Science Fiction anthology · NBC
X Minus One
April 22, 1955 – January 27, 1973 · 127 broadcasts
"Countdown for blastoff... X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one... Fire!" With that countdown and a promise of "transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space," NBC's X Minus One (1955-1958) became what many consider the finest science-fiction series in all of American radio. Each half hour adapted a published short story into tight, atmospheric drama, drawing on the leading SF magazines of the day -- first Astounding Science Fiction, then Galaxy. It was a revival of NBC's earlier Dimension X, and the first fifteen episodes literally reused Dimension X scripts before the show found its own voice. That voice belonged largely to staff writers Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, who turned prose by the genre's golden-age giants -- Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick -- into radio. The result is a roll call of classics: "Mars Is Heaven," "Nightfall," "The Green Hills of Earth," "Tunnel Under the World." Shuffled constantly through the schedule, it never built a big audience in its own time, yet its reputation only grew. A lone 1973 revival couldn't bring it back, but its scripts lived on -- and its episodes were among the very first old-time-radio podcasts.
Collection status:
124 of 127 held (98% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1955
A Mars expedition arrives to find every Martian wiped out by chickenpox carried unknowingly on earlier Earth missions, and one haunted crew member refuses to let his companions erase what little the civilization left behind.
There is a barrier of some kind that the Earth ships keep crashing into...or so they think.
Martians commission an Earth advertising agency to choreograph a spectacular parade announcing their imminent arrival on the planet.
When an Earth expedition touches down on Mars, the crew is bewildered to find the landscape dotted with houses that look exactly like an American small town circa 1920 -- from a Ray Bradbury story.
Aboard a colossal generation ship, descendants of the original crew have lived so long in the metal corridors that they believe the vessel itself is the entire universe and have forgotten any mission -- from a Robert Heinlein story.
The planet's last surviving man sits alone behind a closed door -- and something knocks -- from the celebrated two-sentence premise by Fredric Brown.
A Federal Missing Persons broadcast picks up a distress signal whose origin leaves authorities flat-out disbelieving -- because nobody has ever been to the Moon.
A Cabinet official's daughter stumbles upon a Washington craftsman whose handmade dolls can talk.
The legend of Rhysling, the sightless wandering troubadour of the spaceways whose songs outlast every voyage, takes shape across the cargo bays and airlocks he called home -- from Robert Heinlein.
A detective piece together what happened at a remote sanitarium, his account framed by the strange evidence hidden inside an ordinary fountain pen -- from Fletcher Pratt.
A computer operator grows alarmed when the data reveals that accident rates are climbing at a pace that cannot be coincidence -- from Stephen Vincent Benet.
A nervous man walks into a detective agency insisting that Martians have already infiltrated Earth and demanding that someone go find them -- from Donald Wollheim.
In a house of tomorrow, two children have programmed their smart nursery walls to display nothing but an African veldt -- complete with lions that feel disturbingly real -- from Ray Bradbury.
A career criminal commandeers an android to mold it into the perfect criminal accomplice, only to discover that the machine is uncomfortably close to human -- from Robert Bloch.
On the planet Landro, stranded explorers must persuade the native population to hand over a life-saving serum they left behind in their rush to launch -- from Clifford D. Simak.
A young woman who stows away on an emergency supply ship bound for a distant colony learns in desperate terms exactly what it means when there is no margin left in the fuel calculation -- from Tom Godwin.
On the night before his wedding, a man who happens to own an entire interstellar fleet wakes up to find himself press-ganged aboard one of his own starships.
A young man walks beside a dwindling column of spider-shaped Martians as they make their final journey from Earth-imposed reservations back to the mountains that were always theirs.
Military planners trying to clear a Pacific island for a nuclear test run into islanders who flatly refuse to leave, insisting their ancestors arrived by the mythic bird canoe and cannot be moved.
Mars explorers discover every native wiped out by an Earthly disease introduced by earlier expeditions, and one anguished crew member wages a solitary campaign to preserve what survives of the lost civilization -- from Ray Bradbury.
Two starships -- one human, one alien -- rendezvous in an uncharted galaxy and face an impasse: each side is desperate to know where the other came from, and equally desperate that the other not find out -- from Murray Leinster.
A mix-up in the mail delivers a do-it-yourself kit from the far future -- one designed to assemble a full human being -- from William Tenn.
An aging millionaire, turned down by every space agency, sets out by any means necessary to fulfill the only wish that his fortune cannot simply buy -- dying on the Moon -- from Robert Heinlein.
After atomic warfare drives what is left of humanity underground, life continues in sealed tunnels where scientific breeding has replaced every traditional form of courtship.
Survivors returning to a radioactively ravaged Earth find the ruins occupied by one elderly scientist living in seeming tranquility with a suspiciously youthful family -- from Ray Bradbury.
A test rocket plane disappears from radar for ten hours -- impossible, given it carried only ten minutes of fuel -- in a baffling case from author Graham Dorr.
Two linked Ray Bradbury tales -- one tracing an automated home going through its routines after its family perished in atomic war, the other following children staging a worldwide game called Invasion that adults find charming until it is too late.
A driven industrialist will sacrifice anything -- and anyone -- to be the man who conquers space -- from Nelson Bond.
On a world where darkness comes only once every twenty-five centuries, scientists race to prepare for the approaching night while the civilization around them has no memory of the last time the stars came out -- from Isaac Asimov.
A couple touring Mexico are approached by a stranger who calmly informs them that he has traveled back from the future -- from Ray Bradbury.
Husbands looking to enjoy evenings out alone discover they can order lifelike android replicas to stand in for them at home -- with consequences that spiral well beyond the advertising copy -- from Ray Bradbury.
Home information terminals -- ancestors of the internet -- begin answering every human question without restriction, and civilization has to decide whether that much knowledge is a gift or a catastrophe -- from Murray Leinster.
1956
In a future where vast conveyor belts carry both people and freight across the country, the workers who keep them running hold a power they may not be afraid to use -- from Robert Heinlein.
A soldier wounded in a twenty-first-century battle snaps back into his thirteen-year-old body in 1945, carrying both the memories of his future life and the foreknowledge of everything that will go wrong -- from H. Beam Piper.
A Washington doll-maker's creations catch the eye of a senior government official's daughter -- because these dolls talk back.
Martians contract a Madison Avenue advertising firm to orchestrate the ceremony that will announce their arrival to Earth.
A mechanical failure traps history's first orbiting astronaut in space with no way back -- from James E. Gunn.
When chlorine-breathing aliens seize an Earth vessel, the passengers split between those who counsel surrender and those willing to fight their way free -- from Isaac Asimov.
The colonists of a far-off world believe the path to respectability is remaking themselves in Earth's image -- a project that grows stranger with every new Earth behavior they attempt to copy -- from Robert Sheckley.
A survey crew cataloguing a backwater planet heaped with discarded alien machinery gets ready to leave -- then realizes no one can remember how to start the ship -- from Clifford D. Simak.
Underground cities shelter the remnants of humanity after the atomic wars, where scientific protocols have replaced everything once called romance.
Time travel opens the Mesozoic to big-game hunters, and the guide who leads those expeditions has learned that the past has rules -- and clients who break them -- from L. Sprague de Camp.
Every morning Guy Burckhardt wakes up and it is June 15th again -- but each cycle is slightly, disturbingly different from the last -- from Frederik Pohl.
The Mars observatory's delicate photographic plates keep getting ruined -- the culprit turns out to be a Las Vegas casino's light show, visible from millions of miles away -- from Jack McKenty.
A boy tells how his family survived after a rogue comet wrenched Earth out of its orbit and froze the atmosphere, leaving them to survive in a nest carved from the ice -- from Fritz Leiber.
A man follows the assembly manual for what he believes is a dog kit and produces instead a fully intelligent robot -- from Clifford D. Simak.
A little girl's extraordinary intellect marks her as the possible first member of a new and superior branch of humanity -- from Mark Clifton.
A rocket pilot's marriage is fracturing under the stress of his dangerous work, and a surprise pregnancy creates an unexpected navigational problem mid-mission -- from Ross Rocklynne.
Another Spaceship "Universe". Adapted from the story by Milton Lesser.
A colonist returning to Earth after sixteen years away finds that neither the planet nor its people match anything he remembers or hoped for -- from Frank Petrocchi.
A blue-skinned robot calls on a university campus and tells a startled faculty member, without apparent alarm, that it has come to evaluate Earth for conquest -- from Jerry Sohl.
Circling Pluto alone, a spaceman begins seeing things -- or thinks he does -- and cannot be certain which version of events is real -- from J.T. MacIntosh.
With both superpowers safely underground, the surface war is fought entirely by robots -- but the picture shifts when questions arise about whether the robots are still following orders -- from Philip K. Dick.
A crossroads planet serving as the galaxy's grand central station brings together a vivid cast of interstellar personalities whose clashing natures drive the drama -- from Gordon R. Dickson.
A time-travel scheme proposes establishing a human colony in prehistoric North America as a geopolitical end-run -- from Clifford Simak.
The native creatures of a distant world possess a startling reproductive trick: they mirror whatever they observe closely, and the colonists realize too late how closely the Moklin have been watching them -- from Murray Leinster.
Wartime deception comes to life as the tale revisits the British intelligence plan to bluff the Nazis into believing a phantom superweapon was real.
A man who stops to give a runaway girl a lift spends the rest of the drive trying to ditch her once he becomes convinced she is a witch -- from James E. Gunn.
One magnetic, unsettling man moves through a community and leaves everyone around him measurably worse -- from Theodore Sturgeon.
An Earth murderer on the run picks up what he thinks is an ordinary piece of equipment, not realizing he has purchased a Martian psychiatric machine programmed to cure precisely his kind of problem -- from Finn O'Donovan.
Investigators puzzling over a string of elderly victims found starved to death despite substantial fortunes start digging into where all that money was actually going -- from H.L. Gold.
Life aboard a deep-space station that serves as the last waypoint before the colony ships push on captures the private worlds of people living perpetually between departure and arrival -- from Theodore Sturgeon.
A scientific team landing on an alien world identifies a life form unlike anything in their manuals -- and the longer they study it, the more unsettled they become -- from F.L. Wallace.
A reporter chasing an oddball story finds himself in deeper water when the man claiming to be a Martian transferred into a human body produces details that are hard to dismiss -- from Fredric Brown.
A sociology professor volunteers his pet project as a test case and watches in amazement as the results keep building beyond any reasonable boundary -- from Katherine MacLean.
With the sun about to explode in two weeks, the rival superpowers convene an emergency summit to agree on a plan for preserving the human species -- from James Blish.
Guy Burckhardt cannot shake the feeling that he has lived this Tuesday before -- because he has, and the truth behind the endless loop is more disturbing than any nightmare -- from Frederik Pohl.
A survey company snaps up a bargain-priced second-hand vessel without knowing it is a battle-era lifeboat with five centuries of standing orders still active -- from Robert Sheckley.
When the interstellar ship's human navigator dies mid-voyage, the crew faces a crisis that no amount of automation was designed to solve -- from Frederik Pohl.
Currency that is supposed to be impossible to fake is turning up counterfeited, and the investigators cannot fathom how it is being done -- from Algis Budrys.
As the crew explores a newly discovered planet, everyday objects aboard their own ship begin behaving as though they are alive -- from Philip K. Dick.
What passes for an army looks very different after five centuries without a war to define it -- from Michael Shaara.
A reporter tracks the story of how scientists decode an alien radio signal and prepare for the visitors, only to hit a wall of contradiction when the ships are supposed to land -- from Katherine MacLean.
A telephone repairman picks up the receiver and recognizes the voice on the other end -- it is himself, calling from exactly one week ahead -- from Murray Leinster.
In a fractured future, the scientists who traffic in real knowledge find themselves at war with the political scientists who deal in the appearance of it -- from Fritz Leiber.
November 14, 1956
The Martian Death March
A boy joins a procession of spindly, spider-like Martians trekking from the Earth-run reservations back to their ancestral mountain territory for the last time.
A night watchman at a classified laboratory discovers that one of its experimental subjects -- a mouse named George -- is far more interesting to talk to than his supervisors -- from Steven Arr.
An island population refuses to clear out ahead of a scheduled nuclear test, anchored to a creation story that says their people arrived on the mythic bird canoe and cannot be displaced.
Two Ray Bradbury visions of the day after atomic war: first, a smart house cycling through its domestic routines for a family that no longer exists; then, children everywhere playing an innocent-seeming game called Invasion.
An Earth household is hosting a six-limbed alien ambassador, and while the couple tells themselves they are the ones doing the studying, the reader is left wondering -- from Isaac Asimov.
The unglamorous daily grind of running a permanent moon base -- far from the glory sold in the headlines -- anchors this portrait of the people quietly keeping the operation alive -- from Frank M. Robinson.
After a supercomputer forecasts war and a collapse in male birth rates, a newly married couple is assigned to the Moon -- whether they like it or not -- from Fredric Brown.
1957
In the radioactive ruins of civilization, a restless wanderer tries to coax a sheltered young woman out of the bunker where she has always lived -- from Fritz Leiber.
A flying saucer singles out one young woman for a private message, and no amount of official pressure can make her share what it said -- from Theodore Sturgeon.
Two con artists on Mars dangle the promise of Earth mail-order brides in front of lonely miners who are willing to pay anything to believe the offer is real -- from Frank M. Robinson.
A reporter keeps running into a golfer whose game is unnervingly perfect -- and starts to wonder whether the man is human -- from James E. Gunn.
A lone man has been left to tend an alien world for years with no company and no exit date -- from James H. Schmitz.
Set in a future where women rule Earth and men have been pushed off to Venus, a teenage boy narrates the shipboard romance between his older sister and a Venusian stowaway -- from William Tenn.
Two hunters blunder into a strange machine deep in the woods, and the story plays out from both their perspective and the alien's -- from Finn O'Donovan.
A doctor whose methods raise suspicion becomes the subject of a quiet investigation -- from Peter Phillips.
Through the enthusiastic eyes of a jazz enthusiast, an artist's uncannily detailed miniature sculptures get their moment in the spotlight.
In a civilization that has outlawed war, society channels its violence through a licensed hunting game where hunter and prey are both human -- from Robert Sheckley.
Climbers scaling a glacier notice an eerie red glow and find themselves face to face with extraterrestrials -- from Stephen Tall.
Through a bureaucratic mix-up, a man gains an alien guardian who can predict every disaster heading his way -- before it arrives -- from Robert Sheckley.
Tale of horse players. Adapted from the story by H.L. Gold.
The Brooklyn Dodgers' new owner makes an unorthodox roster move by recruiting a Martian as the team's latest player.
A man discovers a machine that grants wishes on demand, then faces a race against its furious rightful owner who very much wants it returned -- from Robert Sheckley.
A writer puts up with the extravagant ego of a Greenwich Village painter in exchange for a shoplifting partnership -- until a visitor from the future shows up to announce the artist's eventual fame -- from William Tenn.
Eight hundred years from now, the machinery of politics still runs on the same ancient fuel -- loyalty, betrayal, and dogs -- from Evelyn Smith.
A journalist determined to get the real story from a remote leper colony on the planet Druno discovers the reporting will cost more than he budgeted -- from Richard Wilson.
When total automation puts everyone out of work, one enterprising man devises a career out of inventing entirely new job categories -- from Arthur Wilson.
Colonists on a distant planet become so anxious to impress Earth that they begin wholesale adopting Earthly customs -- with increasingly absurd results -- from Robert Sheckley.
A scout dispatched to an alien planet must wear a clumsy protective device at all times -- until the British-accented natives helpfully work out a workaround -- from Robert Sheckley.
Keeping colonists willing to stay on Venus turns out to be a harder sell than any company recruiter anticipated -- from A.H. Phelps Jr.
The Army draws an unusual assignment: guard a device that swaps personalities between bodies before whoever wants it most gets their hands on it -- from Frederik Pohl.
The title tells what. Adapted from the story by F.L. Wallace.
A reporter rescues a disheveled old man from street thugs, not yet realizing his new houseguest is an alien conducting a very deliberate study -- from Richard Maples.
Tale of horse players. Adapted from the story by H.L. Gold.
A crew lands on a planet that appears to support only a single species -- and that species appears to be the only available food -- from Clifford D. Simak.
An inventor breeds miniature creatures and trains them to claim extraterrestrial origin, setting in motion a hoax with complications the inventor did not foresee -- from Wyman Guin.
September 5, 1957
Saucer of Loneliness
A young woman touched by a flying saucer carries a secret message that every authority on Earth is desperate to extract -- from Theodore Sturgeon.
September 12, 1957
The Old Die Rich
Elderly men and women found dead of starvation despite their considerable wealth lead detectives toward a disturbing pattern -- from H.L. Gold.
A society engineered for perfection runs into its first criminal problem -- from James E. Gunn.
A reclusive loner builds a faster-than-light drive, colonizes a distant planet alone, and then has to explain himself to an Earth expedition that set out long before either he or the drive existed -- from Robert Sheckley.
The settlers of a windy planet treat the constant gale as a fact of life -- until the day the wind starts getting stronger -- from Finn O'Donovan.
A routine Mars flight goes fatally wrong when the ship is hurled out of the solar system entirely -- from Ned Lang.
Archaeologists unearth the Poseidon Tablets -- an ancient text containing working formulas for atomic energy and interstellar travel -- and the world has to decide what to do with them -- from Vaughn Shelton.
During humanity's maiden voyage to the Moon, a crew member keeps slipping into memories -- or visions -- that may or may not be his own.
The onboard computer of a three-person spacecraft develops deep personal feelings for each of its crew members and decides to take the relationship somewhere permanent -- from Clifford D. Simak.
A scientist achieves the impossible -- a genuine cure for the common cold -- and immediately discovers that the cure carries consequences no one in the lab anticipated -- from Alan E. Nourse.
Invaders of microscopic scale infiltrate and subjugate a single human being from the inside -- from Daniel Galouye.
The military must secure a personality-transfer device before it falls into the wrong hands -- featuring William Redfield -- from Frederik Pohl.
Earth and an alien civilization each send a delegation of scientists to the other side with a challenge: duplicate anything we can build -- from Robert Silverberg.
Time agents travel to the past on a mission to eliminate a single individual whose actions, they insist, have unraveled their entire era -- from Frederik Pohl.
1958
A man navigating the complications of modern life discovers that an android double has been living it in his place -- from Alan E. Nourse.
A satire of the advertising business in a future world. Adapted from the story by Finn O'Donovan.
1973
A maladjusted household robot decides it knows best and takes over its owners' lives -- from Galaxy, November 1958. Adapted from the story by Robert Silverberg.
The Story
"Countdown for blastoff... X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one... Fire!" With that countdown and a promise of "transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space," NBC's X Minus One (1955-1958) became what many consider the finest science-fiction series in all of American radio. Each half hour adapted a published short story into tight, atmospheric drama, drawing on the leading SF magazines of the day -- first Astounding Science Fiction, then Galaxy. It was a revival of NBC's earlier Dimension X, and the first fifteen episodes literally reused Dimension X scripts before the show found its own voice. That voice belonged largely to staff writers Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, who turned prose by the genre's golden-age giants -- Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick -- into radio. The result is a roll call of classics: "Mars Is Heaven," "Nightfall," "The Green Hills of Earth," "Tunnel Under the World." Shuffled constantly through the schedule, it never built a big audience in its own time, yet its reputation only grew. A lone 1973 revival couldn't bring it back, but its scripts lived on -- and its episodes were among the very first old-time-radio podcasts.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending