X Minus One Podcast

X Minus One Podcast gathers broadcasts of X Minus One, a science fiction drama series produced for the NBC radio network. Its opening is hard to mistake. A launch countdown runs from X minus 5 to X minus 1, ends on the word fire, and an announcer promises stories of the future set on a thousand maybe worlds. After that, each episode is its own story with its own characters. The stories cover a lot of ground. In Point of Departure, by Von Shelton, an official faces a board of directors to explain why an atomic plant is short a large sum, and the explanation involves a solar converter, a rocket and a pilot named Porter Hayes. Death Wish puts a crew aboard a ship moving at almost the speed of light, and the captain admits he does not know what to do. The Native Problem follows settlers who arrive calling the place their promised land, while a speech warns them that the aboriginal people there cannot be trusted. The narrator walks down to the beach with his empty hands held out and is stopped at gunpoint. Other episodes lean toward mystery. The Old Die Rich, by H.L. Gold, starts with a sergeant letting the narrator into a shabby room where a medical examiner is looking over an old woman's body, and later finds him held at gunpoint in a room full of dials, tubes and a wire mesh cage. In another, a newspaper reporter follows a young woman held after a flying saucer case through a disorderly conduct fine and a subpoena from a congressional committee, where she answers every question but one. Finn O'Donovan's story from the pages of Galaxy sends the narrator and a companion six miles across a rocky plain through rising wind to reach a water tank. Several of these stories share a pattern: they are told by someone inside them. An official giving a statement, a reporter on assignment, a man let into a room where a body lies. That first-person framing keeps the drama grounded, even when the premise is a flying saucer. The recordings keep their broadcast trappings. Closing credits name the cast, the adapter and the director, among them Les Damon, George Lefferts and George Voutsas, and Fred Collins signs off by name. One broadcast comes wrapped inside an NBC Nightline segment with Walter O'Keefe. Another ends with a teaser for the next week's story, The Stars Are the Styx, followed by a plug for the news with Chet Huntley. Present-day ad reads also sit at the edges of some episodes, so the archive comes with modern commercial breaks attached.