Stories like Outer Limits (Original Series): "Awe and Mystery"

[Extollager]

Interested people who are acquainted with the early1960s black-and-white TV anthology series are invited here to list and discuss print stories that seem to them to have strong affinity with the show. Most, but not all, OL teleplays involved aliens, often threatening, and not rarely of monstrous appearance. The series, at its best, strongly emphasized atmosphere, conveyed by moody, even noirish photography and characters and eerie music. Characters often experienced great fear, but endings were usually happy or at least left room for hope. Time travel stories involved visitors from the future, not trips into the prehistoric past, the Old West, etc, etc.

A great deal of sf makes no attempt at this sort of thing; it may be straight-ahead pulp adventure, it may be ironic satire, etc.

Here are some works that seem to me to be the sort of thing:

Wells's The War of the Worlds, especially while the firings from Mars are noticed, the Martian capsules have begun to land, etc., before the Martian conquest
Damon Knight's "Stranger Station"
Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space," "The Shadow Out of Time," and At the Mountains of Madness
F. Brown's "Arena" (which was perhaps adapted for the episode "Fun and Games")
probably Wyndham's Day of the Triffids and Midwich Cuckoos
Kuttner and Moore's "Vintage Season"

Classic teleplays include "The Zanti Misfits," "Demon with a Glass Hand," "The Architects of Fear," "The Man Who Was Never Born," etc. Most of the better ones were broadcast during the first season.

The Outer Limits Season One | Trailers From Hell

The "Control Voice" may have provided some sententious remarks, but for me and probably lots of other viewers, the stories were entertainment, kind of noir-plus-sf elements; RKO meets the rocket age.
However, this thread isn't dedicated to discussion of the show, but to nominations for Limitsy stories.

 

[BAYLOR]

Three stories that I think would have fit nicely into The Outer Limits

Resurrection by A E Van Vogt
All the Way Back by Michal Shaara
A Relic of War by Keith Laumer

 

[Extollager]

Thanks, Baylor. I'm not sure I've read any of those. Maybe the van Vogt years ago -- ?

 

[BigBadBob141]

I think "Demon With A Glass Hand" was the best one made, it was written by Harlan Ellison and was truly outstanding!!!

 

[BAYLOR]

Upon the Dull Earth by Phillip K Dick That would have made for a very interesting episode.

 

[Al Jackson]

I think "Demon With A Glass Hand" was the best one made, it was written by Harlan Ellison and was truly outstanding!!!

Yes indeed Demon with a Glass Hand was the best story that Outer Limits ever did. Solider also by Ellison was another good one.
I found Outer Limits to be very uneven , about 3 or 4 stories a season were good. Twilight Zone did a better in being consistent. Even then in later years TWZ got a inconsistent.
TWZ did a few stories from the great fantasy magazine UNKNOWN , the should have done more.

 

[Extollager]

However, this thread isn't dedicated to discussion of the show, but to nominations for Limitsy stories.

That's just a reminder from the original poster. There is a whole separate forum for discussing the Outer Limits shows themselves. For example:

Original Series & Harlan Ellison

 

[Al Jackson]

F. Brown's "Arena" (which was perhaps adapted for the episode "Fun and Games")

Fred Brown's story Arena was adapted for Star Trek January 19 1967. 18th Episode.

 

[Al Jackson]

That's just a reminder from the original poster. There is a whole separate forum for discussing the Outer Limits shows themselves. For example:

Original Series & Harlan Ellison

What surprises me , still, is how little science fiction and fantasy prose was adapted by Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. There was a huge wealth of stores from the printed page by 1960 and little of it was ever used, and to this day still lies fallow.

 

[Extollager]

There was a lot of sf, but how much of it had the qualities of the best Outer Limits teleplays? What I'm after is suggestions for sf stories that would have had such qualities. They'd need to be eerie, probably should have a frightening creature(s); they'd need to be set in, or begin in, our own time or the near future; ideally they'd put one or two or a few people in intense and lonely situations; the story would probably need to suggest some timeless truth about humanity. They'd need to have good visual potential but not necessarily a lot of special effects. The best shows tended to have something of a noir quality, so the stories we're looking for might well do the same. The best shows were not sci-fi adventures with lots of violence; they were not satires; they fit within the format of telling the story in 45 minutes or so -- so those things too would have implications for the type of stories we're looking for, with this thread.

And that was a type of story I'd have liked to find when I was a kid in the late 1960s -- and how rarely I found stories really to my liking when I would page through various Galaxy Readers from the library, etc.

However, I probably missed some stories I'd have liked because of the fashion, for some years, of sf magazines and authors using drab, noncomittal titles (Simak and Asimov were great ones for those).

A Rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak - A Reading Challenge

A Rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak - A Reading Challenge

There might be some good Outer Limits fodder there, but who's going to realize that unless he or she reads them? The teleplays, I admit, sometimes had dull titles too; "Second Chance," "Tourist Attraction," etc. But I suppose one had trailers the previous week, etc., to give a sense of what might be offered.

So -- let's hear it if you have some more story nominations, for things that could have made good series teleplays.

 

[Al Jackson]

There was a lot of sf, but how much of it had the qualities of the best Outer Limits teleplays? What I'm after is suggestions for sf stories that would have had such qualities. They'd need to be eerie, probably should have a frightening creature(s); they'd need to be set in, or begin in, our own time or the near future; ideally they'd put one or two or a few people in intense and lonely situations; the story would probably need to suggest some timeless truth about humanity. They'd need to have good visual potential but not necessarily a lot of special effects. The best shows tended to have something of a noir quality, so the stories we're looking for might well do the same. The best shows were not sci-fi adventures with lots of violence; they were not satires; they fit within the format of telling the story in 45 minutes or so -- so those things too would have implications for the type of stories we're looking for, with this thread.

And that was a type of story I'd have liked to find when I was a kid in the late 1960s -- and how rarely I found stories really to my liking when I would page through various Galaxy Readers from the library, etc.

However, I probably missed some stories I'd have liked because of the fashion, for some years, of sf magazines and authors using drab, noncomittal titles (Simak and Asimov were great ones for those).

A Rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak - A Reading Challenge

A Rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak - A Reading Challenge

There might be some good Outer Limits fodder there, but who's going to realize that unless he or she reads them? The teleplays, I admit, sometimes had dull titles too; "Second Chance," "Tourist Attraction," etc. But I suppose one had trailers the previous week, etc., to give a sense of what might be offered.

So -- let's hear it if you have some more story nominations, for things that could have made good series teleplays.

Here are five I like, none of which would need a lot of VFX, tho the Sturgeon might take some care, no days it would be much more easy.


Theodore Sturgeon - Microcosmic God


Lewis Padgett - Mimsy Were the Borogoves


Robert Heinlein - The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag


L. Sprague de Camp - Nothing in the Rules


Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost

 

[Extollager]

Ooo -- I like that nomination of "Smoke Ghost."

 

[BAYLOR]

Fishhead by Irving Cobb
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombus by Clark Ashton Smith

 

[Extollager]

Hmm -- I doubt those two, Baylor. "Fish-head" is (as I recall) a story about a "freak" on a deep Mississippi (or Louisiana?) swamp -- nothing like what Outer Limits focused on, while the Smith story is a ridiculous thing about a monster on an alien world that subsists on the eyeballs of visiting astronauts...so try again!

 

[BAYLOR]

Hmm -- I doubt those two, Baylor. "Fish-head" is (as I recall) a story about a "freak" on a deep Mississippi (or Louisiana?) swamp -- nothing like what Outer Limits focused on, while the Smith story is a ridiculous thing about a monster on an alien world that subsists on the eyeballs of visiting astronauts...so try again!

In the case of the Clark Ashton Smith story, you must be remembering a different story. They ind a dead city on Mars and try to solve the mystery as to what happened to the civilization and inhabitants, Storywise it doesn't resemble what you describe at all. Ricard Corben did a Graphic novel adaptation of this story.

 

[BAYLOR]

Men Without Bones by Gerald Kersh
The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson

 

[Extollager]

In the case of the Clark Ashton Smith story, you must be remembering a different story. They ind a dead city on Mars and try to solve the mystery as to what happened to the civilization and inhabitants, Storywise it doesn't resemble what you describe at all. Ricard Corben did a Graphic novel adaptation of this story.

Yes, I see "Yoh-Vombis" is about disgusting leeches. But The Outer Limits wasn't gory.

 

[Extollager]

Perhaps Simak's "Desertion" could have been adapted for the 1963-1964 Outer Limits. Much of the protagonist's experiences would have to be delivered through someone talking about them, rather than their being depicted, since, though the series had special effects in the budget, that budget wasn't big. One of Simak's stories was adapted for the show, and I have the nagging feeling that some of his other stories might have lent themselves to the show's parameters.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, I see "Yoh-Vombis" is about disgusting leeches. But The Outer Limits wasn't gory.

The Outer Limit wasn't gory because the television codes that era would allow it. But the show did have monsters in it.

How about The Plutonian Drug by Clark Ashton Smith ? The subject matter of this one would fit in with The Outer Limits quite nicely . And there is no gore in this one.

The Possessed by Arthur C Clark.

 

[Extollager]

"The Outer Limit wasn't gory because the television codes that era would allow it. But the show did have monsters in it."

I question that "because," Baylor. You imply that -- but for TV norms of the time -- the show's producers and writers would have gone in for gore. I'm not sure that Stefano, Stevens, & Co. wished they could have done so. Maybe, for a few of the teleplays, they would have, if they had been able -- but let's stick with the series as it was in 1963-1964, not as it might have been under other circumstances, in which case it would have been something it was not.

My thought with this thread was -- if you liked The Outer Limits as it was in 1963-1964, what are some stories that you think have similar qualities and might have been adaptable?

I don't know the Smith and Clarke stories you mention -- care to say more about them?