X Minus One

About X Minus One

X Minus One is the most celebrated science fiction series of old time radio. NBC broadcast it from 1955 to 1958, and every episode opens with a rocket countdown, "X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one... Fire!", and a promise of stories of the future, "adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds." Each half hour is a complete story adapted from the science fiction magazines of the day.

NBC made the series first with Astounding Science Fiction and then with Galaxy Science Fiction, whose writers included Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley and Philip K. Dick. Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts wrote most of the radio scripts, and Fred Collins was the announcer. The early shows remade scripts from NBC's Dimension X. The stories are about people more than gadgets, which is why they still hold up.

If you are new to old time radio, X Minus One is one of the best places to start. The stories are short, smart and complete, the production is polished, and many of the writers are still read today. Fans of The Twilight Zone or of classic science fiction in print will feel at home, and the series is a fine way to meet authors like Bradbury, Asimov and Philip K. Dick through the ear.

What you’ll hear

• The countdown opening, the same every week
• Adaptations of Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Sturgeon, Simak, Sheckley and Philip K. Dick
• First contact, robots, time travel, Mars and life after the bomb
• Satire as well as suspense, often with a twist at the end
• Futures imagined from the 1950s, some of them set in years that are now our past

Where to start

• Every episode is a complete story, so you can start anywhere; the podcast goes in broadcast order.
• If you know Dimension X, you will recognize some early scripts, remade with new casts.
• Follow the podcast for a new episode every week, in the order they first aired; released episodes also play free right on this page, no account needed. Plus members ($5 a month) can play every episode now.
• For science fiction without a break, Signal From Tomorrow streams X Minus One, Dimension X, Space Patrol and more live, around the clock.

Where the recordings come from

The X Minus One recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' X Minus One Singles set (121 episodes), hosted by the Internet Archive. Our thanks to the Old Time Radio Researchers, the volunteers who found, dated and assembled the set, and to the Archive and the collectors whose uploads it rests on. The sound is our remaster of those files (rumble, hiss and hum cleaned out, levelled to steady broadcast loudness); the recordings themselves are theirs. About our sources.

Every X Minus One episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

• Space Patrol
• Planet Man
• Dimension X
• Exploring Tomorrow
• Signal From Tomorrow, all of them mixed

Spotted a wrong date, title or name? Report a mistake · Missing a series? Request a show · Suggest a note

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