Spacemens Luck

 

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

Dimension X

This is the story of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and is of the Fourth Mars Expedition. The previous three Mars Expedition’s had all failed with the rocketships landing on Mars then after 24 hours of landing no further contact with them was made.

Our story of the Fourth Expedition begins as they make their landing on the surface of Mars. After landing they send out a scouting party, lead by the crew’s physician, Hathaway and assisted by archaeologist Spender, to a nearby Martian city. Meanwhile the rest of the crew remain near the ship awaiting the return of the Hathaway search party and are gathering firewood against the cold Martian evening.

Hathaway and Spender’s search party returns and reports that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox (most likely brought by one of the earlier three expeditions). In a celebratory fashion the Captain authorizes alcoholic beverages to be issued and the crew began partying and celebrating the end of the Martians.

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1953 Space Travel Movie It Came from Outer Space

Based on a Ray Bradbury story “The Meteor”. Amateur astronomer John Putnam, a romantic dreamer misunderstood by the local townsfolk, and schoolteacher and fiance Ellen Fields see a fiery ball fall from the sky and crash into the desert near the small town of Sand Rock, Arizona. John drags his friend, Pete, out of bed to take him and Ellen over to the crash site near the old Excelsior Mine in his helicopter. Once there, John climbs down into the crater. Unfortunately, he does so alone, as Pete and Ellen wait for him on the rim of the crash crater. John is the only one who sees the spaceship before a landslide covers it. And John is the only one who catches a glimpse of the hideous thing inside.

John Putnam’s story is ridiculed by the townspeople, Sheriff Warren, and the local media. Even Ellen is unsure of what to believe at first, but soon agrees to assist John in further investigation. In the following days, several local people disappear. A few return, only to begin to act in bizarre ways, such as speaking and behaving in a zombie-like manner and staring directly at the sun for long periods of time. In the meantime, the local telephone repairmen, Frank Daylon and his assistant George, are kidnapped by the creatures who convert to the looks of the repairmen and begin to act strangely. John is convinced that their likenesses were taken over by the space visitors. As it turns out, they are actually aliens from the buried spaceship, and the real humans have been abducted by them including his fiance Ellen.

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Dimension X

The Dimension X production of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles is a compilation of several of his Martian Chronicles short stories, weaved into a single storyline. Includes abbreviated versions of “Rocket Summer”, “Ylla”, “–and the Moon be Still as Bright”, “The Settlers”, “The Locusts”, “The Shore”, “The Off Season”, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, and “The Million-Year Picnic”.

Our story opens in a wintry small town in Ohio in January 1999 when a flooding sea of hot hair crosses the land. A little girl explains it is “Rocket Summer” where nearby a rocket launches toward Mars.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

Based on a story by science fiction legend Ray Bradbury originally titled Orphans of the Sky. The inhabitants of a generation starship, that is a space Ark, the humans have spent generations aboard, on a never ending journey to nowhere. They have been traveling for so many generations that they have long ago forgotten their origins and purpose. They think that their ship is the entire Universe, not realizing they live inside a spaceship, to them, “the Ship is All.”

The inhabitants are divided into two factions, the lower decks occupied by humans, and the upper by mutants.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

Our story opens with the announcer: “When the first space rocket lands on Mars, what will we find? Only the ruins of a dead and deserted planet, or will there be life? Intelligent life in some strange form that we can only imagine. Will we be welcomed with open arms? Or will the Martians treat us as invaders? Only one thing is certain. Some day a giant metal ship will take off from earth to travel through the black velocities, the silent gulfs of space, to descend at last into the darkness of the upper Martian atmospheres. And on that day, man will finally know the answers, the day we first land on Mars.”

This show is a radio adaption of a short story from Ray Bradbury’s classic series of short stories “The Martian Chronicles.” The short story collection chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists.

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Dimension X

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.

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Picture of a Classic Rocketship of the 1950s

Welcome to this new category for Classic Space Travel here at Spacemen’s Luck. Space Travel Movies of the 1950′s and 1960′s is important for those of you, like myself, who got your vision of space travel from the radio and TV of the 1950′s.

In the series “Space Travel Movies” I will have show descriptions, cast members, production credits and plot lines for movies made during the 1950′s and 1960′s. Additionally, I will be adding my own reviews for these classics. Of course I am biased toward any and all science fiction space travel movies, serials, TV shows, radio episodes and books created during those golden days of space travel.

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Dimension X

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.

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