Unknown Orbits

We go back to our childhoods to discuss key books that turned us into fans and shaped our future as writers. In this case, Tarzaan at the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, by Robert Heinlein. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan_at_the_Earth%27s_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_Travel

Check out our review of Tomorrow is Yesterday, the original Series Star Trek episode where the Enterprise travels back in time to 1967 and unnecssarily creates a time paradox. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Is_Yesterday

This week, we review the pilot episode of Irwin Allen's Land of the Giants, a 1960s slice of sci-fi fun. A passenger rocket lands in a world where they are menaced by giants, giant cats, and giant pencils. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_the_Giants

This week we revisit a childhood favorite, The Invisible Enemy from The Outer Limits. Shark monsters living in the sands of Mars murder astronauts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Enemy_(The_Outer_Limits)

This week we chat about The Gamesters of Triskelion the Star Trek epsidoe we judge to be the most Shatnerific. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamesters_of_Triskelion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelique_Pettyjohn

We discuss The Country of the Kind, by Damon Knight, where a psychopathic mutant is shunned by the human race. Then we discuss Knight's acerbic literary criticism. LINKS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Kind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Wonder

We experience Deja Vu when we review Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury. The second expedition to Mars is defeated by memories. We discuss more possible plagiarism by Rod Serling. We also examine stories stranding astronauts on the red planet. LINKS: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Is_Heaven! Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Planet_Stories_Canadian_Ed._v03n12_1948-Fall/page...

This week we chat about Elegy, a Twilight Zone episode featuring astronauts forced to land on a mysterious asteroid where everyone is frozen in place in an Earth-like vintage village. Links: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegy_(The_Twilight_Zone) Text of Charles Beaumont original story: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32819/pg32819-images.html

We discuss Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin, the classic tale of brutal choices forced by the laws of physics that might have been plagiarized by John W. Campbell. LINKS: Link to the X Minus One radio episode (8/25/1955): https://www.radioechoes.com/?page=play_download&mode=play&dl_mp3folder=X&dl_file=x_minus_one_1955-08-25_cold_equation.mp3&dl_series=X%20Minus%20One&dl_title=Cold...

We discuss the beloved classic: Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. Scientists operate on a mentally challenged man and turn him into a genius, with tragic consequences. Story Link: https://archive.org/stream/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v016n04_1959-04_PDF/Fantasy__Science_Fiction_v016n04_1959-04_PDF#page/n3/mode/2up Film Adaptation: Charly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charly_(1968_film)

Killdozer, Theodore Sturgeon's contribution to the killer machine sub-genre is discussed, along with the infamous TV movie adaptation from the 1970s. We also discuss inanimate objects that kill from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!_(short_story) https://youtu.be/vU73kzrhWig?si=br1fI9yduQBwe0Qk

Today we talk about the first appearance of Harcourt Fenton Mudd in Mudd's Women, where a group of women are travelling to meet, and marry, lonely dilithium miners. Link: Star Trek - Mudd's Women: https://archive.org/details/star-trek-tos-original-effects/Star+Trek+TOS+-+Orginal+Effects/Season+1/Star+Trek+-+1x04+-+Mudd's+Women.avi

In The Twilight Zone second-season episode "The Invaders," an older woman living alone in a shack with no gas, electricty, or modern conveniences, finds herself fighting off the inhabitants of a spacecraft from another planet.   Link: Twilight Zone - The Invaders: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/622077806/

In The Outer Limits' episode "The Special One," a father begins to suspect the motives of man who claims to be from a government program, sent to tutor their genius son. Link: The Outer Limits - The Special One: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kfw6z  

The USS Enterprise encounters the wrecked USS Constellation and its distraught commodore who's determined to stop the giant planet-destroying robot ship that killed his crew. 

52 episodes already? On this special anniversary episode, we make an attempt to define science fiction, reveal our favorite stories from the past year, and finish up with our favorite discoveries about the science fiction world. 

City by Clifford D. Simak is the story of the end of the city, the abandonment of Earth by humans, and the rising hegemony of Dogs. Then we talk about early genre publishing houses.

Children find a mysterious box of future toys in Henry Kuttner's and C. L. Moore's Mimsy Were the Borogoves, which have unexpected properties. Then after hating the movie it was made into, we discuss other stories with powerful objects that were gifts from aliens or that travelled through time. 

The Great Nebraska Sea by Allan Danzig is a future history account of the greatest disaster to hit the United States, the forming of the Great Nebraska Sea. Millions die, but there are new opportunities for fishing and water skiing.

In Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, a squatter and government surveyer have to team up to travel across a dangerous world to look for survivors from an earlier settlement. Leinster also wrote several television novelizations, which leads us to a debate over what was the worst TV show or movie Irwin Allen ever produced.

What would you do if you turned around and found a fourteen-inch Zanti misfit staring at you? So would I. In Howard Fast's The Large Ant the protagonist makes the same decision, and that - of course - leads to a philosophical discussion of Mankind's place amoung intelligent species. 

In A Can of Paint by A. E. van Vogt, the first landing on Venus finds a simple can of paint. But is it really simple, or an advanced alien artifact? Then we touch on the writing techniques of A. E. van Vogt and others.

Spheres, domes and bottomless holes appear in C. M. Kornbluth's The Silly Season, but how are they connected? We discuss this memorable story from 1950, then move on to the actual newspaper silly season, secret aircraft, UAPs, and the time we embarrassed a Milwaukee Journal reporter.

Today we talk about Arthur C. Clarke and his 1953 novel Childhood's End, and how some science fiction writers helped poularize space exploration during the early U.S. space program.

Fritz Leiber's A Pail of Air is a unique view of life on Earth after the end of the world. This inspires us to categorise end of the world movies, and somehow we spend a lot of time talking about Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (a.k.a. Tarzan and the Lost City).