Quasar Dragon Spotlight On X Minus One.

X Minus One was a half-hour science fiction radio anthology that ran from April 24, 1955 to January 9, 1958 on NBC.  It was overseen by NBC staff writers Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, who also wrote some stories and adapted most of the rest.  The series featured stories by many of the best writers of that era (Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, Dick, etc.), typically either a rewrite of a Dimension X script or taken "from the pages of Galaxy Magazine," and was one of the last great Old Time Radio series.

As with virtually every anthology series, the episodes were rather hit or miss. Some were great, while other (including most original stories by Kinoy and Lefferts) weren't very good.  But with so many episodes, if a listener likes even half of them, it's a great series.  Tastes vary so I'm reluctant to recommend any except to say that the stories by the better known writers tend to the best ones.

There was a single episode attempt to revive the series in 1973, that some purists do not consider part of the series.  And I'm the only person in the world, but I consider the 19 Nocturne Boulevard episode "The leech" to be an honorary X Minus One episode. (It's a dramatization of 1950's Galaxy Magazine story by a big name SF writer - Robert Sheckley).

While X Minus One had some flaws, such as a half-hour being a bit short for the adaptations, it was one of the high points of twentieth century science fiction.

The links after the fold are direct download MP3 from the Internet archive, except on names which lead to the original story at Project Gutenberg and on The 19 Nocturne Boulevard which leads to that site.

Subterranean, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tor and More

There's some great free fiction today. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has two new fantasy stories, a new SF story at Tor.com and a new issue of Subterranean Press Magazine, with four more great stories.  All these sites are fantastic, so don't even think about skipping one (We have ways of knowing). 


There are continuations of two serials, flash fiction, and more today. An interesting item in the "other genres" is the first issue of the classic mystery and short story magazine, The Strand. And more later.

[Art for Subterranean Press Magazine Winter 2013]




Fiction
• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies:

"The Storms in Arisbat" by Therese Arkenberg. Fantasy

       "Semira made her way to him, unsteady as if on a rocking deck. He took her outstretched hand, and the point of contact became an anchor, and axis; something steady to work around. The fear didn’t abate, but its quality changed: from dread to dizzy panic to the icy clutch of despair. Semira thought of rushing winds, coming and abating, and of sudden downpours of rain. Of storms."

"Casualties" by Alec Austin. Fantasy.

       "For a frozen moment, I glanced between the murder-sharp blade of my athame and Bastien's stricken expression, trying to reconcile the two. Part of me wasn't sure why I hadn't slit his throat for everything he'd done and all the people he'd betrayed. Because he didn't do any of that, the rational part of me insisted. Trouble was, I remembered him stabbing Annie in the arm on the Day of Glass, and what Gretchen had become after he got to her in Gabbleford."

• At Paizo: "Thieves Vinegar - Chapter Two: The Hall of Lies" by Kevin Andrew Murphy. Fantasy. Pathfinder.
     "Newby analyzed the contents of Norret's flask, pronouncing it ninety-nine point nine percent pure will-o'-wisp essence, with the impurities mostly consisting of honeysuckle and grape. Norret nodded, and the three old men fell to talking amongst themselves."

• At Tor.com: "Am I Free to Go?" by Kathryn Cramer.

       "The line between utopia and dystopia...is, often, who you are. Or who your neighbors think you are."

• Now Posted: Subterranean Press Magazine Winter 2013.

"Surfacing" by Walter Jon Williams. Science Fiction.
      "There was an alien on the surface of the planet. A Kyklops had teleported into Overlook Station, and then flown down on the shuttle. Since, unlike humans, it could teleport without apparatus, presumably it took the shuttle just for the ride. The Kyklops wore a human body, controlled through an n-dimensional interface, and took its pleasures in the human fashion."

"The Boolean Gate" by Walter Jon Williams. Science Fiction.
     "The dining room in Guildford had yellow wallpaper with little figures on it, and a heavy mahogany sideboard, and vases with flowers that Sam, in his carelessness, was allowing to die. The window was open as a relief against the heavy August heat, but the lace curtains barely stirred."

"Hard Rain" by Steven R. Boyett.
      "Twelve miles outside of Agville they came across a silver miner half dead from the beating and the tarring he’d been given before the town ran him out on his splithoof rackribbed mule. The tar had cooked him to the bone in places and plugs of skin had festered where he had worried at patches"

 "Raptors" by Conrad Williams.
       "You were allowed to wear shorts if the weather was good. The management never turned the air conditioning on because they wanted the punters to overheat and buy more drinks. Dervla wore shorts that were more like broad belts."

Flash Fliction

• At Every Day Fiction: "Deprescience" by Mickey Hunt. Fantasy.
• At Flashes in the Dark: "Toon" by Alun Williams. Horror.
• At Nature: "An Unintended Future" by Tristan Scott. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Bath" by Duncan Shields. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Episode 10 - The Return of Tarzan. Adventure
      "Tarzan has been tricked by Lt. Gernois into accompanying a scouting party led by the suspected traitor, who has been seen in secret conversations with a mysterious Arab. Commanded to maintain a solo post in a valley in the mountains"

• At The Internet Archive: BBC's "The Foundation Trilogy" by Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov. [via SF Signal and The Verge] Science Fiction.
      "The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept devised by Asimov and his editor John W. Campbell. Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone for anything smaller than a planet or an empire"

Other Genres

• Audio at SFFaudio: Two versions of  "Was It A Dream?" by Guy de Maupassant.
• Fiction at Project Gutenberg: The Strand Magazine, Volume I, January to June 1891 by Various.
• Flash Fiction at Flash Fiction Friday: "F3, Cycle 108 [...] The Stories"

Thing From Another World, Terry Pratchet, Isaac Asimov, and More

Yay, it's Sunday, so annoying space captain has taken a day off and I Lt. Bob am in charge. First like always, we have a cool Mooooooviiiiiieeee! This time it's a classic from the 1950s, featuring an alien that fights humans. Go alien! It's your birthday! Also, unusual for a Sunday, lots of audio fiction (I notice some via SF Signals. Ha, lazy space captain). And a couple of comics. You QuasarDragon readers are OK (for humans) so have a nice day.




The Thing From Another World (1951)

"Scientist at an Arctic research station discover a spacecraft buried in the ice. Upon closer examination, they discover the frozen pilot. All hell breaks loose when they take him back to their station and he is accidentally thawed out."

Also don't miss the 1968 J.R.R. Tolkien Documentary at SF Signal.







@Beam Me Up: Episode #257 "Death and what comes Next" by Terry Pratchett, "where a mathematician tries to wrangle out of dying using physics on Death!" and "Infall" pt2 (the conclusion) "where we finally find out just exactly what faces our two combatants as the draw closer and closer to the event horizon of their destination, a monstrously huge and vastly ancient, black hole" by Ted Kosmatka. And a roundup of SF/Science tidbits.

@Pseudopod: Episode #225 "Top Of The Heap" by Nathan Robinson, read by Ben Phillips.
“I open my eyes and the dead smile back with bare teeth. In the fresh, sparse daylight I can see the bodies beneath me. I want to reach out and touch their faces, close their beseeching eyes. I recognize a few of them. Some I don’t, either through decomposition or the fact that I didn’t dump them here.

@Archive.org: The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov [via SF Signal via James Nicoll]
"an epic science fiction series written over a span of forty-four years by Isaac Asimov."

@LibriVox: Elves and Heroes by Donald Alexander Mackenzie (1873-1936, read by Matthew Reece. "This volume describes, in verse, the mythical creatures and people of ancient Scotland. It also includes explanatory notes about about the characters and folk tales that inspired the author's poetry."

@LibriVox: The Mahabharata by Vyasa: the epic of ancient India condensed into English verse by Romesh C Dutt. "The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. ... Mahabharata tells the story of the epic Kurukshetra War and the fates of the cousin brothers Kauravas and the Pandavas." One of the world's great epics, on a par with The Iliad and Gilgamesh. I don't know this version, but it should at least capture some of the flavor.

@SFFaudio: "The Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckly. Two dramatized versions of the classic SF story (I Just listened to the X-Minus One version a few weeks ago - quite good).

@SFFaudio: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, performed by a full cast (CBS Radio Workshop).








@The Warriors Comic Book Den: "The Lighthouse!" By Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. Classic B&W horror from Eerie.

@Digital Comics Museum: Super-Mystery Comics v08 004. Horror/Mystery.