Book to Radio: There Will Come Soft Rains

Book to Radio: There Will Come Soft Rains
By Ray Bradbury from his book, The Martian Chronicles
Adapted to radio by George Lefferts
Dimension X broadcast, June 17, 1950

In June of 1950, radio show Dimension X featured two stories by one of the “new young writers of science fiction, Ray Bradbury.” The first of these was There Will Come Soft Rains. The other was Zero Hour from The Illustrated Man which I will review later

There is no reference in the script to Mars. This empty house is on a post-atomic Earth.

The story opens with the real estate agent pitching the house and all its features in the futuristic year of 1980. The house came equipped with self warming blankets, beds that make themselves, talking book recordings, "mouse things" that take away all the dust. Set the menu on the oven for the week and it will prepare all of your meals.

The automated house goes about its day, preparing breakfast. The writer of the script and the director demonstrate real talent in the presentation with the discordant rhymes the house chants, backed with discordant music as the house announces the time and the tasks to be performed.

Narrator Norman Rose goes on to describe the dark shadows scorched onto the walls of the house – remnants of the bodies scorched into the surface by atomic energy.

The narrator’s voice picks up speed. The house performs its tasks ever faster until evening arrives when the home finally asks which poem the residents would like to hear. Not hearing a response, it selects Sarah Teasdale’s There Will Come Soft Rains. The pace slows as Teasdale's soothing prose unfolds.

However, a tree falls outside and spills solvent onto the stove. The house catches fire. The house begs for help. It begins to maniacally carry out its tasks before the wiring burns. It eventually crashes into dust and rubble.

The story ends as Teasdale poem ends – with no one mourning the passing of mankind.

Norman Rose is a gifted radio voice talent and his narration, growing more frantic with the discordance going on behind him makes this absolutely creepy. It deviates far from Bradbury’s text, but writer, George Lefferts shows his genius in taking this chapter from Bradbury’s book and making it into something disturbing.

Book to Radio: Mars is Heaven

Book to Radio: Mars is Heaven
by Ray Bradbury from his book, The Martian Chronicles
Adapted for radio by David Friedken
Escape! radio broadcast
Original Broadcast: June 2, 1950

Escape was the first radio show to adapt Ray Bradbury’s tale of the third mission to Mars to radio. To do so, they completely rewrote Bradbury’s story, changing it a great deal, but keeping the essential story intact.

The show was adapted for Escape by David Friedkin and starred Ben Wright.

The Escape broadcast opens with the news of the launch of the first manned mission to Mars (as opposed to the third). People of all faiths and creeds have come together to pray for the success of the mission and the astronauts aboard the rocket.

The characters from the crew are limited to the ship’s captain and the doctor who are the only two allowed to leave the ship. It is they who quickly discover that Mars bears a striking resemblance to their homes on earth. A resident tells them they are in Green Lake, Ohio.

The doctor finds his grandmother living in the house she lived in when he was a kid. She explains that Mars is a “second chance.” They soon hear a parade, complete with a brass band, leading the crew away from the ship. The Captain sees his old girlfriend among the crowd and decides to join her in an emotional reunion.

The Captain is sitting on the porch swing on a quiet summer evening when he starts to develop a hypothesis. He tells her, if the Martians wanted to manipulate the crew, they would use their memories and fondest desires to entrap them. The girlfriend tries to dissuade him. But when the Captain decides he’s got to talk to the doctor about his hypothesis, Phyllis turns on him and kills him.

After the astronauts have all been dispatched, the Martians hold a town meeting to analyze and discuss what has transpired.

This broadcast was the first of this Bradbury story (and perhaps the first of any Bradbury story), but it is also the weakest. The Dimension X and X Minus One broadcasts are far superior, relying on larger casts and sticking closer to the Bradbury story.

Mars is Heaven Dimension X radio broadcast

Mars is Heaven
Dimension X radio broadcast
Original Air Date: January 7, 1951
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adapted for radio by Ernest Kinoy

This adaptation was written by Ernest Kinoy and aired on the Dimension X radio program on Friday, January 7, 1951.

I really enjoy old time radio, having become hooked listening the CBS Radio Mystery Theater as a teenager. The Internet introduced me to a much larger world of radio broadcasts from the 1930 through the 1970s.

Radio shows like Dimension X and X Minus 1 have allowed me to enjoy the works of writers, such as Murray Leister, whose books are now out of print.

Dimension X was probably the best of a number of science fiction shows. The show adapted the works of Golden Age giants such as Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bloch, and Murray Leinster. However, it was radio writer, Ernest Kinoy that adapted Bradbury and he always did a magnificent job.

The distinguishing characteristic between Bradbury’s story and Kinoy’s radio play is the nature of the crew. In the story, they are scientists and soldiers. In Kinoy’s story, they are Navy men. They are simple men, much like one would find on a naval ship of the 1950s. The script even notes that the rocket is a naval vessel. Perhaps this was done to contemporize the story for a radio audience of the 1950s who were familiar with classic naval portrayals through film, newsreels, and real life experience in World War II.

Other than that, Kinoy is true to the story. The 1951 recording, transcribed onto vinyl and then digitized for the Internet does hurt the voice actor’s ability to emote. Radio drama requires strong verbal emotion from the actors since there is no visual medium through which to emote. When the actors scream, the distortion makes the sound comical.

This, however, is a minor point. Bradbury’s short tale of the Third Expedition to Mars is brought to life for the first time on Dimension X. The voice talent did a fantastic job with an excellent Kinoy script.