X Minus One — 1955
32 episodes broadcast in 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.
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