Page 11

were not in the mood to buy such story lines, not when the reality they were experiencing consisted of atomic and hydrogen weapons, an ongoing Cold War the overthrow and subversion of government, military posturing and threats and the shoe pounding theatrics of Soviet leaders with the avowed intention of burying the West. In the light of the world scene in the 1950s it is perfectly understandable that most creative explanations of the flying saucer phenomenon was of an ominous and sensational nature. Even the pages of a magazine as staid and rooted in the past as the Saturday Evening Post began to run an occasional science fiction short story, and one such story, “The Outer Limit,” by Graham Doar, appeared in the

Post issue of December 24, 1949, and it is worth noting here for its popularity on radio and television and for the manner in which the story reflected popular thought in the 1950s. The theme of Doar’s story was one of warning, which was consistent with the direction that radio, television and cinematic science fiction would be headed following 1945. In Doar’s story, an American test pilot literally disappears from the sky and is presumed crashed. Hours later the pilot returns to report that he had been abducted by aliens who had given him a message to take back to earth. Earth’s development of atomic weapons was being viewed with alarm by other beings in the universe. If earth did not cease the development and use of such weapons then the other inhabitants of the universe were prepared to destroy earth.
Who was to say that Doar’s explanation wasn’t remotely possible? Certainly the sightings of UFOs in such copious numbers beginning on June 24, 1947, coincided with the beginning of the Cold War and the furious race between the Western democracies and Communism to develop and deploy atomic and hydrogen weapons.
Doar’s short story accomplished what science fiction did best – blurred the borders between science and fiction vis-à-vis Gernsback’s own principle so that audiences were left to ponder where truth ended and fantasy began. This is precisely what Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre players had so completely achieved on Halloween Eve, 1938, when those clearly defined and delineated boundaries were kicked out from under listeners and the audience was left to come to their own conclusions.
Doar’s story, “The Outer Limit” served as the pilot episode for one of the earliest adult science fiction series on television, Out There (October 28, 1951), and “The Outer Limit” was also successfully dramatized several times on radio in the 1950s: Escape (February 7, 1950), Dimension X (April 8, 1950), Suspense (February 15, 1954) and X Minus One (November 16, 1955).
Indeed, Dimension X, one of the earliest adult-oriented science fiction series on radio, elected to use “The Outer Limit” as its premiere episode. The series often adapted the works of well-known science fiction writers, such as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Murray Leinster, Donald Wolheim, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Jack Williamson, and at other times in-house writers Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts would contribute an original story, and Dimension X was likely one of the series David Kyle had in mind when he wrote of radio in A Pictorial History of Science Fiction:
There was another medium which was much more successful in communicating the essence of science fiction—radio. Here the listener could collaborate with the writer and build “in the theatre of the mind” the marvelous stories of any time and any space. The two ingredients which made genuine science fiction—the sense of wonder which is the true artistic expression of sf and the fresh intellectual ideas related to scientific theorizing—were just being achieved in radio when technology begat another medium (125).
For the “Outer Limit” Joseph Julian played the part of test pilot Steve Weston and Wendell Holmes played the part of Hank and Joe DeSantis played Major Donaldson. Ernest Kinoy adapted Graham Doar’s story with Van Woodward producing the series and Edward King directing. The show began with listeners being appraised that they had moved forward in time to the year 1965 and were standing beside the giant concrete runway of a desert testing ground somewhere in the American Southwest. In a few minutes test pilot Steve Weston will fly higher than any man had gone before—to the outer reaches of earth’s atmosphere. Once in flight

Continued Next Page

To Page 12