Podcasts about astounding science fiction

There is an infinite number of paths through a lens between an object point and its image point-and no matter how many changes of path you make, have you changed anything? Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Fritz Leiber is one of about 25 men and women from the golden age of pulp science fiction to receive the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. He has also been a frequent contributor to our podcast.From page 93 of Astounding Science Fiction in March 1958, Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Can the moving out of line of even the smallest atom of the Inscrutable pattern of the Universe, bring down the whole great edifice in instantaneous, crashing holocaust? The Shadow and the Flash by Jack London.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

The last living man on a world rendered utterly lifeless by all–consuming fire– how could he start life alone? Adam and No Eve by Alfred Bester. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.I love a great apocalyptic sci-fi tale, and today we have an exceptional one for you by a legendary author. Alfred Bester, a true icon of the genre, is honored in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the Prometheus Hall of Fame, and the Fandom Hall of Fame. He was also awarded the prestigious SFWA Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.Published almost 84 years ago in September 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction on page 35, Adam and No Eve by Alfred Bester…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, A tale of dark science, and the ghastly mystery that enveloped the Spanish doctor's attempts at artificial refrigeration. Cool Air by H. P. Lovecraft.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

It was only a slingshot, but it hurled more death than a thousand-pound bomb. Where did Tommy Sonofagun get those deadly pellets? The Incredible Slingshot Bombs by Robert Moore Williams. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Our last episode featured an author we had never showcased before, William Tenn, today another, Robert Moore Williams and our next episode we will debut another authors work, Francis Stevens.Although we were not familiar with Robert Moore Williams work, it's not like he was a minor player in the pulp sci-fi world in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, with more than 170 short stories to his credit along with 20 novels.Williams was born in Farmington, Missouri in 1907, graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1931 and published his first story in 1937. Zero as a Limit appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1937 and his career took off. His stories were published 17 times in what was left of the 1930s and 90 stories appeared in the pulps in the 1940s.We will find our story on page 130 in the May 1942 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, The Incredible Slingshot Bombs by Robert Moore Williams…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Silently it waited in a woodland glen, baited with dreams to tempt… the strange lost company that time had forgot. The Elf-Trap by Francis Stevens.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

The biggest job in history and it had to be done with complete secrecy. It was—which was just the trouble! Project Hush by William Tenn and What thrill is there in going out among the stars if coming back means bitter loneliness? Homesick by Lynn Venable. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Until today, we had never narrated a story by William Tenn—though, in truth, William Tenn never actually wrote a story. How is that possible? Because William Tenn was the pen name of Philip Klass.Born in London in 1920, Klass moved to New York City before his second birthday. He grew up in Brooklyn, served in the Army during World War II, and later spent 22 years as a professor at Penn State University.Klass wrote over 60 short stories, beginning in 1946 with Alexander the Bait, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. Most of his work was published during the 1950s. Turn to page 100 in the February 1954 publication, Galaxy Science Fiction, Project Hush by William Tenn…Our second story on the podcast today comes from Lynn Venable. Though she wrote only seven stories, each one left a lasting impression. This was her first, published in the December 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. We will discover our story on page 73, Homesick by Lynn Venable…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, It was only a slingshot, but it hurled more death than a thousand-pound bomb. Where did Tommy Sonofagun get those deadly pellets? The Incredible Slingshot Bombs by Robert Moore Williams.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

We start Asimov's third (or second) Galactic Empire Novel, The Currents of Space, by discussing chapters 1 through 6. This nearly corresponds to the first installment published in the October 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction which covered 1 through 7.A friend tells me that our episodes are better when we're enjoying the stuff that we're reading.We certainly enjoy reading The Stars End Mail Bag! This time when we opened it up, it inspired a short conversation about My Living Doll starring Julie Newmar and Bob Something-Or-Other.And we're liking The Currents of Space so far! It hits the ground running with a threat of planetary destruction and a hero in the mists of amnesia! This is the Good Doctor's take on race relations in the American South making it a nice companion to The Caves of Steel which tackled the issue in our northern cities. This gave us a lot to think about!Like, what year was this written? It looks like the answer is actually 1952 and not 1951 like I, Joseph, thought.We see parallels to three (count ‘em! 3!) Star Trek episodes! But which ones? Not "The Omega Glory," I'll tell you that much.Is Ol' Isaac reading comic books on the side?And how does this compare to the other Galactic Empire Novels?Plus, another round of “Where's Daneel?“ Have we figured that out yet?And more! You'll have to listen to find out!

The mountain men who opened up the frontier in the west weren't settlers, they were trappers, traders, fighters and gunmen — the men who didn't fit back home. The kind of men who will be needed on the frontier of space… Collision Orbit by Katherine MacLean. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.As we get ready to celebrate our 3rd anniversary, we thought it was the perfect time to try something new! Today's story is a great example—it shares the same title as yesterday's, but it's by a completely different author and tells a totally different tale. And that's not the only first! We're also thrilled to welcome author Katherine MacLean to the podcast for the very first time.Katherine Anne MacLean was born in 1925 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and she was one of the early female voices in science fiction. Unlike some women writers of the 1950s who used male pen names, MacLean published most of her work under her own name. She made her debut with Defense Mechanism in the October 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and over the years, she wrote more than 40 short stories—most of them in the 1950s, though she kept writing all the way into the 1990s.Katherine MacLean even got a chance to write for television! She penned an episode for the 1962 British sci-fi series Out of This World, which was hosted by none other than Boris Karloff. Her episode, Pictures Don't Lie, aired on August 11, 1962, and was based on her short story of the same name. Out of This World on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhWWABp1BJ4Her work also made it to the big screen—her 1953 short story The Carnivore was adapted into the 2016 Brazilian film Carnívora. Let's flip through the May 1954 issue of Science Fiction Adventures magazine and turn to page 78, Collision Orbit by Katherine MacLean…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Adventure flamed in Mr. Meek's timorous heart, the surge of battle and singing blades. And so, with a rocket-ship for his steed and a ray-gun for his sword, he sallied forth ... carrying cavalier justice to the resentful shining stars. Mr. Meek—Musketeer by Clifford D. Simak.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

He was one man, horribly confused, escaping from a destroyed planet, carrying some sort of message which he couldn't recall. But he had tremendous potential for achievement! Potential by Robert Sheckley. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Special thanks to Eaten by a Grue who bought us $25 worth of coffee, “Superlative content, thanks for bringing me enjoyment. Great selections, great reads.” Thanks Eaten by a Grue for your kind words and for the coffee.If you'd like to buy us a coffee there is a link in the description.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsVRobert Sheckley has been heard many times on the podcast and fortunately there are still many more Sheckley stories in the public domain that we will share with you in the future.By the time this story appeared in Astounding Science Fiction magazine the publication has been around for almost 24 years, and if my math is correct it can be found in the 276th issue of the magazine. Let's turn back the clock to November 1953 and open this pulp pleaser to page 72, Potential by Robert Sheckley…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Mr. Harbinger could not quite believe in the Mouth. But poor Mr. Harbinger—or Darwin, if you prefer—are gone to other times. Or Darwin, If You prefer by Mel Hunter☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV

"Lo que Necesita" (What you Need) es un relato fantástico de los escritores norteamericanos Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) y Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987), publicado originalmente en la edición de octubre de 1945 de la revista Astounding Science Fiction, y luego reeditado en la antología de 1950: Hubo una vez un gnomo y otros relatos de ciencia ficción (A Gnome There Was and Other Tales of Science Fiction). Es uno de los grandes cuentos de Henry Kuttner, narra la historia de Tim Carmichael, un periodista opaco, autor de artículos amarillistas, quien descubre una misteriosa tienda a la cual asiste prácticamente toda la alta sociedad, llamada LO QUE NECESITA. La tienda es manejada por Peter Talley, y posee la cualidad de vender exactamente lo que cada comprador necesita, literalmente. Música y Ambientación: What Remains of Edith Finch - Jeff Russo Silent Hill 2 - Akira Yamaoka Blog del Podcast: https://lanebulosaeclectica.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @jomategu

It was a weird sort of battle for survival–not only of individuals, but each, against his will, represented his whole race. And the battle rested on ingenuity, tenacity and courage, not strength alone. Arena by Frederic Brown, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Thank you Carolyn Guthleben for buying us 3 coffees! “Thank you for a great show. I love good, real sci-fi, and it's so hard to find. Many a dinner has been cooked while you sent me into outer space!!! Time flys and pasta boils when you're having fun! Thanks Scott the coffee's on me!”Thank you Carolyn! If you would like to buy us a coffee there is a link in the description. ☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsVToday on the podcast, a story many of you have been asking for. It was chosen by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the finest science fiction works published before the creation of the Nebula Awards which were first awarded in 1965. From the June 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine on page 70, Arena by Frederic Brown…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Would it work? Yes. How would it work? Exactly like this. The Stuff by Henry Slesar.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsVYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@VintageSciFiAudiobooksFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheLostSciFiPodcastTwitter - https://twitter.com/lost_sci_fi=========================== ❤️ ❤️ Thanks to All Our Listeners Who Bought Us a Coffee$200 Someone$75 James Van Maanenberg$50 Anonymous Listener$25 Dave Wiseman, Bromite Thrip, Marwin de Haan, Future Space Engineer, Fressie, Kevin Eckert, Stephen Kagan, James Van Maanenberg, Irma Stolfo, Josh Jennings, Leber8tr, Conrad Chaffee, Anonymous Listener$15 Carolyn Guthleben, Patrick McLendon, Curious Jon, Buz C., Fressie, Anonymous Listener$10 Anonymous Listener$5 Ron McFarlan, Tif Love, Chrystene, Richard Hoffman, Anonymous Listener Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As usual there are spoilers ahead!If you want to read the full show notes you can click the episode on this page and scroll down. The Day the earth Stood Still was released in 1951 just like The Thing from Another World. And just like that film The Day the Earth Stood Still is based on a story from Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The flying saucer craze of 1947 has obviously made its impression on Hollywood and The Day the Earth Stood Still delivered a seamless sleek futuristic saucer along with an imposing shiny robot and a polite humanoid alien who comes in peace to deliver an ultimatum to a world wrangling with the atomic age. The Experts: Glyn Morgan is Curatorial Lead at the Science Museum in London and is a science fiction scholar. Peter Gottschalk is a Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University with a special interest in the South Asian region, empire and science. He also teaches a class called “Awesome Cinema”. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the show and guests 02:22 Astounding magazine, The Manhattan project and the Peace Offensive 5:55 From pulps to peace: Sci-fi amid the red scare 11:28 The Flying Saucer 14:00 A benevolent invader and the United Nations 19:39 Gort the robot - Klaatu, Barada Nikto! 25:55 The sane scientist 29:06 Christian themes 34:36 Media frenzy 38:24 The 2008 remake 42:44 Bernard Hermann's seminal score 44:06 Legacy and recommendations NEXT EPISODE!Next episode we will be taking a closer look at The War of the Worlds (1953). You can check Just Watch to find out where it can be found in your region. It is available to buy or rent at many outlets including Apple TV. If you wanted to listen to the famous 1938 radio play from Orson Welles you can hear it here on YouTube. And if you want to hear Richard Burton's hypnotic reverberating voice in Jeff Wayne's Musical version of War of the Worlds you can hear that here on YouTube.  

Mercury had no atmosphere—everyone knew that. Why was it developing one now? Hot Planet by Hal Clement, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Harry Clement Stubbs, better known by his pen name Hal Clement, was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, in May 1922. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in astronomy in 1943. While still a college student, he published his first story, Proof, in the June 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.Though Clement wrote relatively few short stories—around 30 in total—and only 8 novels, his work was highly regarded. His skill as a writer earned him the prestigious title of the 17th Grand Master from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1999.Appearing in the pages of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine in August 1963, on page 6 you will find, Hot Planet by Hal Clement…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, My Space-partner was a good reliable sidekick—but his partner was something else! A Hitch in Space by Fritz Leiber.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsVYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@VintageSciFiAudiobooksFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheLostSciFiPodcastTwitter - https://twitter.com/lost_sci_fi=========================== ❤️ ❤️ Thanks to All Our Listeners Who Bought Us a Coffee$200 Someone$75 James Van Maanenberg$50 Anonymous Listener$25 Dave Wiseman, Bromite Thrip, Marwin de Haan, Future Space Engineer, Fressie, Kevin Eckert, Stephen Kagan, James Van Maanenberg, Irma Stolfo, Josh Jennings, Leber8tr, Conrad Chaffee, Anonymous Listener$15 Patrick McLendon, Curious Jon, Buz C., Fressie, Anonymous Listener$10 Anonymous Listener$5 Tif Love, Chrystene, Richard Hoffman, Anonymous Listener Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The essential requirements of a first-class triggerman are two: that he know how to pull the trigger–and when not to! Triggerman By J. F. Bone, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Jesse Franklin Bone was born in Tacoma Washington in 1916. Before he was an author Bone was a veterinarian, and a professor of veterinary medicine, served in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel and retiring in 1976. His first short story, Survival Type, didn't appear in Galaxy Science Fiction until he was 41, in 1957.About 30 short stories and 5 novels later his 21 year career as an author came to an end. Today's story first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in December 1958 in the United States. It was in Astounding in the UK in March of 1959. Three months later it could be found in the Dell Paperback The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume and almost 30 other publications around the world.Which would lead you to believe that this is a really good story. It is, so much so that it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1959. Bone's adventure can be found on page 47, Triggerman By J. F. Bone…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, It's remarkable what a bright, eager youngster can accomplish with just a pail and a shovel. The Deep Hole to China by Robert Sheckley.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================

Get the COMMERCIAL-FREE VERSION by joining the Darkness Syndicate at https://weirddarkness.com/syndicate! *** Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = The Parade (January 25, 1956)00:30:54.070 = The Cave of Night (February 01, 1956)01:00:04.761 = The C-Chute (February 08, 1956)01:29:22.699 = Skulking Permit (February 15, 1956)01:58:50.451 = Junkyard (February 22, 1956)02:27:51.015 = Hello, Tomorrow (February 29, 1956)02:52:41.472 = A Gun For A Dinosaur (March 07, 1956)03:21:17.387 = Tunnel Under The World (March 14, 1956)03:49:56.913 = Thousand Dollars A Plate (March 21, 1956)04:18:30.168 = A Pail of Air (March 28, 1956)04:47:34.238 = How-To (April 03, 1956)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-013

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = Dwellers In Silence (November 10, 1955)00:25:39.232 = The Outer Limit (November 16, 1955)00:53:40.316 = Zero Hour (November 23, 1955)01:07:54.802 = The Vital Factor (November 30, 1955)01:36:54.438 = Nightfall (December 07, 1955)02:05:38.741 = To The Future (December 14, 1955)02:34:25.759 = Marionettes Inc. (December 21, 1955)03:03:27.465 = A Logic Named Joe (December 28, 1955)03:30:30.208 = The Roads Just Roll (November 04, 1956)03:58:09.807 = Time And Time Again (January 11, 1956)04:26:24.683 = Perigi's Wonderful Dolls (January 18, 1956)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-012

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = The Embassy (July 28, 1955)00:25:49.998 = The Veldt (August 04, 1955)00:49:44.039 = Almost Human (August 11, 1955)01:13:13.099 = Courtesy (August 18, 1955)01:36:44.580 = Cold Equation (August 25, 1955)02:00:18.990 = Shanghaied (September 01, 1955)02:23:11.605 = The Martian Death March (September 08, 1955)02:46:33.950 = The Castaways (September 15, 1955)03:08:36.379 = The Moon Be Still As Bright (September 22, 1955)03:32:25.135 = First Contact (October 06, 1955)03:55:03.177 = Child's Play (October 20, 1955)04:18:08.170 = Requiem (October 27, 1055)04:41:50.103 = Hello, Tomorrow (November 03, 1955)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-011

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = Target One (December 26, 1957)00:22:22.573 = Prime Difference (January 02, 1958)00:42:03.386 = Gray Flannel Armor (January 09, 1958)01:03:12.770 = The Parade (May 01, 1955)01:31:19.548 = Mars is Heaven (May 09, 1955)01:58:34.700 = Universe (May 15, 1955)02:26:24.507 = Knock (May 22, 1955)02:54:32.460 = The Man In The Moon (May 29, 1955)03:22:12.064 = Perigi's Wonderful Dolls (June 05, 1955)03:50:05.753 = The Green Hills of Earth (July 07, 1955)04:13:30.368 = Dr. Grimshaw's Sanatorium (July 14, 1955)04:36:48.555 = Nightmare (July 21, 1955)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-010

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = Volpla (August 29, 1957)00:22:16.469 = Saucer of Loneliness (September 05, 1957)00:50:51.099 = The Old Die Rich (September 12, 1957)01:18:08.541 = Tsylana (September 19, 1957)01:37:40.666 = The Native Problem (September 26, 1957)01:58:10.558 = The Wind Is Rising (October 03, 1957)02:18:40.709 = Death Wish (October 10, 1957)02:39:22.511 = Point of Departure (October 17, 1957)02:58:45.672 = The Light (October 24, 1957)03:18:16.277 = Lulu (October 31, 1957)03:39:15.628 = The Coffin Cure (November 21, 1957)04:00:05.957 = Shocktroop (November 28, 1957)04:19:45.671 = The Haunted Corpse (December 12, 1957)04:39:36.634 = Double Dare (December 19, 1957)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-009

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = Martian Sam (April 03, 1957)00:23:05.410 = Something For Nothing (April 10, 1957)00:44:10.355 = Discovery of Morniel Mathaway (April 17, 1957)01:05:48.183 = Man's Best Friend (April 24, 1957)01:28:03.208 = Inside Story (June 20, 1957)01:48:25.455 = The Category Inventor (June 27, 1957)02:08:54.377 = Skulking Permit (July 04, 1957)02:30:10.133 = Early Model (July 11, 1957)02:51:34.432 = The Merchants of Venus (July 18, 1957)03:12:40.934 = The Haunted Corpse (July 25, 1957)03:33:34.689 = End As A World (August 01, 1957)03:53:15.073 = The Scapegoat (August 08, 1957)04:14:27.700 = At The Post (August 15, 1957)04:35:52.542 = Drop Dead (August 22, 1957)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-008

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience. It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run. Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = The Moon Is Green (January 02, 1957)00:30:16.613 = Saucer of Loneliness (January 09, 1957)00:59:01.789 = The Girls From Earth (January 16, 1957)01:21:18.452 = Open Warfare (January 23, 1957)01:42:35.282 = Caretaker (January 30, 1957)02:04:13.830 = Venus Is A Man's World (February 06, 1957)02:25:06.654 = The Trap (February 13, 1957)02:47:00.728 = Field Study (February 20, 1957)03:08:36.066 = Real Gone (February 27, 1957)03:30:43.375 = The Seventh Victim (March 06, 1957)03:52:48.201 = The Lights on Precipice Peak (March 13, 1957)04:13:48.162 = Protection (March 20, 1957)04:36:00.300 = At The Post (March 27, 1957)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-007

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience.It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run.Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = Soldier Boy (October 17, 1956)00:30:54.946 = Pictures Don't Lie (October 24, 1956)00:59:20.861 = Sam This Is You (October 31, 1956)01:28:26.609 = Appointment In Tomorrow (November 07, 1956)01:55:58.404 = The Martian Death March (November 14, 1956)02:19:23.562 = Chain of Command (November 21, 1956)02:47:52.054 = The Castaways (November 28, 1956)03:09:54.177 = There Will Come Soft Rains (December 05, 1956)03:38:36.019 = Hostess (December 12, 1956)04:06:50.861 = The Reluctant Heroes (December 19, 1956)04:35:29.652 = Honeymoon In Hell (December 26, 1956)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-006

Get full-length pulp audiobooks, pulp eBooks, and old-time radio shows ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD by emailing WeirdDarkness@RadioArchives.com!By the mid 1950s, science fiction had largely fallen into a familiar pattern, regardless of medium. When fans tuned into the radio or caught the latest science fiction movie, they either encountered space opera adventures or fare aimed largely at a juvenile audience. Only in magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy were stories grounded firmly in science fiction being told with mature themes aimed at character development, true literature taking off to the stars. The debut of X Minus One in April 1955 changed that on radio, making this program not only the best of its type, but in many ways one of the only shows from Radio's Golden Age to present science fiction for a well-rounded adult audience.It is an often debated point among experts and fans as to whether or not X Minus One was simply a new season of Dimension X, a program that ran on NBC in 1950-51, or a revival of sorts of this previous show. The latter is probably more accurate since the first 15 episodes of X Minus One were new productions of Dimension X episodes. What makes X Minus One stand out, however, is the fact that the remaining programs were actually adaptations of works from two of the best science fiction magazines of the period. NBC staff writers, primarily Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, scoured the pages of Astounding Science Fiction and then later Galaxy Magazine for tales that would thrill and chill their listeners, aiming most assuredly at the more sophisticated science fiction fans. Stories penned by noted science fiction and genre authors such as Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and Isaac Asimov, and many others found themselves expertly adapted for radio over the program's nearly three-year run.Listen to X Minus One and rocket to new heights of top-notch science fiction old time radio!00:00:00.000 = INTRODUCTION00:01:54.470 = The Old Die Rich (July 17, 1956)00:29:53.682 = Stars Are The Styx (July 24, 1956)00:58:49.731 = Student Body (July 31, 1956)01:26:43.327 = The Last Martian (August 07, 1956)01:55:23.093 = The Snowball Effect (August 14, 1956)02:18:49.235 = Surface Tension (August 28, 1956)02:47:21.482 = Tunnel Under The World (September 04, 1956)03:16:05.504 = The Lifeboat Mutiny (September 11, 1956)03:44:20.539 = The Map Makers (September 26, 1956)04:13:02.085 = Protective Mimicry (October 03, 1956)04:40:56.609 = Colony (October 10, 1956)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…This episode is sponsored by http://RadioArchives.comWeird Darkness Retro Radio theme by Storyblocks.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarknessWeirdDarkness® - is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness, 2024.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/xminusone-marathon-005

A casi todo el mundo le suenan las Leyes de Murphy y seguramente se saben alguna de memoria. Pero lo que no conocerán son las Leyes de Finagle, que podrían ser parecidas pero no lo son. Eso si, ambas coinciden en que el universo es hostil y caprichoso. Vamos a descubrir su origen, su misterio, su rigor científico y su historia. Las leyes de Murphy y de Finagle son dos formas de expresar el pesimismo o la ironía sobre las cosas que pueden salir mal en la vida. Ambas leyes tienen orígenes y formulaciones diferentes, pero comparten una idea común: el universo es hostil y caprichoso. La ley de Murphy se atribuye al ingeniero aeroespacial Edward A. Murphy Jr., quien en 1949 realizó un experimento con un mono y un cohete para medir la aceleración humana. Debido a un error de cableado, el experimento falló y Murphy pronunció su famosa frase: «Si algo puede salir mal, saldrá mal». Desde entonces, la ley de Murphy se ha popularizado como una forma de explicar los fracasos, las desgracias y las coincidencias negativas. La ley de Finagle es anterior a la de Murphy, y se debe al escritor de ciencia ficción John W. Campbell Jr., quien la usaba frecuentemente en sus editoriales de la revista Astounding Science Fiction. La ley de Finagle se enunciaba originalmente como: «Cualquier cosa que pueda salir mal, saldrá mal. En el peor momento posible». Sin embargo, esta formulación se confundía con la de Murphy, por lo que se adoptó una variante más conocida como el corolario de Finagle: «La perversidad del universo siempre tiende hacia un máximo». La ley de Finagle también fue difundida por el autor Larry Niven, quien la incorporó en sus historias del Espacio conocido como una religión ficticia de los mineros del cinturón de asteroides. En resumen, las leyes de Murphy y de Finagle son dos formas de expresar el mismo concepto, pero con diferentes matices y orígenes. Ambas leyes reflejan una visión humorística y fatalista de la realidad, que puede servir para consolarse o para reírse de las adversidades. ¿Qué te parecen estas leyes? ¿Crees que se cumplen en tu vida? Otros temas en el programa: 35:13 Homo Antecessor 52:18 Ulises de Joyce 1:03:46 La perversión de las Redes Sociales No soy un serial killer - Capítulo 13 Puedes leer más y comentar en mi web, en el enlace directo: https://luisbermejo.com/murphy-vs-finagle-zz-podcast-05x26/ Puedes encontrarme y comentar o enviar tu mensaje o preguntar en: WhatsApp: +34 613031122 Paypal: https://paypal.me/Bermejo Bizum: +34613031122 Web: https://luisbermejo.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZZPodcast/ X (twitters): https://x.com/LuisBermejo y https://x.com/zz_podcast Instagrams: https://www.instagram.com/luisbermejo/ y https://www.instagram.com/zz_podcast/ Canal Telegram: https://t.me/ZZ_Podcast Canal WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va89ttE6buMPHIIure1H Grupo Signal: https://signal.group/#CjQKIHTVyCK430A0dRu_O55cdjRQzmE1qIk36tCdsHHXgYveEhCuPeJhP3PoAqEpKurq_mAc Grupo Whatsapp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FQadHkgRn00BzSbZzhNviThttps://chat.whatsapp.com/BNHYlv0p0XX7K4YOrOLei0

Alec's Astounding is a brilliant account of the 'golden age' of science-fiction when John Campbell, jnr, brought together the writers who would thrust s-f into the public arena - Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt and, of course, Ron Hubbard. There is much to be learned from Hubbard's stint at Astounding. Without Campbell, Dianetics might never have seen the light of day. Find how those around Hubbard lost faith in his ideas. Check out Alec's website here.

In my occasional series of "Chronological Bradbury" episodes, we reach the year 1942. This was Ray Bradbury's first full year as a professional writer, and the year he broke through to two of the leading science fiction and fantasy pulp magazines: Astounding Science Fiction, and Weird Tales. So it's an important year, although he only published two stories in that year. For full shownotes, visit my website: www.bradburymedia.co.uk

Containing Matters of Feline Carrier Difficulty Timestamps: introduction, opening sketch, 1939 "Union Leader Tobacco" ad read (0:00) Astounding 1939 cover, contents, ads, non-fiction piece on atomic power (5:42) A.E. Van Vogt background, "Black Destroyer" non-spoiler discussion (17:38) "Black Destroyer" spoiler summary and discussion (45:02) Bibliography: Aldiss, Brian and Wingrove, David - "Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction" (1986) Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939 issue https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v23n05_1939-07_dtsg0318/mode/2up D'Ammassa, Don - "Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction" (2005) Hartwell, David G. - "Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction" (1984) James, Edward - "The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction" (2003) Panshin, Alexei - "The Early Stories of A.E. van Vogt" https://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html Platt, Charles - introduction to "The World of Null-A" (1977) Music: in order of appearance in opening sketch: Hirsch, Louis A. - "Sweet Kentucky Lady" (1914) https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.musihas-100006686/?sp=1&st=image Dodge, Mr. & Mrs John Wilson - "Moon, Moon, Moon" (1910) https://www.loc.gov/resource/musm1508.10020387.0/ Bayes, Nora and Norworth, Jack - "Falling Star" (1909) https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200004367/ "Union Leader" ad read from Astounding July 1939 issue (with "Sweet Kentucky Lady")

Enright was coming home, which should have been good, since he was the first Earthman ever to go faster than light. But when he'd been gone eighteen months in a ship that was supplied for only ten days, the authorities were just a trifle curious...Home is the Spaceman by George O. Smith, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode. Support the show - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV Another 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, this review was written by Proenker, “Awesome Podcast. I enjoy all your amazing stories so much. It's great to hear so many classic tales. Thanks for all the great content.” Thank you Proenker! We'd love it if you give us a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, if you think we deserve it. And another email, this one from Juan, “Excellent podcast. Would love to hear more of Asimov's stories, or other authors with similar easy and enjoyable style. Also, looking forward to the upcoming stories for this month.” Thanks Juan, and you'll be happy to know there's more Asimov on the way soon. We love hearing from you, you can email us at scott@lostscifi.com. George O. Smith is another of those authors that most people have never heard of. When I first stumbled upon Mr. Smith I liked his work so here he is. George Oliver Smith, born in Chicago in 1911 was a consistent contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction of the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith. Yea, that tends to mess up a relationship between friends. He wrote about 70 short stories and novels, most of them in the 1940s and 50s.  Today marks the beginning of several stories written by George O. Smith that you will hear, here on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. Open the pages of Rocket Stories magazine, a publication that debuted in April 1953 and disappeared three issues later after the September 53 issue. The 2nd issue which came out in July gave us the story you're about to hear. Turn with me to page 50 for, Home is the Spaceman by George O. Smith… Tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Alone, accursed, he set out on the long, dark voyage to the forbidden gateway to worlds beyond life itself—restless forever with an ultimate knowledge, possessing which no man could die! The Call From Beyond by Clifford D. Simak. That's tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. Support the show

The exposition was easily the biggest John Watts had ever seen, and he'd seen them all. Yet, besides its size, there was something else strange about this fair­–it was just a little out of this world! The Elephant Circuit by Robert A. Heinlein, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode. Special thanks to listener J Paul Parker who bought 3 coffees along with the comment “Thank you, good narration.” Thank you, J Paul Parker!! If you'd like to show your appreciation for the podcast, there's a link in the description where you can buy us a cup of coffee. Support the show - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV We're going live again in two days on October 5th on YouTube. We will be live at 8 PM in London. There's a link in the description so you can join us and I hope you do.https://www.youtube.com/Vintagescifiaudiobooks We receive a lot of requests and many of them are for stories by Robert A. Henlein.  He was born on July 7th, 1907, in Butler Missouri. His family moved to Kansas City later that year. He was a voracious reader and using the library cards of his siblings he read all the science fiction books in the Kansas City Public Library. He was in the Navy for a short period of time before he was medically discharged. He gave politics a shot but that didn't go well so in 1938 he was unemployed and broke. A year later he wrote his first short story, “Life Line” which he sold to Astounding Science Fiction magazine for 70 dollars, equivalent to about $1,500 today. He would go on to write 32 novels and 59 short stories during his incredible career. From the pages of the October 1957 issue of Saturn magazine, let's turn to page 116 for The Elephant Circuit by Robert A. Heinlein… Tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, A madman can be prevented from bomb-throwing—but a mad world? King of the Hill by James Blish. That's tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. Support the show

The computer classified it "rabbit" and Montresig was not one to argue, long ears or not! Rabbits Have Long Ears by Lawrence F. Willard, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode. Support the show - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV Two days ago, we heard from Isaac Asimov, yesterday Philip K. Dick and tomorrow Robert A. Heinlein. Three very accomplished and recognized science fiction authors. Today, not so much.  The man who wrote today's offering only authored one story that we could find. We couldn't find when he was born or when he died nor where he lived, until we unearthed a response he wrote to an article in Astounding Science Fiction in 1956. He wrote about “road hypnosis” and how it can cause accidents. He suggested several solutions including the use of radar to warn the driver that he is getting close to another motorist. Radar wouldn't be used for more than 30 years in Japanese vehicles and high end cars in the US and Europe wouldn't use radar for more than 40 years after Willard brought it up in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine. We also learned that at the time he was a news photographer and he gave his address as, Box 262, Yalesville, Connecticut. Two and a half years later Mr. Willard's lone story appeared in the August 1958 issue of, If Worlds of Science Fiction Magazine. Turn to page 70 for Rabbits Have Long Ears by Lawrence F. Willard… Tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The exposition was easily the biggest John Watts had ever seen, and he'd seen them all. Yet, besides its size, there was something else strange about this fair­–it was just a little out of this world! The Elephant Circuit by Robert A. Heinlein. That's tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.Support the show

There is one fact no sane man can quarrel with ... everything has a beginning and an end. But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so! And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode. There are many ways you can support The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. Your reviews and ratings on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, comments on our YouTube channel and there's a link in the description where you can buy us a cup of coffee. If you choose to buy us a cup of coffee and tell us your name when you do, we'll thank you here on the podcast. Everything you do to help us allows us to produce more episodes faster. Thank you. Lester del Rey was an interesting fellow. He often told people his real name was Ramon Felipe Alvarez-del Rey. But his sister confirmed that his name was in fact Leonard Knapp. He told people his father was a poor sharecropper but that's not true either. It seems Lester del Rey was destined to become a great storyteller. He was born in 1915, some say he was born in Clydesdale, Minnesota, but I looked and looked and couldn't find Clydesdale, Minnesota. Wonder if that was made up too? His mother died shortly after he was born, his father hired a woman to care for him and his older sister, eventually marrying the woman. But she didn't able to connect with young Lester, actually Leonard. In 1931, at the age of 16, he moved by himself to Washington D.C. to attend George Washington University on a scholarship. He didn't stay long. For the next two years he supported himself doing a variety of odd jobs and writing poetry. He sold 20 poems to various publications before coming to the realization that poetry was not his thing. In 1938 he wrote a science fiction short story on a dare from a friend after he criticized the work of a professional writer. He wrote “The Faithful” in one day and submitted it to Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Eight days later he got a check in the mail and his professional writing career had begun. By the way, you will hear “The Faithful” in a future episode. Let's open the pages of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine in February 1951, turn to page 62 for And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey… In two days on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught in Kreynborg's marvelous, unique trap. Invasion by Murray Leinster. That's in two days on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.Support the show

The man you're listening to is one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th-century: Ray Bradbury. By the spring of 1955 he'd authored more than one-hundred short stories and one novel, Fahrenheit 451, born out of a collection of earlier works. These stories were published in magazines like Astounding Science Fiction, Street and Smith, Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and The Saturday Evening Post. Among sci-fi enthusiasts, Bradbury was regarded as one of America's preeminent writers. In April of 1955, NBC staff writer Ernest Kinoy was tabbed to adapt one of the sections of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, “And the Moon Be Still as Bright'' for a new audition. The show would be called X Minus One. X Minus One was picked up. The network formed a partnership with the aforementioned sci-fi magazines to choose stories for adaptation. The magazines would plug the show, and the show would mention the magazine during the introduction. X Minus One debuted on Sunday, April 24th, 1955. Its scheduling was erratic. NBC had long been known for impatience with new programs. If a series wasn't generating big numbers and sponsors straight away, NBC often dropped or moved the show. Unfairly, the onus was on Street and Smith and their magazines to make X Minus One profitable. By September 5th, 1957 the show was airing Thursday evenings at 8:05PM. It was NBC's only dramatic offering of the evening. Fittingly the episode was called “Saucer of Loneliness.” We've spent a good deal of time in past Breaking Walls episodes discussing Hollywood radio's famed actors. There was a concurrent equally-talented group of New York actors. Like Bob Hastings. Bob Hastings spoke of Arnold Moss. There was Jan Miner, John Gibson, Joe Julian, Jackson Beck, Mandel Kramer, another oft-heavy was Larry Haines, and of course, the husband-wife team of Mary Jane Higby and Guy Sorel. These are just some of the people who appeared on countless shows originating from New York during radio's golden age. Many were able to make the transition to television, many others weren't. Once X Minus One signed off at 8:30, Nightline signed on for ninety minutes. News had become more valuable than drama in prime time. X Minus One would be canceled after the January 9th, 1958 broadcast.

On this episode we're joined by OblivionSeeker (Les) to take a look at Unknown (later changed to Unknown Worlds), a brief-lived fantasy sibling publication to Astounding Science Fiction. Also mentioned in the episode is Robert Kuntz's website, which you can find here.

Bold and ruthless, he was famed throughout the System as a big-game hunter. From the firedrakes of Mercury to the ice-crawlers of Pluto, he'd slain them all. But his trophy-room lacked one item; and now Riordan swore he'd bag the forbidden game that roamed the red deserts ... a Martian! Duel on Syrtis by Poul Anderson, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.Today's episode of the podcast marks the debut of Poul Anderson. Anderson was no ordinary science fiction author. He has been called ''one of the five or six most important writers to appear during the science-fiction publishing boom of the decade following the end of World War II.''To call him prolific would be a vast understatement. His wife, Karen, said she did not know how many books he wrote, saying. ''We lost count after 100.'' As for short stories, I stopped counting at 150.Poul William Anderson was born on November 25th, 1926, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, to Anton and Astrid Anderson. His father had anglicized the spelling of the family name, originally Andersen. He told his wife she could name their first child, and she chose Poul.His father died in a car crash when Poul was 11. His mother took him and his brother first to Denmark, then to Maryland, and finally to a 40-acre farm in southern Minnesota.While growing up in Minnesota Poul found himself spending all of his tiny allowance on subscriptions to science fiction magazines. And so, his love of science fiction began.A former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he won numerous awards, including three Nebula and seven Hugo awards. In 1997 the association named him a Grandmaster and he was inducted into the Science Fiction Fantasy Hall of Fame.He had a few short science fiction stories published in the 1940s, but his career really took off in the 1950s when more than 70 of his stories appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Super Science Stories, Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy and other publications.Today's story appeared in March 1951 in Planet Stories magazine. Let's turn to page 5 for Duel on Syrtis by Poul Anderson…Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, After space, there was always one more river to cross ... the far side of hatred and murder! The Hated by Frederik Pohl. That's next week onThe Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

Fear and misfortune stalk the strange byways of a lonely planet. A Walk in the Dark by Arthur C. Clarke, that's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.Thanks to uncle shaun for his 5 star review on Apple Podcasts! “Just what I wanted! This is a superb Sci-Fi podcast. I love everything about it. Keep ‘em coming!” Thanks uncle shaun, we will. We now have 98 ratings on Apple Podcasts in the US. We would love to get to 100 ratings and we could use more reviews too, if you would be so kind. Even if you listen to us using some other player you can go to Apple Podcasts and give us a 5 star rating, if you think it's deserved and leave a review. We'll leave a link to Apple Podcasts US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands in the description. Those are the countries where most, but certainly not all, our listeners come from. If you live somewhere else and need a link please send us an email, scott@lostscifi.com.U.S. - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789Canada - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789U.K. - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789Australia - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789Germany - https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789Netherlands - https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the-lost-sci-fi-podcast-vintage-sci-fi-stories-every-week/id1611620789Today marks the debut of Sir Arthur Charles Clarke on our podcast. Most people know him from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely regarded as one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was born in England in December 1917. He said his interest in science fiction began with the November 1928 issue of Amazing Stories magazine at the age of 11, which he read in 1929 after it had been shipped from the United States. Sir Arthur Charles Clarke remembered buying this life changing magazine at Woolworth's and said, “How I used to haunt that once-famous store during my lunch hour, in search of issues of Amazing, Wonder, and Astounding, buried like jewels in the junk-pile of detective and western pulps!”Clarke did have some stories published between 1937 and 1945, those stories were published in fanzines. His first professional sale was published in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1946. He was still a member of the Royal Air Force at the time he sold his first two stories to Astounding in 1945. Rescue Party sold first, followed by Loophole which was the first story actually published. Over the next few years his stories appeared regularly in leading pulps, and he always acknowledged them as his ‘launch pad' to become a writer.He wrote around 100 short science fiction stories during his career and dozens of novels. Today's story first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine in August 1950. A Walk in the Dark by Arthur C. Clarke…Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Ralph Banks editor of Popular Crafts Monthly, was a short stocky man with a round pink face, a crisp crew cut, an intensely energetic manner. When a letter from the Smithsonian Institute came across his desk it caught his attention, A Practical Man's Guide by Jack VanceThat's next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

TENE pod continues their look into fashy ruling class woowoo following JB Rhine's ESP lab at Duke into the first steps on the path to Project Stargate alongside the Golden Age science fiction fandom created by John W. Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction. Praise Mighty Jorth! Cool sci-fi sounds from freesound.org Subscribe to patreon.org/tenepod and twitter.com/tenepod.

What do you call a con man in an advanced world of rocket ships, concrete, and stainless steel? A stainless steel rat. Harry Harrison, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.  Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening.  We are proudly supported by our listeners. Please sign up to be a supporter for as little as $5 a month. We'll give you a monthly coupon code for $8 off any audiobook order. Your support on a monthly basis is vital to keep us going.  Go to http://classictalesaudiobooks.com and become a financial supporter today. Thank you so much.  The Arsène Lupin Podcast is coming along. If you haven't heard, I'll be releasing the first collection of Lupin stories as its own show. Wednesdays are about to get even better.  And now for something completely different.   I thought we'd have a little bit of classic science fiction for a while. We're starting with a short story by Harry Harrison. The Stainless Steel Rat is his most well-known story, along with the Deadworld series. Originally released in the August 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the noir style of the story helps us to immediately know our protagonist, and the world he inhabits. I hope you like it.  And now, The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison  Follow this link to become a monthly supporter:   Follow this link to subscribe to our YouTube Channel:   Check out our blog about how audiobooks are made:    

Dimension X was an NBC radio program broadcast mostly on an unsponsored, sustaining basis from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre recorded. Fred Wiehe and Edward King were the directors, and Norman Rose was heard as both announcer and narrator, opening the show with: "Adventures in time and space... told [or transcribed] in future tense..." For two months, beginning on July 7, 1950, the series was sponsored by Wheaties. Overview: Preceded by Mutual's 2000 Plus (1950–52), Dimension X was not the first adult science fiction series on radio, but the acquisition of previously published stories immediately gave it a strong standing with the science fiction community, as did the choice of established writers within the genre: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts adapted most of the stories and also provided original scripts. In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote: It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology. The series opened with "The Outer Limit," Ernest Kinoy's adaptation of Graham Doar's short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949) about alien contact. A week later (April 15, 1950), the program presented Jack Williamson's most famous story, "With Folded Hands," first published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and can be heard today. Later, NBC's X Minus One (1955–58) utilized many of the same actors and scripts.

Dimension X was an NBC radio program broadcast mostly on an unsponsored, sustaining basis from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre recorded. Fred Wiehe and Edward King were the directors, and Norman Rose was heard as both announcer and narrator, opening the show with: "Adventures in time and space... told [or transcribed] in future tense..." For two months, beginning on July 7, 1950, the series was sponsored by Wheaties. Overview: Preceded by Mutual's 2000 Plus (1950–52), Dimension X was not the first adult science fiction series on radio, but the acquisition of previously published stories immediately gave it a strong standing with the science fiction community, as did the choice of established writers within the genre: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts adapted most of the stories and also provided original scripts. In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote: It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology. The series opened with "The Outer Limit," Ernest Kinoy's adaptation of Graham Doar's short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949) about alien contact. A week later (April 15, 1950), the program presented Jack Williamson's most famous story, "With Folded Hands," first published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and can be heard today. Later, NBC's X Minus One (1955–58) utilized many of the same actors and scripts.

QRM-Interplanetary by George O. Smith audiobook. QRM-Interplanetary is one of eleven science fiction novelettes by George O. Smith published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine between 1942 and 1945. 

This is without a doubt the most unusual episode of The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, featuring 8 short sci-fi stories for you by Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, Harry Fletcher, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick.  That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.A few weeks ago Blind Voyager said and I quote, “It would be fun to do an episode of several short, very short sci-fi stories." Thanks for your request Blind Voyager and today's episode would never have happened if not for you!I came across several interesting short stories months ago but it's tough to sell a 4 minute audiobook and the thought of a super short podcast didn't appeal to me either. However, when we got the request from Blind Voyager the light bulb went on and I began planning today's podcast.After you have a chance to listen, and you will want to listen all the way to the end, let us know what you think by commenting and tell us if we should do another episode of the The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast with several super short sci-fi stories. You can always send us an email, scott@lostscifi.com.Our first story today can be found in the June 1960 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" by Fredric Brown…That's "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" by Fredric Brown… up next another story by Brown which first appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories in August 1960, "The House"…That's "The House" by Fredric Brown and now our last Fredric Brown story for today, from Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1954, "Experiment"… Let's go back to October 1944, you could buy Super Science Stories for 15 cents and if you did you would have found, "And Then—The Silence" by Ray Bradbury...In 1953 Harry Walton wrote a short story that was published in the March/April 1953 edition of Fantastic using the pen name Harry Fletcher, "A Star Falls on Broadway"... If you'd picked up a copy of the April 1942 Astounding Science Fiction you would have discovered this super short story by Isaac Asimov, "Time Pussy"...The next two stories by Philip K. Dick didn't appear in a science fiction magazine when they were written. And they weren't credited to Philip K. Dick. These stories were published in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. Dick was only 13 years old when he wrote The Black Arts which appeared in the newspaper on Wednesday September 16th, 1942 and credited to Philip Dick. "The Black Arts"...Philip Dick was a little older when this next story appeared in the newspaper, he had just turned 16, when the Berkeley Daily Gazette published "Santa's Return" on Tuesday January 4th 1944."Santa's Return" by Philip Dick.Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast…Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen. But he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger's skull under his arm."The Skull" by request by Philip K. Dick. That's next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

"And Then There Were None" read by John Lothe johnlothe.wordpress.com/ www.youtube.com/user/JohnLothe en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Frank_Russell www.corbettreport.com/ Eric Frank Russell (January 6, 1905 – February 28, 1978) was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. Up to 1955 several of his stories were published under pseudonyms, at least Duncan H. Munro and Niall(e) Wilde.[1] -- www.amazon.com/Then-There-Were-None/dp/B001E2R4HK The story is set sometime in the 27th century. Four hundred years ago the Blieder-drive engine was invented making faster-than-light travel possible. Within a few years hundreds of ships packed full with colonists had left Earth. Many worlds were populated - often by like minded and eccentric colonists. Now the universe is believed to hold an estimated 1600 newly populated planets, and Earth believes it ought to rule them all. A Terran battleship with 2000 soldiers, bureaucrats, and an Imperial Ambassador land on an unknown and under-populated planet with the intention of making a claim on what they consider their own. However things begin to go wrong for the invading force almost immediately and it is discovered that the locals posses an unstoppable secret weapon. Audio taken from: www.corbettreport.com/mp3/andthentherewerenone.mp3

Dimension X was an NBC radio program broadcast mostly on an unsponsored, sustaining basis from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre recorded. Fred Wiehe and Edward King were the directors, and Norman Rose was heard as both announcer and narrator, opening the show with: "Adventures in time and space... told [or transcribed] in future tense..." For two months, beginning on July 7, 1950, the series was sponsored by Wheaties. Overview: Preceded by Mutual's 2000 Plus (1950–52), Dimension X was not the first adult science fiction series on radio, but the acquisition of previously published stories immediately gave it a strong standing with the science fiction community, as did the choice of established writers within the genre: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts adapted most of the stories and also provided original scripts. In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote: It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology. The series opened with "The Outer Limit," Ernest Kinoy's adaptation of Graham Doar's short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949) about alien contact. A week later (April 15, 1950), the program presented Jack Williamson's most famous story, "With Folded Hands," first published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and can be heard today. Later, NBC's X Minus One (1955–58) utilized many of the same actors and scripts.

I learned something today. Did you know that when Elements are named to honor cities the Latin names for the cities are used rather than the common names? The funny thing is that this is true even if the city has no Latin name. This is how we get the name for holmium, which is named after Stockholm or rather after "Holmia" which is the Latin name for Stockholm that the chemist made up. This is from the essay "Names! Names! Names!" by the good doctor. It's all about naming elements and, although I haven't quite finished it yet, I'm pretty sure it covers all hundred or so that were known at the time. The essay appeared in the December 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the very same issue as our final installment of The Naked Sun. This led John W. Campbell to declare Asimov a "two-headed author." Isaac's predilection for non-fiction was starting to show. Being trained as a chemist, Asimov gives us a ton of Asenion names to enjoy in this final section! There's GalDIEah Delmarre, Kloitta Cantero, Jothan Leebig, Corwin Attlebish, and Anselmo Quemot. And who could forget Benzadril Copperbottom? In this final section, which corresponds to chapters 13 to 18 in the book, Baley survives the assassination attempt, gets his portrait done, almost strolls to his death, and solves the case! Of course, we talk about it all. Join us for the setting of The Naked Sun!

On Ron's Amazing Stories we have a left over from last week. A Johnny is it True look at the TV series Gunsmoke. We also have a science fiction story from L Ron Hubbard. The Empire State Building is missing with everyone still inside! Ray Peyton returns to the show with another one of his stories from his amazing life. We travel to Iraq and his encounter with the guy from Bangladesh. So press that play button and enjoy the show. Featured Story - The Professor Was A Thief Our featured story comes from the classic radio series Dimension X. It takes us to New York. A metropolitan newspaper reports that Grant's tomb has just been stolen. Sounds crazy right? Well it's true. Not only Grant's tomb but some other famous landmarks have all gone missing. The story is titled The Professor Was A Thief and it was originally written by L. Ron Hubbard. It appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction in February of 1940. Later it was published by Galaxy Press as a novel and is still available for purchase on Amazon or any book seller. What we will hear today is the radio adaptation of the story. It first aired on Dimension X on November 5, 1950. Other Stories Include - The Forsyth Case, The Ultimate Science Fiction Mega Collection, A Story By Ray Peyton, The Professor Was A Thief, and Johnny Is It True - Gunsmoke. Ron's Amazing Stories Is Sponsored by: Audible - You can get a free audiobook and a 30 day free trial at   and - Good Treats for your dog to eat. Your Stories: Do you have a story that you would like to share on the podcast or the blog? Head to the main website, click on Story Submission, leave your story, give it a title, and please tell me where you're from. I will read it if I can. Links are below. Program Info: Ron's Amazing Stories is published each Thursday. You can download it from , stream it on or on the mobile version of . Do you prefer the radio? We are heard every Thursday at 10:00 pm and Sunday Night at 11:00 PM (EST) on . Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this . Social Links:Contact Links:

Dimension X was an NBC radio program broadcast mostly on an unsponsored, sustaining basis from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre recorded. Fred Wiehe and Edward King were the directors, and Norman Rose was heard as both announcer and narrator, opening the show with: "Adventures in time and space... told [or transcribed] in future tense..." For two months, beginning on July 7, 1950, the series was sponsored by Wheaties. Overview: Preceded by Mutual's 2000 Plus (1950–52), Dimension X was not the first adult science fiction series on radio, but the acquisition of previously published stories immediately gave it a strong standing with the science fiction community, as did the choice of established writers within the genre: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts adapted most of the stories and also provided original scripts. In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote: It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology. The series opened with "The Outer Limit," Ernest Kinoy's adaptation of Graham Doar's short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949) about alien contact. A week later (April 15, 1950), the program presented Jack Williamson's most famous story, "With Folded Hands," first published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and can be heard today. Later, NBC's X Minus One (1955–58) utilized many of the same actors and scripts.

We've seen grandiose visions of our future in space in science fiction since the early 20th century. The Golden Age of pulp sci-fi ramped this up, then came Star Trek and other, more realistic depictions. While fiction and reality don't often align, there's more here than meets the eye. Join us for this fascinating look into the future. Host: Rod Pyle Co-Host: Geoffrey Notkin Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Dimension X was an NBC radio program broadcast mostly on an unsponsored, sustaining basis from April 8, 1950, to September 29, 1951. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre recorded. Fred Wiehe and Edward King were the directors, and Norman Rose was heard as both announcer and narrator, opening the show with: "Adventures in time and space... told [or transcribed] in future tense..." For two months, beginning on July 7, 1950, the series was sponsored by Wheaties. Overview: Preceded by Mutual's 2000 Plus (1950–52), Dimension X was not the first adult science fiction series on radio, but the acquisition of previously published stories immediately gave it a strong standing with the science fiction community, as did the choice of established writers within the genre: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts adapted most of the stories and also provided original scripts. In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote: It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual's 2000 Plus and NBC's Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology. The series opened with "The Outer Limit," Ernest Kinoy's adaptation of Graham Doar's short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949) about alien contact. A week later (April 15, 1950), the program presented Jack Williamson's most famous story, "With Folded Hands," first published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and can be heard today. Later, NBC's X Minus One (1955–58) utilized many of the same actors and scripts.

If you enjoy these lost sci-fi short stories you will love the 50 book bundle of audiobooks at lostscifi.com, 27 hours of vintage sci-fi! All 27 hours for only $9.88 when you use the promo code “podcast”.Today's author is yet another sci-fi fan turned sci-fi writer. But unlike many sci-fi writers he was also a harsh sci-fi critic. Damon Francis Knight was born September 19th, 1922 in Baker City, Oregon. A brave soul, Knight moved across the country to New York City when he was 17 to live in poverty in a number of shared apartments with science-fiction fans, writers and editors. He was a member of the Futurians along with CM Kornbluth, Frederic Pohl and others. His first real impact in the world of science fiction came from hisfirst review, which appeared in a fanzine, when the original version of AE Van Vogt's “The World Of A” appeared in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1945. By the way “The World Of A” was the first hardcover science fiction novel published after World War II in 1948.When Van Vogt revised his novel in 1970, he commented on Knight's review saying  "I foresaw a brilliant writing career for the young man who had written so poetical an attack."Damon Knight is generally acknowledged to have been the first outstanding Science Fiction critic. He wrote around 17 novels and more than 100 short stories.His work found its way to TV when the short story “To Serve Man” appeared on The Twilight Zone in 1962. It's been said that it's one of the best known and highly regarded episodes of the series. “To Serve Man” won a 50-yearRetro-Hugoin 2001 as the best short story of 1950.From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in December 1952 turn with me to page 76 for The Beachcomber by Damon Knight.The Beachcomber by Damon Knight. Damon Francis Knight, sci-fi fan, writer, award winner, critic and teacher died April 15th, 2002. He was 79.Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast Granting the need for money, a man will doany dangerous job that comes along; Borgmann was such a man; air lion diving off Uranus—the job!That's next week onThe Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

Did you know that every story you hear on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast and many more are available every day for only 97 cents. Listen to them on an easy to use app. New stories from Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and our first foray into the fantastic mind of Frederik Pohl, all on sale every day for only 97 cents. Lost sci-fi books 1 thru 40, with more than 20 and a half hours of vintage science fiction is available exclusively at lostscifi.com and it's only $14.97.Very often we find it hard to learn much about the authors on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. In many cases they had a short career and disappeared as quickly as they appeared as if they were abducted by aliens never to be seen again.The author of today's story wrote54 short sci-fi stories from 1951 to 1965, starting with Hell's Pavement in Astounding Science Fiction and ending with Way Station in If Worlds of Science Fiction.We know he was born in Pennsylvania on the24th of May 1917 and died on the 13th of February 2001 at the age of 83.He was born Irving EnglandCox, Jr. and used several slight variations of his given name, Irving B. Cox Jr., Irving Cox and the one he used for today's short sci-fi story Irving Cox Jr.That's pretty much all we know about him except for a reference to an Irving E. Cox Jr in the 1940 Census. He lived in Sacramento California at the time with his father Irving, mother Adelle and a younger sister and brother.The story you are about to hear was in the middle of his career and is his first offering of 1955. From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in July 1955, Export Commodity by Irving Cox Jr.

He was was sent to obtain a soil sample on a distant planet. It was supposed to be a routine assignment, however it was an assignment fraught with danger. He found what he was looking for but he discovered a much more valuable export commodity. Hi, I'm your host, Scott Miller, sci-fi fanatic and audiobook narrator and I want to thank you for listening to The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast with at least one lost sci-fi short story in every episode. Did you know that every story you hear on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast and many more are available every day for only 97 cents. Listen to them on an easy to use app. New stories from Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and our first foray into the fantastic mind of Frederik Pohl, all on sale every day for only 97 cents. Lost sci-fi books 1 thru 40, with more than 20 and a half hours of vintage science fiction is available exclusively at lostscifi.com and it's only $14.97. Very often we find it hard to learn much about the authors on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. In many cases they had a short career and disappeared as quickly as they appeared as if they were abducted by aliens never to be seen again. The author of today's story wrote54 short sci-fi stories from 1951 to 1965, starting with Hell's Pavement in Astounding Science Fiction and ending with Way Station in If Worlds of Science Fiction. We know he was born in Pennsylvania on the24th of May 1917 and died on the 13th of February 2001 at the age of 83. He was born Irving EnglandCox, Jr. and used several slight variations of his given name, Irving B. Cox Jr., Irving Cox and the one he used for today's short sci-fi story Irving Cox Jr. That's pretty much all we know about him except for a reference to an Irving E. Cox Jr in the 1940 Census. He lived in Sacramento California at the time with his father Irving, mother Adelle and a younger sister and brother. The story you are about to hear was in the middle of his career and is his first offering of 1955. From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in July 1955, Export Commodity by Irving Cox Jr. Subscribe to The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast - Vintage Sci-Fi Stories Every Week on Soundwise