X Minus One — 1956
50 episodes broadcast in 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.
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