zorka
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2004
- Messages
- 39
Back in the 1950's there was a radio program devoted to Science Fiction called "Exploring Tomorrow." The host was John W. Campbell Jr.
The episodes were based upon actual SF stories that appeared mostly in Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction.
There were two episodes which I will describe the plot below that I am trying to determine the original story and hopefully the author. Keep in mind the scripts were probably largely edited to meet a half hour format so much detail could be left out.
The first was about a man who returns from five years in space to see his sister. He appears at the house where his sister and her husband live. Several things occur in which the sister becomes suspicious about whether the visitor is indeed her brother. She asks her husband to go up to her brother's room and catch him while he is getting ready for bed and determine if like her brother, he has a large scar across his chest. When the husband enters the bedroom, the visitor is enraged that the man entered without knocking. We find that the brother is indeed an alien that absorbs humans taking over their bodies and thereby creating a new alien who looks and appears as the original human. He does this to the husband. The husband returns to the wife telling her the brother is ok, but also absorbs the wife. Now there are three people in the household - all aliens. Soon a neighbor stops by having heard the wife scream. He too is taken over. The episode ends with the knowledge of the horror of an alien invasion. One working title for the episode was "Mimic."
The second episode involves a hideous human mutant who can project images so that things aren't what they appear. He escapes from a hospital and tries to lead a normal life by projecting images of himself as a normal person. He meets and falls in love with a woman and allows her to see him for what he really is. She is repulsed and the man realizes he will never be able to be normal. He returns to the hospital.
I thought that this might have been the original Rog Phillips story called "The Mutants" which appeared in a 1946 episodes of Amazing Stories. But it is not the same story as the Phillips story deals with macrocephalic children who are geniuses.
Any help in identifying these two stories would be greatly appreciated. Both are short fiction and both would have been published prior to 1958. Thanks for listening.
The episodes were based upon actual SF stories that appeared mostly in Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction.
There were two episodes which I will describe the plot below that I am trying to determine the original story and hopefully the author. Keep in mind the scripts were probably largely edited to meet a half hour format so much detail could be left out.
The first was about a man who returns from five years in space to see his sister. He appears at the house where his sister and her husband live. Several things occur in which the sister becomes suspicious about whether the visitor is indeed her brother. She asks her husband to go up to her brother's room and catch him while he is getting ready for bed and determine if like her brother, he has a large scar across his chest. When the husband enters the bedroom, the visitor is enraged that the man entered without knocking. We find that the brother is indeed an alien that absorbs humans taking over their bodies and thereby creating a new alien who looks and appears as the original human. He does this to the husband. The husband returns to the wife telling her the brother is ok, but also absorbs the wife. Now there are three people in the household - all aliens. Soon a neighbor stops by having heard the wife scream. He too is taken over. The episode ends with the knowledge of the horror of an alien invasion. One working title for the episode was "Mimic."
The second episode involves a hideous human mutant who can project images so that things aren't what they appear. He escapes from a hospital and tries to lead a normal life by projecting images of himself as a normal person. He meets and falls in love with a woman and allows her to see him for what he really is. She is repulsed and the man realizes he will never be able to be normal. He returns to the hospital.
I thought that this might have been the original Rog Phillips story called "The Mutants" which appeared in a 1946 episodes of Amazing Stories. But it is not the same story as the Phillips story deals with macrocephalic children who are geniuses.
Any help in identifying these two stories would be greatly appreciated. Both are short fiction and both would have been published prior to 1958. Thanks for listening.
