sounds good to this day.

Here's the Old Time Radio Researchers collection of Dimension X on YouTube.

Tomorrow: I fire off X Minus One.

Halloween Week, Day 2: "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls"

The Dimension X episode "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" feels like a long-lost Ray Bradbury story - a story in which children are kind of terrible but also a bit slow to realize when something horrible is trying to pit them against their parents.

The story was written by George Lefferts as an original tale for Dimension X. It concerns the toymaker Perigi, who is all to eager to give one of his toy dolls to a little girl out shopping with her mother - particularly because the girl's father is an official in the Pentagon. The girl's doll, Toto, is quite a chatterbox, always talking... including some disturbing speech about dolls ruling over humanity.

"Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" aired on Dimension X on August 4, 1950. You can download the episode from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "We ain't very pretty, are we? Well, nobody is - once they've been dead!"

OTR Halloween Day 7: Dimension X

Dimension X was one of the first great radio science fiction series and the first be truly dedicated to courting an adult audience (or at least, an adult pulp magazine reading audience). Many of the greats from science fiction (and also L. Ron Hubbard) had their stories presented on Dimension X between April, 1950 and September, 1951. It was followed by X Minus One, of which more shall be written later.

Robert Bloch was a great pulp writer in his day but very little of his work was presented on radio. It was his association with television's AlFred Hitchcock - and especially a little film called Psycho - that really introduced him to the layman. But an early episode of Dimension X, "Almost Human" from May 13, 1950 demonstrates that his work suited radio.

"Almost Human" concerns a newly-built robot who is very adaptable and eager to learn. A criminal sees in this the opportunity to mold a great henchman for himself. You can hear this episode at the Internet Archive.

Bradbury 31, Day 26: "Zero Hour"

As with yesterday's entry, we have a story in which adults are betrayed by their own brood. Ray Bradbury's "Zero Hour" was printed first in 1947 at the dawn of the Cold War and I can only imagine it must have been a reflection of the anxieties of the time. In this story, Martian invaders gather intelligence and aid in their invasion from Earth children; the children's scheming is believed to be mere playing by their unconcerned parents until the titular Zero Hour arrives.

It's been adapted to radio a few times - on Dimension X in 1950 as a double-feature with "There Will Come Soft Rains" (listen to it at archive.org here), on Escape in 1953 (listen to it at archive.org here) and on Suspense in 1955 (listen to it at archive.org here). They're all very good, but I feel the Dimension X version hits the climax with the most force.

In 1953, Al Feldstein and Jack Kamen adapted the tale for EC Comics and did a pretty great job. In 1992 it was adapted for television's Ray Bradbury Theater, but I can't really recommend this version. The acting is not only inferior compared to the radio versions, it's just not very good, full stop. The terrifying climax is particularly underwhelming, considering the potency of the radio adaptations.

More horror from Bradbury tomorrow!

Bradbury 31, Day 19: "There Will Come Soft Rains"

Yet again, I'm looking back on a Ray Bradbury short story which is best-known for comprising part of The Martian Chronicles. "There Will Come Soft Rains" debuted on its own in 1950 just ahead of the book itself. It is a very well-regarded Bradbury tale; I have one friend who a great fan of science fiction throughout the 20th century and while he's not much of a Bradbury fan, he believes this story is among sci-fi's finest.

In 1950 the radio show Dimension X adapted the story as a double feature alongside Bradbury's "Zero Hour" - a rather different tale of Mars. The computer voice in this version has a staccato rhythm which really sticks in the memory ("Today is October 6, 2026..."). You can listen to the show at archive.org here.

Al Feldstein and Wally Wood adapted it to EC comics in 1953 and did a fine job. Comic book versions also include the 1992 Topps version by Lebbeus Woods (which was published side-by-side with a reprint of the Feldstein/Wood version) and as part of Dennis Calero's The Martian Chronicles graphic novel. It is also one of the rare Bradbury tales to be animated; the animated version was made in 1984 by a Soviet animation studio and it is, if anything, more grim than Bradbury's text. In all, "There Will Come Soft Rains" is a fine representation of nuclear anxiety, the fear of the cataclysmic effects nuclear war would have on civilian populations. "Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly; and spring herself as she woke at dawn would scarcely know that we were gone - that we were gone - that we were gone - that we were gone..."

Another Ray Bradbury tale tomorrow!

Bradbury 31, Day 18: "And the Moon Be Still As Bright"

Once again, I'm looking a story which was contained within The Martian Chronicles. "And the Moon Be Still As Bright" was likewise a 1948 short story and has been adapted in other version of The Martian Chronicles such as the TV movie and the Dennis Calero graphic novel.

This, too, was adapted for radio's Dimension X in 1950 (you can listen to it at archive.org here). It's a somber tale of an expedition to Mars in which it is found the Martians were all wiped out by chicken pox (H. G. Wells might have warned them!). One member of the expedition is outraged by this as he can foresee how human culture will supplant all which remains of Mars; he vows to become a Martian himself and wage a one-man war against humanity.

In 1990, The Ray Bradbury Theater made a fine adaptation for television. What comes through in all of these versions is the sadness at watching a culture diminish and die, left as little more than a memory as a stronger culture takes its place. And yet, Earth's own presence on Mars within The Martian Chronicles proves fleeting. Something to think about before we grow too pleased at the civilization we ourselves have built.

There will be another Ray Bradbury story tomorrow!

Bradbury 31, Day 17: "Mars Is Heaven!"

Ah, here we go. "Mars Is Heaven!" is one my personal favourite Ray Bradbury stories. Although it was first printed as a short story in 1948, it's best known for appearing as a chapter of The Martian Chronicles and has also been adapted there, both in the TV movie and the Dennis Calero comic book version.

1950 was a hot year for Bradbury; The Martian Chronicles became renowned, granting him prestige he'd previously lacked. Radio loved Bradbury and they adapted "Mars Is Heaven!" twice that year on different network programs: Escape (listen to it at archive.org here) and Dimension X (at archive.org here). The two versions are rather different, with Escape being very faithful. Both tell the story of a human expedition to Mars which discovers a homey U.S. town (from Illinois because it's Bradbury) transplanted to Mars and all the beloved dead ones of the crew residing there. In the climax, the ship's captain realizes the "loved ones" are actually Martians in human form.

Although I normally like adaptations to be as close to the original text as possible, the Dimension X adaptation adds something which I rather like; a new character is added to the crew - a physician who had survived the Dachau concentration camp. A lonely and traumatized man who can no longer recall his family, he finds no one on Mars waiting for him amongst the "dead" - and thus he comes to the realization of what the people truly are.

In other adaptations, such as the 1953 EC comic by Al Feldstein & Wally Wood, the captain comes to the conclusion of the Martians' identity on his own, which renders it something of a solliloquy. The revelation of the Martians' identity is followed by a macabre scene in which the Martians bury the dead humans, which EC and the Escape version kept.

However, the 1989 Ray Bradbury Theater version ends at the moment of the captain realizing what the Martians are. That program had a distinct problem with depicting action - so many episodes would climax at the very moment of the twist, rather than playing any of it out (namely, the death of the captain).

Show up tomorrow for another look at Ray Bradbury!

Bradbury 31, Day 13: "Marionettes, Inc."

"Marionettes, Inc." has boasted a number of adaptation since its debut in 1949. The concept of the series - a company which manufactures lifelike robots - was one Bradbury revisited in a few other tales, most notably "Punishment Without Crime." In this introductory tale, a man who has tired of his wife buys a robot double so he won't have to make time for her any longer. The problem is, the doubles have ambitions of their own.

In 1951, Dimension X adapted the story to radio. Although subsequent adaptations would be very close to Bradbury's text, this version is rather different as it continues past the point of the short story's climax and gets into the "master plan" of Marionettes, Inc. It's an interesting expansion but makes it a little more typical of 50s sci-fi than what Bradbury originally wrote; Bradbury imagined machines who felt as humans do; the radio version imagines machines as conquerors. You can listen to the version for yourself here.

In 1958 Alfred Hitchcock Presents brought the story to televion as "Design for Loving." It was an unusual choice for that program as Hitchcock preferred stories of mystery and crime, not sci-fi. And yet, for all his credentials Bradbury had significant trouble selling his sci-fi stories to The Twilight Zone (even though his philosophies and Rod Serling's seem very similar to me) so kudos to Hitch's staff for knowing a good story when they heard it, regardless of genre.

In 1985 another television version appeared via The Ray Bradbury Theater. It's a pretty good adaptation, with Leslie Nielsen as the head of Marionettes, Inc. The Ray Bradbury Theater did a great job of casting fine Canadian actors, even amongst those who'd spent most of their careers down south.

Lastly, there's a comic book adaptation from 1992 courtesy of Topps, who brought in Wally Wood's one-time assistant Ralph Reese to pencil it. Reese was an inspired choice, considering how many Bradbury tales Wood drew in the 1950s and he certainly brought a Woodish charm to the adaptation.

Another visit from Bradbury tomorrow!

Bradbury 31, Day 9: "The Veldt"

Ray Bradbury has a reputation for being warm and nostalgic about childhood for his stories about children's innocence and sense of wonder. However, he has about as many stories about how nasty children are - their wickedness, capriciousness and remorseless behaviour, how easily they can betray friends and families on a whim, how hostile they can be to strangers. His 1950 short story "The Veldt" is one of his most notorious "wicked children" tales. It tells of a futuristic home in which the children's nursery can fashion anything they desire; what the children desire most is to fashion an African veldt with wild lions, much to their parents' concern.

The year after first publication, "The Veldt" appeared on the radio program Dimension X in a very faithful and terrifying adaptation; you can listen to it on archive.org here. Four years later it was adapted on Dimension X's successor program X Minus One with the same script, only with a new framing sequence. This framing sequence is an utter betrayal of Bradbury's story, a prime example of the censorship which he himself so detested; instead of the tale ending with the parents devoured by lions while the children watch with no concern, this is how the tale ends in the words of the family's psychiatrist:

"There were no lions, of course, not in a physical sense. Lydia and George were devoured, however, almost as surely as if there had been lions. Their personalities were devoured by the mechanistic marvels which had usurped their role as parents. All four members of the family are under intensive therapy now and are doing as well as can be expected."

There is something in there which Bradbury would have liked - the idea the playroom had "usurped" their roles. Bradbury was very much against the idea of machines taking away tasks and desires which make up our human experience. However, suggesting the children were not murderous and that their family troubles can be solved through psychiatry is not a Bradbury concept. It is a very 1950s concept and one can see the culture of 1955 being very pro-family, pro-parental authority and even pro-psychiatry. To this day, there is the idea that psychiatry could cure all our ills; that doesn't interest Bradbury - remorseless, unexplainable evil was more fascinating to him as an author. You can hear the betrayal for yourself at archive.org here.

Later adaptations of "The Veldt" restored the original gory details; these include the 1969 motion picture The Illustrated Man, which does not have a stellar reputation. The individual stories adapted in the film work well enough, I think, it's only as a movie that the picture falters (but such is the case with so many portmanteau anthology films). It was also adapted faithfully for the radio on Bradbury 13 in 1984; you can listen to it at Youtube here. It also figured in a 1989 episode of TV's The Ray Bradbury Theater; the acting is a little lacking, but the story holds up.

Finally, a very faithful adaptation appeared in a 1992 comic from Topps, featuring some spectacular work by artist Tim Truman (best known for his work on Grimjack). None of the salient details are lost on Truman - along with the Dimension X adaptation, it is one of the best versions of "The Veldt."

Tomorrow: Bradbury! Bradbury! Bradbury!

Bradbury 31, Day 7: The Martian Chronicles

Published in 1950, The Martian Chronicles was the first of several books by Ray Bradbury where he compiled various short stories of his into a novel, fashioning bridging material between chapters, revising various details and creating new chapters entirely. It welded together many of the short stories he had written about Mars through the 1940s, developing from it an engaging tale of how humanity would colonize Mars. It was (and is) a celebrated novel with a radio adaptation appearing the same year on Dimension X. Naturally they had to condense many of the details to fit a half-hour, but some of the best moments of the book can be found there; listen to it yourself at archive.org by clicking here.

In 1980 The Martian Chronicles became a made-for-TV movie starring Rock Hudson, likely getting off the ground because of the fascination with science fiction following the success of Star Wars in 1977. Bradbury didn't think too highly of this adaptation but I found it serviceable; it's probably the only attempt at telling the whole book through live action media I'll see in my lifetime. Anyway, the Martian costumes looked unique.

In 2011, Ray Bradbury authorized a full-colour full-length comic book adaptation by artist Dennis Calero. It omitted various tales which had been dropped from The Martian Chronicles reprints over the decades (such as "Usher II") but otherwise, everything is there; and yet, it's not entirely satisfying. Calero is capable of fine work, but the entire book feels rushed. The colors lack subtlety and instead make Calero's lines look simple and half-finished, as though it were produced in MS Paint. It tells the story accurately - that's the best thing I can say about it. If only the cover matched the interior!

I'll visit more stories from The Martian Chronicles as the month continues. There will be more Ray Bradbury tomorrow!

Bradbury 31, Day 1: Kaleidoscope

Each year I like to celebrate the month of October with posts which are somewhat Halloween-themed. This year I've chosen to celebrate the career of Ray Bradbury, my favourite author to dabble in weird fiction - although he dabbled in virtually every other genre you care to name. Each day I'll bring up one of his short stories and examine the many times that story has been adapted.

"Kaleidoscope" originated as a short story in 1949. It tells of a rocket being lost in space and its former occupants spilled out, each carried in a different direction. Using the radios in their spacesuits, the men speak to each other as they prepare to meet their deaths.

"Kaleidoscope" was a popular adaptation on radio, appearing on a 1951 episode of Dimension X (listen at archive.org by clicking here), a very good 1955 Suspense episode where the actors recorded their lines while confined in separate booths to better capture the isolation of their characters (listen at archive.org by clicking here), and a 1984 broadcast of Bradbury 13 (listen at youtube by clicking here).

The first comic book adaptation of "Kaleidoscope" is a rather notorious comic book story called "Home to Stay" which Al Feldstein wrote and Wally Wood drew for EC Comics' Weird Fantasy #13 (1952). Although it's not really an adaptation of the story, the climax of the tale is an utter rip-off of Bradbury's tale. Subsequently, Bradbury contacted EC and, as Mark Evanier describes here:

He noted that the adaptation was well-done and that the two stories had been rather cleverly intertwined, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak. Suing might cost a lot, he knew, and there probably wasn't much money to be collected…so he tried another approach. He wrote Gaines a letter that said, in essence, "You seem to have neglected to pay me for the adaptation of my work." Gaines sent a modest check, a brief correspondence ensued and EC wound up adapting many of Ray's stories on an official basis.

"Home to Stay" is now officially acknowledged as a Bradbury tale, appearing alongside other Bradbury comic book adaptations as collected by Topps Comics in the 1990s. Speaking of which, in 1994 Topps issued a brand-new adaptation in the title Ray Bradbury Comics: Martian Chronicles, even though the tale has nothing to do with his Martian stories. "Kaleidoscope" was adapted by Howard Simpson, using big panels and splashes, evidently to emphasize the vastness of space in which the astronauts had been lost. In a new introduction Bradbury dedicated the tale to the Challenger astronauts.

More Bradbury tomorrow!

31 Days of Suspense: "Kaleidoscope"

With 10 days of October remaining, I'm now counting down my top ten favourite episodes of Suspense! Let's visit #10!

Ray Bradbury was still a young author when he began writing for Suspense; the series not only adapted several of his popular stories for radio, but some of his stories appeared on Suspense before turning up in print (ie "Riabouchinska" & "The Screaming Woman")! Although Bradbury was adept at penning mysteries and thrillers, he's best remembered as a science fiction author. My tenth-favourite episode of Suspense is the July 12, 1955 adaptation of Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope," the story of a smashed-up rocket and its crew who are now drifting in space with almost no hope for survival. William Conrad is the show's featured player. You may download the episode from archive.org here.

Although Bradbury had a pretty good relationship with the producers of Suspense (especially with William Spier), "Kaleidoscope" was first heard on the radio on September 15, 1951 as an episode of Dimension X. If you like, you can hear their adaptation from archive.org here.

Tomorrow: "You're not hunting that cat anymore. That cat's hunting you."

Old-Time Radio Theme Month, Day 28: "Mars is Heaven"

I think Ray Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven" is one of his best short stories, it's a terrific thriller. However, this is a rare case where the adaptation outdoes the original, in my opinion; when the tale was adapted to Dimension X on January 7, 1951. This version includes an extra character, a doctor who was in Dachau as a child and has tried to bury his past. When the rest of the explorers on Mars discover their deceased loved ones now live on the red planet, the doctor is the one man who has no one to meet him.

You can download a copy of this radio show from archive.org here.