Spacemens Luck

 

Where Tom Corbett, Captain Video, CMDR Corry and Other Spacemen Still Live

The Federal Bureau of Missing Persons is broadcasting it’s latest coded bulletin transmission with a list of recently missing persons when they receive a CQ (SOS) radio message from a crank calling earth who claims to be calling from the Moon. Triangulating to locate the offender, radio operator Charlie Stafford discovers that the message did in fact come from the Moon from a man identifying himself as Cornelius Otterburn. Of course the call is dismissed, until a minor member of the Federal Bureau of Missing Persons begins to suspect that the call is related to a strange series of disappearances over the past several years.

Charlie Stafford tells Federal Bureau of Missing Persons records clerk Henry Stinton who recognizes the name and decides to investigate the name Cornelius Otterburn and finds only one person with that name has gone missing and he was an Atomic Physicist who had disappeared 5 years previously on June 5th 1945.

Read the rest of this entry »

A not so successful Madison Avenue ad executive named Syd Ryan is setting at his office desk when his assistant Oliver comes in and states that there is potential client waiting to see him. Syd has him sent in. The client identifies himself as simply Looshaw a Martian and says he wants to engage the ad agency for a campaign to announce the “Martians are Coming.” Thinking he’s a nut Syd immediately begins to throw Looshaw out when he offers a $5,000 cash retainer.

Once Syd gets his creative thoughts going he proposes a suspense campaign with some mysterious press releases announcing “The Martians are coming. ” Looshaw wants the ad campaign to culminate in a parade on June 1st which will be called “Martian Day.” The parade will herald the Martians arrival. Looshaw immediately approves authorizing a one million dollar budget. Looshaw continues that “We are selling a concept,” he tells the ad-man Syd Ryan. “The concept of invasion–from Mars.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This episode is one of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. The story begins in 1987 when the first astronauts from Earth aboard the spaceship XR-57 and a 17 Man crew have just landed on Mars. The landing party leaves the ship into a fog and the first thing they hear after emerging from their ship is the crowing of a rooster. Then they find an old fashioned lawn ornament in the shape of an iron deer sitting in the yard of a regular old fashioned house complete with a porch swing. As the fog clears the crew are shocked to discover a Rockwellian 1920′s small town, eerily similar to those they left on Earth.

Peering through the first house’s window they see a piano complete with sheet music. Their confusion becomes even greater when a little old lady answers the door bell. When they explain that they are from Earth the lady replies “you mean out of the ground?” Captain Black insists they are from earth and that this is Mars she replies insistently that this is Green Acres, Wisconsin in the United States of America in 1928.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the legend of old time spaceman “Noisy” Rhysling a blind singer of the spaceways who lost his sight saving a ship and then spends the rest of his life bumming rides on spaceships singing his songs. He is the poet laureate of space, part Homer, part Robert Burns, and part Rudyard Kipling. The space-going songwriter and radiation-blinded spaceship engineer crisscrosses the solar system writing and singing songs.

The story begins when the aged Rhysling is signed aboard the Tramp Spaceship Gartalk as a Jet Man. There is an engine malfunction and and Rhysling looses his sight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometime in the far future man is exploring the galaxies of deep space and on most every planet they explore they find only rubble and remnants of a long-dead space-faring civilization. Why did this “Lost Race” disappear? Whatever happened to them happened over 100,000 years ago.

The Space Freighter Corilla based out of Earth after having been traveling in overdrive for 103 days re-emerge in normal space in the vicinity of an uncharted solar system with a sun and 3 planets orbiting it.

After they go into a low orbit to investigate one of the planets they find ruins of the “Lost Race” only unlike the thousand other worlds where the ruins of the “Lost Race” were found these ruins were not totally destroyed. Part of the city of the “Lost Race” is still standing. This is unheard of. But before they can decide what to do there is an explosion on the power deck and they are forced to make a crash landing near the city of the “Lost Race.”

Read the rest of this entry »

In the far flung future of 1982, no kidding, Spacemen discover The Great Galactic Barrier. Manned space flights to the moon and mars are common. Now they are trying to travel to the planet Volta (not sure where this is or eve what solar system). Volta is beyond the barrier. The Great Galactic Barrier is a strange invisible barrier which is frustrating Man’s attempts to explore the depths of space. So far five ships have attempted the voyage, but none have ever returned, their fate a mystery since no signal can pass through the barrier.

On June 2, 1987 the rocket ship Star Cloud blasts off for Volta. To avoid the fate of the first five expeditions the Star Cloud’s hull has been lined in lead. The Star Cloud is the sixth ship to attempt the trip, commanded by Captain Lewis Thorson and his crew, who are plagued even before they lift off. First there is a stowaway (Charlie who had been grounded for acceleration bends) aboard who is discovered and removed just before lift off. Then several of the crew come down with the Space Blues, a malady that seems to only effect certain crew members.

Read the rest of this entry »

We find our self in the far distant future of 2006. A future where the Mark 3 Electronic Brain is the latest computer and is used in places like Harvard University. Soon there will be the next generation computer the Mark 4 Electronic Brain.

First we meet Harry Underhill, manufacturer of domestic robots who finds his livelihood threatened when a new competitor appears on the market. Humanoids, which are vastly superior to his, which are inefficient and clunky, are devoted to the protection and service of mankind. Their “prime directive” is to serve man.

The first time Harry speaks to one of these new robots he calls it a robot and he is promptly informed that they are mechanicals and not robots. The mechanical offers a service contract to him but Underhill immediately declines with disgust.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first episode in the then new (1950) science fiction anthology series Dimension X. The show begins in the distant future in the year 1965 (April 15, 1965) and were standing beside the giant concrete runway of a desert testing ground somewhere in the American Southwest. Test pilot Steve Weston is getting last minute instructions from his boss Hanson and well wishes before he is to lift off in an experimental Strato Rocket the RJX-1 and fly higher than any man had gone before—to the outer reaches of earth’s atmosphere.

Once in flight everything is working according to plan when Weston suddenly reports sighting something large and shiny above his plane. Weston gives chase to the mysterious object and then disappears from ground controls radar screen with only ten minutes of fuel left. Search planes are sent out but find no sign of the downed plane.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dimension X Radio Show ran from April 8, 1950 to September 29, 1951 for a total of 50 episodes. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were pre-recorded. Dimension X was Radio’s early 1950′s premier series of adult science fiction tales. The series opened with The Outer Limit, an Ernest Kinoy adaptation of Graham Doar’s short story from The Saturday Evening Post (December 24, 1949), about alien contact. This story was very popular and over the next few years aired on several other Old Time Radio Shows such as X-1, Escape, Suspense, Beyond Tomorrow, Exploring tomorrow and probably others. 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.

Below is a list of all 50 episodes with their broadcast dates. Over time I will be adding each and everyone of these episodes to the Spacemen’s Luck website so you can hear these excellent programs yourself. You will be able to add your comments about each of these episodes and rate them using our star rating system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dimension X, was an NBC radio program broadcast on an un-sponsored weekly basis from April 8, 1950 to September 29, 1951 for a total of 50 episodes. With a five-month hiatus from January 1951 to June 1951, the series spanned 17 months. All 50 episodes of the series survived and will over time be added to the Spacemen’s Luck website for your listening enjoyment. The first 13 episodes were broadcast live, and the remainder were transcribed (pre-recorded). These stories were not kiddie space shows like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. They were thoughtful and sometimes down beat stories based on more serious science fiction stories.

Dimension X, was the first science fiction series to use stories adapted from Sci-Fi pulp magazines of the day like Amazing Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder and Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (which eventually sponsored the show). Classic tales by Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Bloch and Isaac Asimov were brought to life in the minds eye of numerous listeners.

Read the rest of this entry »