X Minus One Radio Show (Complete Series - 126 Episodes) (1955-1958)

SThe last day of September is here, and with it comes an end to "Sci-Fi September". I've had a lot of fun doing this, and I hope that everyone has enjoyed the material I have shared this month. There were many albums that I didn't get a chance to sure, and perhaps I'll put them up after October is over. Once again, I will be participating in "Halloween Countdown" next month, a community wide event that several bloggers take part in during October, in which the participants post Halloween related material until October 31st finally arrives.

I wanted to share something special for the last day of "Sci-Fi September", and while it isn't music, I hope it will bring you as much enjoyment as it has for me. I present to you all 124 episodes of the OTR (Old-Time Radio) show, X-Minus One. I have several OTR shows in digital format, most of which originated from Archive.org, and the archives normally just contain the audio files of each episode. When I searched for episodes of X Minus One and found this collection I was immediately stunned upon extracting the archived contents. It is was immediately obvious that the people responsible for putting this collection together display a level of devotion that is unparalleled among OTR enthusiasts. The group responsible have dubbed themselves "The Old Time Radio Researchers Group". You can find the link to their website, which contains several other OTR collections, at the bottom of this post. The group makes the accuracy and completeness of their collections one of their top priorities, and they even issue their own certifications for their releases based on "OTRR Certified Standards". This release was issued both "OTTR Certified Accurate" and "OTTR Certified Complete" certificates, which indicate that the series is as complete as possible, and each track is properly identified and labeled. The Certified Series section of their website states the following:

"The OTRR Group's Certified library is currently the most accurate archive of OTR series in the world. Each series has been thoroughly researched, accurately labeled (dates and titles), and transcribed at the highest quality possible. Furthermore, each series also includes many additional historic features such as photos, bios and additional sound clips."

As is mentioned above, not only does this collection contain all 124 episodes, but it also includes e-books for dozens of the episodes, digital scans of Galaxy magazine in e-book format, dozens of custom album art images, CD labels, pictures of the authors, scripts from the show, and slew of other bonus features. OTRR has truly went above and beyond in putting this collection together and I couldn't be more impressed. The download is rather large, with the download size of each disc exceeding 600MB; however, if you're a fan of science fiction, and have even the slightest interest in old time radio shows, you'll be very thankful that you took the time to download this collection.

Once again, I'm short on time, so I'm going to close this post out by sharing some information from the X Minus One Wikipedia article:

X Minus One was a half-hour science fiction radio series broadcast from April 24, 1955 to January 9, 1958 in various timeslots on NBC.

Initially a revival of NBC's Dimension X (1950–51), the first 15 episodes of X Minius One were new versions of Dimension X episodes, but the remainder were adaptations by NBC staff writers, including Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts,of newly published science fiction stories by leading writers in the field, including Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl and Theodore Sturgeon, along with some original scripts by Kinoy and Lefferts.

Included in the series were adaptations of Robert Sheckley's "Skulking Permit," Bradbury's "Mars Is Heaven," Heinlein's "Universe" and "The Green Hills of Earth", " Pohl’s "The Tunnel under the World," J. T. McIntosh’s "Hallucination Orbit," Fritz Leiber’s "A Pail of Air" and George Lefferts' "The Parade."

The program opened with announcer Fred Collins delivering the countdown, leading into this introduction (although later shows were partnered with Galaxy Science Fiction rather than Astounding Science Fiction):

..."Countdown for blastoff... X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one... Fire! [Rocket launch SFX] From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future; adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction presents... X Minus One."

The series was canceled after the 126th broadcast on January 9, 1958. However, the early 1970s brought a wave of nostalgia for old-time radio; a new experimental episode, "The Iron Chancellor" by Robert Silverberg, was created in 1973, but it failed to revive the series. NBC also tried broadcasting the old recordings, but their irregular once-monthly scheduling kept even devoted listeners from following the broadcasts. All episodes of the show survive. - Wikipedia"

Disc 1 - Tracklist:

00. Introduction to the OTRR
01. X Minus One Audio Brief
000. And The Moon Be Still As Bright
001. No Contact
002. The Parade
003. Mars is Heaven
004. Universe - Robert A. Heinlein
005. Knock - Frederic Brown
006. The Man in The Moon
007. Perigi’s Wonderful Dolls
008. The Green Hills Of Earth
009. Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitorium
010. Nightmare
011. The Embassy
012. The Veldt
013. Almost Human
014. Courtesy
015. The Cold Equation
016. Shanghaied
017. The Martian Death March
018. The Castaways
019. And the Moon be still as bright
020. First Contact
021. Child’s play
022. Requiem
023. Hello Tomorrow
024. Dwellers in silence
025. The Outer Limit
026. Zero Hour
027. Vital Factor
028. Nightfall
029. To the Future
030. Marionettes, Inc.
031. A Logic Named Joe
032. The Roads Must Roll
033. Time And Time Again
034. Perigi’s Wonderful Dolls (Rebroadcast)
035. The Parade (Rebroadcast)
036. Cave Of Night
037. C-Chute
038. Skulking Permit
039. Junkyard
040. Hello, Tomorrow
041. A Gun For Dinosaur
042. Tunnel Under The World

Disc 2 - Tracklist:

043. $1000 A Plate
044. A Pail Of Air
045. How-To
046. Star Bright
047. Jaywalker
048. The Sense Of Wonder
049. Sea Legs
051. Hallucination Orbit
050. The Seventh Order
052. The Defenders
053. Lulunganeena
054. Project Mastadon
055. If You Was A Mocklin
056. Project Trojan
057. Wherever You May Be
058. Mr. Costello, Hero
059. Bad Medicine
060. The Old Die Rich
061. Stars Are The Styx
063. The Last Martian
062. Student Body
064. The Snowball Effect
065. Surface Tension
066. Tunnel Under The World (Rebroadcast)
067. The Lifeboat Mutiny
067. The Map Makers
069. Protective Mimicry
070. Colony
071. Soldier Boy
072. Pictures Don’t Lie
073. Sam, This Is You
074. Appointment In Tomorrow
075. (Repeat of episode 17)
076. Chain Of Command
078. There Will Come Soft Rains
079. Hostess
080. The Reluctant Heroes
081. Honeymoon In Hell
082. The Moon Is Green
083. Saucer Of Loneliness
084. The Girls From Earth
085. Open Warfare
086. Caretaker
087. Venus Is A Man’s World
088. The Trap
089. Field Study
090. Real Gone

Disc 3 - Tracklist:

091. The Seventh Victim
092. The Lights on Precipice Peak
093. Protection
094. At the Post
095. Martian Sam
096. Something for Nothing
097. Discovery of Morniel Mathaway
098. Mans Best Friend
099. Inside Story
100. The Category Inventor
101. Skulking Permit
102. Early Model
103. The Merchants of Venus
104. The Haunted Corpse
105. End as a World
106. The Scapegoat
107. At the Post
108. Drop Dead
109. Volpla
110. Saucer of Loneliness
111. The Old Die Rich
112. Tsylana
113. The Native Problem
114. The Wind Is Rising
115. Death Wish
116. Point of Departure
117. The Light
118. Lulu
119. The Coffin Cure
120. Shocktroop
121. The Haunted Corpse
122. Double Dare
123. Target One
124. Prime Difference
125. Gray Flannel Armor
126. The Iron Chancellor

Download Disc 1:

X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 1
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 2
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 3
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 4
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 5
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 6
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 1 - Part 7

Download Size: 614MB

Download Disc 2:

X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 1
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 2
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 3
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 4
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 5
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 6
X Minus One Radio Show - Disc 2 - Part 7

Download Size: 623MB

Download Disc 3:

X Minus One - Disc 3 - Part 1
X Minus One - Disc 3 - Part 2
X Minus One - Disc 3 - Part 3
X Minus One - Disc 3 - Part 4

Download Size: 358MB

Lights Out Radio Show - 1936-1947

I hope that you all enjoy this special post as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. Up till this point, I have yet to share any old time radio broadcasts, which I only recently discovered myself. These radio broadcasts were originally downloaded from http://archive.org, but the audio files were not tagged, and the two Oboler albums were found on other blogs, although I'm unable to remember where they were obtained now. I have spent several hours collecting, tagging, and renaming all of the audio files included. I have also taken the time to manually type out the text from the back cover of the "Arch Oboler - Lights Out LP" (which was almost illegible due to the poor quality of the album cover image), convert the official wikipedia page to a .pdf file, and track down a few images of the hosts and actors involved.

NBC writer Wyllis Cooper, who would later write the script for Boris Karloff's Son of Frankenstein, conceived the idea for Lights Out in 1933. Cooper was a respected radio writer of the time, and he worked on a number of other shows in addition to Lights Out. The first episode of Lights Out would air in January of 1934 on a local NBC satation, WENR on Wednesdays at midnight. The first episodes clocked in at 15 minutes in length, but as the series grew in popularity, it was eventually lengthened to 30 minute episodes. In January of 1935 the show was discontinued in order to ease the workload of Cooper, who was working on other shows at the time in addition to Lights Out. However the show was brought back only a few weeks later due to overwhelming popular demand. In April of 1934 NBC made the move to broadcast Lights Out to a national audience. Cooper would continue to host the show until June of '36 when Arch Oboler took over, who's name would eventually become synonymous with Lights Out. Oboler would act as host until 1938, when he left to work on other projects. A variety of people took over the show's writing/producing duties until the show was eventually cancelled in 1939. Oboler would return once again to host the show from 1942 to 1943. There would be three other short lived revivals of the show during 1945,1946, and 1947. These later revival episodes primarily featured reworked scripts written by Cooper during his 1934-1936 stint.

This is not a complete collection of every episode of Lights Out to ever air, but rather a collection of every episode that is available at this time. None of the recordings from the Wyllis Cooper era from 1936-1939 exist, although some of his stories were later rewritten and broadcast by Oboler, and others during the later revival years. I have also included two Arch Oboler LPs. The first, "Drop Dead!", was originally released in 1962. I have been unable to attain much information about the second, which is simply titled "Lights Out". Both of them featured tales that were originally Lights Out broadcasts, but the quality of these recordings is much better than the original broadcasts.

As I mentioned before, it was only recently that I discovered old time radio broadcasts, but there are a few horror/supernatural radio shows from the era that I would like to share before Halloween. I have decided to feature Lights Out first, as it was the premiere horror radio show of the era. There are dozens of other horror radio shows that I would like to share before Halloween, but at the moment it doesn't look like I'm going to have time to, unless I cut out some of the other albums that I had planned on uploading. I'll make my best effort to post at least two or three of the better broadcasts over the next couple of weeks, and perhaps I'll even share some "leftovers" after Halloween is over. Please keep in mind that these shows were broadcast in the 1930's and 40's, and although some of the broadcasts certainly have a creepy quality to them, the majority of them bear more of a similarity to episodes of The Twilight Zone rather than horror by today's standards. Don't let this stop you from downloading and listening to these though. You would certainly be missing out on many good tales of horror and the supernatural, as well as an important piece of history from a bygone era.

There is an wealth of information about the Lights Out series, but rather than make this already lengthy post any longer than it has to be, I'm simply going to link to the wikipedia page, which can provide much more information about the show than I can. As I mentioned before, I have converted the official wiki page into a pdf file and included it with each of the shares below. Here is the Lights Out wikipedia page for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_Out_(radio_show)

Now, without further ado,

lights out everybody....

Lights Out Radio Show

Download: Lights Out - 1936-1939 (81MB)
Download: Lights Out - 1942-1943 (134MB)
Download: Lights Out - 1945 (12MB)
Download: Lights Out - 1946-1947 (23MB)

Arch Oboler - Drop Dead!

Track List:
1. An Introduction to Horror
2. I'm Huntry
3. Taking Papa Home
4. The Dark
5. A Day at the Dentists's
6. The Posse
7. Chicken Heart
8. The Laughing Man

Download: Arch Oboler - Drop Dead! An Exercise In Horror
Download Size: 56MB

Arch Oboler - Lights Out LP

Track List:
1. Oxychloride X
2. Rocket From Manhattan

Download: Arch Oboler - Lights Out LP
Download Size: 45MB