Details for X Minus One
X Minus One holds the record for the longest running Sci-Fi radio series ever produced. However, as successful as it was, the popularity of radio drama was on the wane as the juggernaut of television inexorably took over the home. Low budgets and increasingly disinterested sponsors made production difficult, but these adversities were somewhat counterbalanced by a direct tie-in with Galaxy magazine, a popular Sci-Fi digest of the period. Most of the stories were culled directly from the pages of Galaxy, or remakes of stories produced for Dimension X (of which X Minus One was originally a revival series). Many of Sci-Fi's most popular authors got mass exposure through this series, and even today X Minus One is still generally considered a cornerstone of radio drama.
| Episode Name | Episode # | Air Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 a Plate | Astronomers on a colonized Mars take on the local casino syndicate to stop the nightly fireworks which are fogging their photographic plates. | ||
| A Gun for Dinosaur | A safari into the Cretaceous to hunt for Tyrannosaurus Rex is endangered by a reckless glory hound, whose ineptitude and arrogance are matched only by his capacity for murder. See also: "Project Mastodon" (X Minus One), and "A Sound of Thunder" (BBC, Bradbury 13, and SF68). | ||
| Almost Human | A scientist builds a robot (named Junior) capable of intelligence and consciousness, but the machine is stolen by a criminal who has other ideas for its uses. Junior, on the other hand, has plans of his own. See also: "Almost Human" (Dimension X and X Minus One), "The Automaton" (Hall of Fantasy), "Beware of Tomorrow" (Mysterious Traveler and Sealed Book) and "The Doom Machine" (Suspense and 2000 Plus). | ||
| A Logic Named Joe | An enterprising computer company releases a PC capable of answering any question put to it. Unfortunately, some of the questions people want answers to are not ones that members of a civilized society should be asking... A version of this story was also produced for Dimension X. | ||
| And the Moon Be Still As Bright | As though wiping out the Martian race with Earthborn diseases weren't enough, humans demonstrate a hostile contempt for what relics and monuments the Martians left behind-until one man with a conscience and a gun decides to stand up for the dead. Part of the Martian Chronicles future history. Other versions of this story aired on Dimension X and Omni Audio Experience. See also: "The Martian Death March" (X Minus One and Dimension X); See the full listing of Martian Chronicles stories under Ray Bradbury on the Famous Authors on Radio page. | ||
| A Pail of Air | In a future where the Earth has moved away from the Sun and lost its atmosphere, a lone family of survivors struggle to survive in the ruins of a dead city. Another version of this story also appeared on Future Tense. See also: "Dwellers in Silence" (X Minus One and Dimension X). | ||
| Appointment in Tomorrow | A look into a dark future controlled by the 'Thinkers', and the computer brain they rely on to do the actual thinking. See also: "Man's Best Friend" (X Minus One), "The Last Rose of Summer" (BBC), and "When the Machines Went Mad" (2000 Plus). | ||
| At the Post | Where do the minds of catatonics go? A horserace bookie finds out when his wife's comatose condition draws him into an alien operation to record all of our collective human knowledge before we destroy ourselves. | ||
| A Wind Is Rising | Two men stationed on an alien world scoured by tornadic winds ignore the counsel of the spidery natives and brave the weather to reach a damaged water main. After all, the wind outside is only blowing at about 150 mph... and rising. | ||
| Bad Medicine | A New York jetbus driver with a simple case of homicidal mania purchases a home computer therapist, unaware that this particular machine has been programmed to treat only Martian psychoses. | ||
| Caretaker | A mission to rescue the survivor of a long lost expedition to a remote planet, discovers him not only alive and well, but engaged in a private war to protect the native humanoids from the slug-like 'Zares'. | ||
| Chain of Command | Radioactive experiments at a top secret government research lab inadvertently produce intelligent mice, who take exception to the traps laid out for them in the hallways... such exception, in fact, that one mouse is willing to take his case to Washington. | ||
| Child's Play | A milquetoast lawyer accidentally receives a package in the mail containing a cloning machine from the future, with which he sets about making a duplicate capable of turning his life around. Another version of this story originally aired on Dimension X. A more recent version was produced by Seeing Ear Theatre. See also: "Marionettes, Inc." (Dimension X and X Minus One) and "Prime Difference" (X Minus One) | ||
| Cold Equations | Classic story of a space pilot on an emergency medical run who finds himself carrying a stowaway. His shuttle, however, does not have enough fuel to land with the extra weight. Versions of this story also appeared on Exploring Tomorrow, Future Tense, Sci-Fi Radio, and the CBC pilot Faster Than Light. | ||
| Colony | A survey expedition on a distant planet must determine whether the world is safe for colonization. It seems ideal, in fact, until one scientist reports that his microscope tried to strangle him. See also: "Drop Dead", "Student Body" (X Minus One), and "Here There be Tygers" (Bradbury 13) | ||
| Courtesy | An expedition to the planet Landro meets with disaster when the serum protecting against a local plague runs out. The natives are immune to the disease, but seem reluctant to explain the source of their natural immunity. NOTE: The same characters appear again in a later episode, "Junkyard". Another version of this story originally aired on Dimension X. | ||
| Death Wish | A mishap aboard a spaceship sends it hurtling out of the Solar System with no hope of rescue, save for an onboard computer which the ship's engineer is convinced hates humans. See also: "The Mapmakers" (X Minus One), "Survival" (BBC) and "Space Wreck" (2000 Plus). | ||
| Double Dare | Two human engineers get caught in a deadly game of one-upmanship on an alien planet. | ||
| Dr Grimshaw's Sanitarium | An Private Eye infiltrates an insane asylum to investigate rumors of strange goings-on, and discovers some bizarre physical transformations. Versions of this story also appeared on Future Tense and Dimension X. | ||
| Drop Dead | A survey team encounters a planet with only a single indigenous species, a bizarre life form which is both utterly harmless and invariably deadly. See also: "Colony", "Student Body" (X Minus One), and "Here There be Tygers" (Bradbury 13). | ||
| Dwellers in Silence | Colonists from Mars return to Earth generations after the Atomic War and discover a few survivors-a family with some very odd peculiarities about them. Part of the Martian Chronicles series. Another version of this story originally appeared on Dimension X. See also: "A Pail of Air" (X Minus One). | ||
| Early Model | A personal forcefield provided for a First Contact Agent backfires when the natives he's meant to survey interpret his invulnerability as demonic influence and decide he must be destroyed. | ||
| End As a World | People all over the world seem to know that the world, as they know it, is about to come to an abrupt end at a certain hour of a certain day... but no one seems particularly concerned. | ||
| Field Study | An unorthodox healer selling placebos seems to be achieving a phenomenal number of cures. A version of this story was produced for Future Tense. | ||
| First Contact | Classic story of the first encounter with an alien race and the mutual distrust that would involve-neither ship wishes to be the first to depart for fear of giving away clues of their origin to a potential adversary. Versions were produced for Dimension X, Exploring Tomorrow, and X Minus One. | ||
| Gray Flannel Armor | A lonely bachelor accepts a free trial offer from a matchmaking service that guarantees success through its strategy of 'spontaneous fate', and a little cheating on the sly. No real sci-fi elements here. A version of this story was later produced for Future Tense (as "The Romance Game"). | ||
| Hallucination Orbit | Stationed alone on Pluto for six years and suffering from isolation psychosis, a man begins to have 'visitors'. See also: "The Eleventh Plague" (CBS Radio Mystery Theater) and "The Number You Have Reached" (Mindwebs). | ||
| Hello, Tomorrow | To escape a world of radioactive dust and intense gamma radiation, the survivors of the 3rd Atomic War burrowed underground and, over the next 2,000 years, rebuilt civilization. But with scant resources, such a civilization has no place for the genetically inferior... or for a geneticist who falls in love with one of them. See also: "The Defenders" (X Minus One) and "The Last Objective" (Dimension X). | ||
| Honeymoon in Hell | Under the dual threat of a nuclear war and a serious drop in male birth, civilization seems doomed. Until a supercomputer concocts a plan to send a man from our side and a woman from theirs on a mission to the Moon to hopefully conceive a son. | ||
| Hostess | A housewife offers lodging to an alien psychologist who finds humans both strange and fascinating, and wishes to observe life in an average home. Her husband, however, is convinced the alien has a more sinister purpose in mind-one which may affect the future of the human race. | ||
| How-2 | A man orders a robotic dog kit in the mail, and instead receives an android-one ready to serve in every capacity and equally ready to reproduce himself a thousand-fold. All his problems vanish - until the government sticks their bean-counting nose into it. | ||
| If You Was a Moklin | The primitive, native Moklins are so enamored of humans that they want to be just like us. But the humans soon discover that imitation can not only be flattering, but deadly... | ||
| Inside Story | A newshound on Mars looking for a big story goes undercover in a colony of nullies-a segregated camp reserved for the violently insane. | ||
| Jaywalker | A pregnant wife stows away on an Earth-Moon liner to be with her husband the pilot, unaware that space travel is fatal both to her and her unborn child. Her husband must choose between their lives and a maneuver which could kill everyone on board. | ||
| Junkyard | On a remote planet littered with alien junk, a survey team find themselves trapped when their engineers suddenly can't remember how to lift the ship. | ||
| Knock | "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door." Aliens who have no concept of natural death have wiped out humanity, literally to the last man and woman, whom they put in a zoo as public curiosities. With Alex Scourby (Walter), Luis Van Rooten (Zan, George), Lori March (Grace), and Fred Collins (announcer). Versions were produced for 2000x, Dimension X, Future Tense, Mindwebs, Seeing Ear Theatre, and X Minus One. | ||
| Lulu | Hell hath no fury like a computer spurned... three spacers are saddled with a lovesick ship's computer who is unwilling to return home unless they indulge her romantic inclinations. | ||
| Lulungomeena | Tensions at a deepspace relay station erupt over a veteran's claim that his homeworld, Lulungomeena, is the most beautiful in the galaxy. To resolve the dispute, they must rely on the arbitration of an alien Hixabrod, the most literal and honest race in the universe. Part of his Dorsai series about a planet that breeds mercenary soldiers. | ||
| Man's Best Friend | In the 28th century, a reclusive man is chosen by a central computer to assassinate the Overlord and take his place. All of society is egging him on, including the Overlord himself - but the computer has ulterior motives. See also: "Appointment in Tomorrow" (X Minus One). | ||
| Marionettes, Inc. | A husband looking to get away from his wife for a vacation purchases a robot duplicate of himself to take his place. Bad idea... Versions of this story were made for Dimension X and an independently produced series called Audion Theater. See also: "Child's Play" (Dimension X and X Minus One) and "Prime Difference" (X Minus One). | ||
| Mars Is Heaven! | The first astronauts to land on Mars discover... Earth: a planet where their long-dead loved ones are waiting for them in a small Midwest town just like home. Part of the Martian Chronicles series. A popular story for radio; Two separate versions were produced for Dimension X. Another version appeared on Escape. See the full listing of Martian Chronicles stories under 'Ray Bradbury' on the Famous Authors on Radio page. | ||
| Martian Sam | The losing LA Dodgers bring in a stringer to bolster their chances for a winning season-a Martian with eight arms. See also: "Open Warfare" (X Minus One) | ||
| Mr Costello, Hero | A star freighter's crew is glad to see the end of their enigmatic passenger, Mr. Costello. During their run through the circuit of Earth's colonies he has managed to either manipulate or destroy everything and everyone around him. But pity the poor isolated colony world where they dump him off... | ||
| Nightfall | Classic tale of an alien civilization whose world circles a multiple star system of six suns, and faces worldwide insanity and social collapse when night descends once every several thousand years. Another version of this story originally aired on Dimension X. | ||
| Nightmare | A man begins to suspect that all machines are on the verge of a unified worldwide revolt to overthrow their human masters. Another version of this story was produced for Dimension X. See also: "Darling Deadly Dolores" (CBS Radio Mystery Theater). | ||
| No Contact | A strange invisible barrier is frustrating Man's attempts to explore the depths of space. Six expeditions have been lost trying to cross it, their fate a mystery since no signal can pass through the barrier. This is the story of the seventh... Two separate versions of this story appeared on Dimension X; another version appeared on a 50s series called The Chase. | ||
| Open Warfare | A champion golfer accepts a challenge to play a round against a robot built and programmed to play a perfect game. See also: "Martian Sam" (X Minus One). | ||
| Perigi's Wonderful Dolls | A dollmaker sells a father an unusual doll which seems capable of responding to people, presumably by recording voices and replaying them in its own voice. Is it just a bit of technical wizardry, or is there something more to this doll than meets the eye? A version of this story also appeared on Dimension X. | ||
| Pictures Don'T Lie | Scientists receive a video signal from an alien spaceship on its way to Earth. Its arrival is imminent, but uninvited - what chance would humanity have if they turned out to be hostile? This story is suspiciously similar to an episode of Escape called "The Invader". Another version appeared on Future Tense. | ||
| Point of Departure | Ancient tablets uncovered in Egypt describe what seem to be blueprints for the construction of a starship drive system. | ||
| Prime Difference | A henpecked husband, fed up with his wife, has an illegal android facsimile of himself made to step into his domestic role so he can have a fling with his secretary. See also: "Marionettes, Inc." (Dimension X and X Minus One) and "Child's Play" (Dimension X and X Minus One). | ||
| Project Mastodon | Entrepreneurs appeal the government to award official state recognition to their own personal republic of Mastodonia, 50,000 years in the past. Sounds like a great opportunity to make a fortune, but the past is not all it's cracked up to be... See also: "A Sound of Thunder" (Bradbury 13, BBC, SF68), and "A Gun for Dinosaur" (X Minus One). | ||
| Project Trojan | An odd episode about the British hiring a Sci-Fi writer to fool the Nazis into thinking they have developed a super Death Ray. Hopefully, the Nazis will divert their scientific resources from the V-2 program to developing an 'impossible' counter-weapon. Best laid plans... An original story by Ernest Kinoy, based on an idea contained in an editorial in Galaxy Magazine by H.L. Gold. | ||
| Protection | When a man receives a guardian alien to watch over him, he doesn't realize just how much trouble he is really in for. A version of this story appeared on Future Tense. | ||
| Protective Mimicry | A galactic treasury agent must trace down the origin of counterfeit credits which are good enough to fool the government's most sophisticated detectors. His search leads him to a world of swamps and primitive natives, a place which could not possibly possess the technology necessary... | ||
| Real Gone | A sculptor becomes rich over his miniature creations, renowned for their astoundingly realistic detail. But a jazz musician friend of his soon discovers there is more than to his masterpieces than mere artistic talent. A version was done for Future Tense under the title "Really Heavy". | ||
| Requiem | Two grounded astronauts are offered one more chance by an aging tycoon who will stop at nothing to achieve his lifetime dream of setting foot on the Moon. Versions of this story also appeared on Beyond Tomorrow and Dimension X. See also: "The Vital Factor" (Dimension X and X Minus One). | ||
| Sam, This Is You | A telephone lineman having trouble with his girlfriend receives a phone call from himself in the future, advising him how to turn his life around. See also: "The Discovery of Morniel Nathaway" (X Minus One), and "Night Call, Collect" (Bradbury 13). | ||
| Saucer of Loneliness | After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, a woman explains to her rescuer how she received a message from a flying saucer, her subsequent imprisonment and interrogation by a government bent on discovering that message, and... her lifelong loneliness. Two separate versions of this story were produced for X Minus One. Other versions were produced for Future Tense, and Mindwebs. It was also produced on the revival series of The Twilight Zone in the mid 80's. | ||
| Sea Legs | A homesick space jockey returns to an overcrowded, authoritarian Earth whose welcome is little warmer than the cold of space. | ||
| Shanghaied | A man is drugged and press-ganged from his own stag party to serve on board a deepspace freighter outward bound on a fifteen-year round trip to Alpha Centauri. Another version of this story originally appeared on Dimension X. | ||
| Shock Troop | A microscopic alien race expands its empire not by conquering worlds, but by waging aggressive campaigns to seize control of individual minds and bodies from within. This is the story for one such war to 'colonize' a human body. | ||
| Skulking Permit | A small colony, cut off from Earth for generations, must prove they are a model of Earth culture when a ship arrives to effect their 'reclamation'. They strive to provide archetypes of Earth society, including a town criminal... Two separate versions of this story were produced for X Minus One. | ||
| Soldier Boy | Earth's colonies are spread too thin over space, making them easy targets for attack by an unknown alien race. When a minor colony planet is threatened, the military can only spare a one-man defense force. See also: "Resident Killer" (CBS Radio Mystery Theater). | ||
| Something for Nothing | A down-on-his-luck nobody wakes up to find a wishing machine from the future in his room, and an army of service techs ready and willing to see to it that his every desire is fulfilled. Of course, there couldn't be any catch to it all... | ||
| Star, Bright | Children are apparently evolving at an alarming rate; what to do when your six-year old daughter demonstrates an IQ of over 400, and starts to experiment with previously unknown physical dimensions? See also: "Absalom" (Mindwebs), "Star Bright" (X Minus One) and "A Child Is Crying" (Mindwebs) | ||
| Student Body | A colony world has problems with alien 'mice', which seem to have the ability to eat virtually anything and use it as raw material to rapidly evolve beyond any measure employed against them. See also: "Colony", "Drop Dead" (X Minus One), and "Here There be Tygers" (Bradbury 13) | ||
| Surface Tension | The world is headed for unavoidable destruction, so a brilliant scientist conceives a microscopic civilization in a drop of water; one day, however, his 'children' must begin to wonder what lies beyond the surface of their cosmos. | ||
| Target One | In a desperate attempt to avert nuclear Armageddon, a man travels back in time to kill the one man responsible for bringing the world to the brink - Albert Einstein. | ||
| The Castaways | Nuclear testing on a remote Pacific island goes awry when the natives-rather than be relocated-threaten to commit mass suicide to put a curse on the project. Two separate versions of this story were produced for X Minus One. Also, an original production appeared on Dimension X. | ||
| The Category Inventor | In the future, staying competitive in the super-automated, highly specialized job market can be tough-unless you can invent a profession nobody has ever thought of before. | ||
| The Cave of Night | An astronaut trapped in orbit inspires a worldwide rescue effort-but does he need it? | ||
| The C-Chute | Six human passengers are taken captive at the beginning of the 2nd Interstellar War when their merchant spaceship Starfire is boarded and hijacked by enemy aliens. | ||
| The Coffin Cure | A research company discovers an answer to Mankind's oldest and greatest dream-a cure for the common cold. But as the old saying goes, the cure is often worse than the disease. | ||
| The Defenders | Mankind has retreated underground to escape the horrors of a surface decimated by World War Three, leaving the machines to continue the fighting. Another version of this story appeared on Future Tense. See also: "Hello, Tomorrow" (X Minus One and Dimension X) and "The Last Objective" (Dimension X). | ||
| The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway | A worthless artist receives a visitor from the future who tells him his art will come to be known as the work of a genius. A version was produced for Future Tense. See also: "Sam, This is You" (X Minus One). | ||
| The Embassy | A detective agency is hired by a crackpot who wants them to investigate and expose a nest of Martians sent to prepare the way for an invasion of Earth. Another version of this story originally aired on Dimension X. | ||
| The Girls From Earth | Two crooks con the all-male colony on Mars into paying for a shipment of beautiful women from home at a hundred dollars a head, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. | ||
| The Green Hills of Earth | Classic story of a space engineer who suffers a tragic accident and ends up tramping about the Solar System singing about the life of spacers and dreaming of returning to Earth once more before he dies. Versions of this story appeared on Dimension X and CBS Radio Workshop; also a TV version was produced for a 50's show called "Out There". | ||
| The Haunted Corpse | A scientist who resents the 'protection' of the military in his secret work to transfer minds from one body to another, hatches a private plan to outwit his benefactors. | ||
| The Iron Chancellor | A robot created to make the lives of the family which purchased it safer and healthier undertakes its role with fanatical devotion. [NOTE: This episode is NOT from the original X Minus One series. Rather, it was an attempt to revive the series, independently produced in 1973. I have included it here only because many program logs include it as belonging to the series.] See also: "With Folded Hands" (Dimension X) | ||
| The Last Martian | A reporter for a big city newspaper overhears a very confused young man in a bar confess that he is not who he appears to be, but is in fact the last of the race of Mars, somehow transported to Earth into a human body. Utter nonsense, of course. | ||
| The Lifeboat Mutiny | Two men planning an expedition across the sea of an alien planet buy a lifeboat from a junk dealer, unaware that said boat is a relic of an ancient alien war. The boat's computer is programmed to protect its occupants at all costs, which is fine if you happen to be a Drome instead of a human being. | ||
| The Light | The first astronauts to reach the Moon discover the impossible - footprints. | ||
| The Lights on Precipice Peak | Two men determine to find the cause of strange glowing lights emanating from atop a high Wyoming mountain. | ||
| The Man in the Moon | The Federal Missing Persons Bureau receives a desperate radio message from a crank who claims to be calling from the Moon (unlikely in 1950). Of course the call is dismissed, until a minor functionary begins to suspect that the call is related to a strange series of disappearances over the past several years. Versions of this story were produced for Dimension X and Future Tense. | ||
| The Mapmakers | A deepspace survey ship collides with a meteor during a jump through hyperspace, becoming hopelessly lost. Their navigation system destroyed, they have no way of even determining their own location. Then a crewman blinded in the accident begins to undergo a strange transformation... See also: "Death Wish" (X Minus One), "A Fall of Moondust" (BBC or Nightfall), "Survival" (BBC) and "Space Wreck" (2000 Plus) | ||
| The Martian Death March | On a Mars conquered by Earthmen, the few remaining spider-like Martians escape from their reservation and embark on a desperate trek across the deserts to their mountain homelands, lead by a human religious fanatic. X Minus One produced two separate versions of this story. Also, versions were produced for Dimension X and Future Tense. See also: "And the Moon be Still as Bright" (X Minus One, Omni Audio Experience and Dimension X) | ||
| The Merchant of Venus | Overcrowding on Earth means colonizing Venus, a steaming, putrid hellhole of jungles and swamps. So how come nobody wants to go there? See also: "The Space Merchants" (CBS Radio Workshop) | ||
| The Moon Is Green | For years following a nuclear holocaust, a husband bullies his wife to never open the windows of their shelter, for fear of the terrible mutants who live outside. But temptation proves a little too much for her. An earlier version of this story appeared on Tales of Tomorrow. | ||
| The Native Problem | An explorer marooned on a distant planet is ecstatic to witness a ship descending, until he discovers it is an antiquated generation ship filled with an archaic crew who mistake him for a hostile native. | ||
| The Old Die Rich | An unusual number of elderly turn up dead with money stuffed in their pockets, yet having died of starvation. The investigation leads to an unscrupulous woman who is using a time machine to send people back to make fortunes for her. Versions of this story appeared on Tales of Tomorrow and Future Tense. | ||
| The Outer Limit | A test pilot on an experimental high altitude aircraft with only ten minutes worth of fuel disappears from radar for ten hours, yet returns safely. Of course, it is impossible... A very popular story with radio producers. Versions also appeared on Escape, Dimension X, Beyond Tomorrow, and two versions for Suspense. | ||
| The Parade | An ad agency is hired by a man insisting he is from Mars to promote an upcoming parade marking the arrival of Martians on Earth. Of course, he must be lying, or simply crazy... As well as their own version, X Minus One also re-broadcast the version originally produced for Dimension X. Also a version was produced for Future Tense. | ||
| The Reluctant Heroes | Team members of a remote base on the Moon serve long tours of duty, and come into conflict over who is next in line to return to Earth. | ||
| There Will Come Soft Rains | An automated house faithfully continues its daily routines after its occupants-and the rest of humanity-have long gone. The BBC produced 4 versions of this story. Another version appeared on Dimension X. | ||
| The Roads Must Roll | In the future the country depends on an electro-hydraulic road system which acts as a conveyor belt to transport people and cargo. The system works well, until the engineer's union which maintains the roads stages a strike as a bid to gain power. Another version of this story originally appeared on Dimension X. | ||
| The Scapegoat | Rescuing an old man from an apparent mugging is not necessarily a good idea - especially if the 'victim' happens to be an alien exiled from his own planet for what soon become obvious reasons. | ||
| The Sense of Wonder | The inhabitants of a generation starship have long ago forgotten their origins and purpose. To them, 'the Ship is All', until one low caste Attendant questions the pseudo-religion which has grown up around the archaic manuals left by the vessel's long dead crew. See also: "Universe" (X Minus One and Dimension X). | ||
| The Seventh Order | A robot shows up at a college professor's doorstep to announce he has come to prepare the way for an alien invasion. He is armed with enough personal firepower to take on anything we can send against him. Or is he? | ||
| The Seventh Victim | In a future which regulates the instinct for violence by staging government-subsidized hunts-in effect making a social institution of murder-there is no place for human compassion. Or is there? A version was produced for Future Tense. This story was also made into a movie called "The Tenth Victim". | ||
| The Snowball Effect | A sociologist seeking to prove his equations of exponential growth dynamics tests his methods out on a ladies sewing club, with more than spectacular results. | ||
| The Stars Are the Styx | At a way station for starbound colonists, a coordinator whose responsibility is to match suitable couples for the long journey, falls in love with one of the prospects himself. Another version of this story originally aired on Tales of Tomorrow. | ||
| The Trap | Two drunken hunters in the woods try out a new trap and end up becoming embroiled in an alien love triangle. | ||
| The Veldt | A couple purchase a holo-theatre to keep their son and daughter amused, but the recreation of the sweltering African savannah the children concoct is anything but amusing... See also: "The House on Chimney Pot Lane" (CBS Radio Mystery Theater). One of Bradbury's most popular stories. Versions appeared on BBC, Bradbury 13, CBC Playhouse, Dimension X, Mindwebs, and X Minus One | ||
| The Vital Factor | Wayne Crowder, the ruthless head of Crowder Industries, assumes the Herculean task of being the first man in history to achieve space travel. Building the ship proves easy, but to propel it at sufficient speed seems impossible, until one man shows up with an answer... and a heavy price for achieving the stars. Another version of this story originally appeared on Dimension X. Yet another was produced for television on the program Tales of Tomorrow, with Lee J. Cobb as Crowder. See also: "Requiem" (Dimension X and X Minus One). | ||
| Time and Time Again | A soldier dying on a battlefield of the future suddenly finds himself transported back to his own childhood. Another version of this story also appeared on Dimension X. See also: "Flashback" (Exploring Tomorrow). | ||
| To the Future | A couple escape the totalitarian, war-torn world of 2155 for the carefree gaiety of 20th century Acapulco. Unfortunately, however, the government of the future considers them essential for the war effort and cannot allow them to escape. Inevitably, the Seekers are sent to find them... A version of this story under the same title originally aired on Dimension X, and also as "The Fox in the Forest" on Bradbury 13. | ||
| Tsylana | In a future society which prizes order and conformity above all else, a statistician is horrified to uncover an act of petty theft. Concerned for the welfare of civilization, he determines to become a petty thief himself in order to catch the subversive sociopath. But to do so requires the aid of a very unorthodox psychoanalyst, who harbors some very serious ulterior motives of his own. | ||
| Tunnel Under the World | Every day seems to be a repeat of June 15, but only one man in the entire city is aware of the anomaly. Two separate versions of this story were produced for X Minus One. Another version appeared on Future Tense, and more recently on the BBC. | ||
| Universe | Humanity's descendants aboard a space Ark are divided into two factions - the lower decks occupied by humans, and the upper by mutants. One man dares probe the upper levels and his quest leads him to question not only his society's prejudices, but the ultimate truth of what might lie beyond the Ship. Another version of this story originally appeared on Dimension X. See also: "The Sense of Wonder" (X Minus One). | ||
| Venus Is a Man's World | A gender schism among interplanetary pioneers aboard a colony ship to Venus. A version of this story was produced for Future Tense. | ||
| Volpla | A scientist creates a race of intelligent flying creatures that soon get out of hand. | ||
| Wherever You May Be | A new twist on the traveling salesman/farmer's daughter shtick; this time the country girl has an ace up her sleeve... witchcraft. | ||
| Zero Hour | Suddenly, children from all over the country are playing a new game called Invasion, with Zero Hour set for 5:00 PM, today. How charming. How droll. Or is it really just a game? Versions of this story also appeared on Future Tense, Adventure Theater, Suspense (3 versions), Dimension X, The Mysterious Traveler, and Escape. |