Exploring Tomorrow

was a short-lived series, hosted by the influential editor, John W. Campbell Jr., of Astounding Science Fiction magazine which ran on the Mutual Broadcasting System from late 1957 to mid 1958. Despite the apparent link to Astounding, the magazine was not sponsoring the series. Campbell merely acted as host, commentator, and, perhaps, script editor and adaptor. Each episode featured musings by Campbell on the cultural, psychological, or sociological implications of that night's theme. These musings were often as engaging as the story itself! Unfortunately, very few of the episodes have survived the years intact—most copies have a lot of scratch. While the series was designed to be only 25 minutes in length, some of the shows might have been doubled up two per broadcast, since some episodes are considerably shorter.

(See: Index to First Lines located at bottom of this page.)

Sources used to create my own log and double-check titles, dates and cast members: Digital Deli Too, RadioGOLDINdex, Nightkey's OTR Errors and Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
Note: According to the folks over at the Digital Deli this series ran semiweekly, from late '57 to late '58, and probably consisted of around 104 broadcasts. See the CD cover art for this series.

Currently this archive contains 37 of 42 plotlines and 4 reviews

Webmaster recommends:
The Cold Equations | The Convict | Flashback | Genius | The Happiness Effect | The Last Physician | The Liar | War Game

Jeff Dickson recommends:
The Cold Equations | The Convict | Genius

Adventure of the Beauty Queen, The

A woman is contacted by a voice from one thousand years in the future claiming to have fallen in love with her beauty, though our descendants' concept of beauty is very different from what she is used to. Stars Charlotte Sheffield, Miss United States of 1958, and Bret Morrison.

"The philosophers down the ages have hassled a long time and with many words about the good, the true, and the beautiful. The true, well that can be defined pretty objectively. There's a peculiar thing about beautiful. What is beauty? And in whose terms? Makes it difficult." --- from the intro

Alien, The

Pop, his daughter, and their friend, the Marshall, are having a few root beers out on the porch, watching meteors shoot through the clear desert sky, when they are startled by one striking fairly close-by. Pop and the Marshall investigate and return with an alien shaped like a big rubber beach ball. The alien can make only one sound: 'Nago' and has no appendages or facial expressions, so it has a hard time communicating. Pop seems to think it's the answer to his dreams... but Nago has other plans.

"The major trouble in dealing with an alien, is that we're accustomed to certain little signs... symbols... facial expressions... tones of voice, that have meaning when a human being is communicating with a human being, but we have no system of signs and no code of communication with the alien. Ah... how could we tell what the alien was thinking?" --- from the intro

Best Policy, The    *LOST*

"...in which a smart Earthling manages to convince a reconnaissance group of hostile aliens who abduct him that the earthlings are far more advanced and superior race, and instead of a hostile takeover, they send humble ambassadors. The catch is the aliens have a perfect truth detector and the hero has to phrase every line carefully so that while being literally honest he can pull off such a huge lie." --- Wikipedia

Black Magic    *LOST*

"On the assumption that the supposedly irrevocable laws of nature may not be the same throughout the universe, the creators of Exploring Tomorrow weave a strange and fascinating science fiction story about an expedition to Jupiter. The expedition encounters strange laws of nature on the far-away planet which causes events that would be considered 'Black Magic' on Earth." --- Pacific Stars and Stripes, as quoted at Digital Deli Too.

Brain Writers, The

Cold Equations, The

Classic story of a space pilot on an emergency medical run who finds himself carrying a stowaway. His shuttle, however, does not have enough fuel to land with the extra weight.

[NOTE: "The Stowaway" is often listed as an alternative name for "The Cold Equations", but the plot as stated by RadioGoldIndex is quite different from the Tom Godwin short story. I believe "The Stowaway" is LOST.]

Versions of this story also appeared on X Minus One, Future Tense, Sci-Fi Radio, and the CBC pilot Faster Than Light.

"The essential character of any frontier you explore is that, if you get into it, and stick your neck out, you get it lopped off and there's no help. The frontier is the place where there isn't any reserve, where there isn't anyone to help if you get into trouble. There is no support. Tonight's story is the story of a true frontier. You know, sometimes the frontier lies just the other side of a doorway. It doesn't seem very different, but it can be the difference between life and sudden death." --- from the intro

Collecting Team    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Convict, The

When Robert Black was convicted of armed robbery, he was given a choice: 15 years in prison or permanent exile on Mars. He chose Mars. Now, after 10 years of frigid exile—ten years of always having cold feet and hands, ten years of watching his breath condense and swirl before his eyes in the damp Martian mines—he is desperate to escape and return to Earth, desperate to get back to where it is warm.

"Many of the colonies of this planet, here, have been founded and built by misfits, rebels... rejects from their own societies: the transported criminals. And they've made good men in those new frontiers. But, not all men are good men in a bad spot." --- from the intro

Country Boy

Roy Bartlett, an innocent and naive country bumpkin, sells his farm for $10,000 and heads to New York to try his luck. Upon arrival he is approached by a kind young woman who offers to help him learn the ways of the big city. Very kind. And very warm... and sweet... and beautiful. Gosh, darn it, this just seems too good to be true...

"The two o'clock jet from Montana has just landed at New York bringing in some two hundred passengers, including some who have come to the world's largest city for the first time. Roy Bartlett is one of these. Big strapping kid, out seeking fame and/or fortune and New York was ready for him. The ancient custom of fleecing the country yokel will not die out for quite a few centuries to come. He just emerged from the port terminal and was just looking around big-eyed and confused, and bewildered by the immesity of it all, when a girl came up to him." --- from the intro

Desert Object

Destination Arcturus    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Diamond Mountain of Venus, The

Do It and Like It

Dreams

In a post-Apocalyptic world attempting to rebuild civilization, Jim Bedford, the head of the State War Reclaim Bureau, seeks psychiatric help for dreams that plague him of his own death at the hands of the black marketeers he is in conflict with.

"Dreams are a remarkable thing: a remarkable power of the human mind. Freud, the psychoanalytical school, has held very important. But there is one aspect of dreaming that they deny, they overlook, perhaps. That's tonight's story. If someone handed you a photograph of a man's face and said, "Do you know who this is?" Suppose that was a photograph of yourself twenty years from now? You'd have an awful hard time recognizing that. We can recognize a picture of something we have seen, but it's impossible to recognize something that we haven't yet seen." --- from the intro

Escape, The    *LOST*

Aies, a young scientist who is almost twenty-one years old, is afraid the Population Control Commission is going to pair her with Bruce, a scientist whom she cannot stand. The Commission not only decides who people can mate with, but psychologically conditions them to enjoy their fate. To avoid this unhappy future, Aies tries to make her escape with Paul, a man she loves. They have the advantage of surprise and a secret stun weapon, but the Commission has a cloaking device and seems all-powerful. It's a close-run thing.

Ethan    *LOST*

A stranger and his pet wolf appear on the scene of a meteor crash—or was it just a meteor?

Fair Fight

First Baby in Space, The

First Contact

Classic story of the first encounter with an alien race and the mutual distrust that would involve—neither crew wishes to be the first to depart for fear of giving away clues of their origin to a potential adversary.

Versions were produced for Dimension X, Exploring Tomorrow, and X Minus One.

"For many years, a lot of us have been interested in considering the possibilities of meeting other life forms, other intelligent beings, from other stars. Now if there is life out there, some form of life, and remember it may be beyond our most far-fetched imaginations... if there is life, and we have our own Earth ships going out, in constant, regular, deep-space exploration, some day, some where, maybe even out in the gas cloud of the Crab Nebula, some time we will meet." --- from the intro

First Men on the Moon

Flashback

Captain Thompson, part of an experimental Space Medicine program at the base, arrives at the hospital to await the birth of his first child. He's exhausted. Worn out. He uses a new mental technique to relax and relieve his tension—to break down mental barriers—and finds himself leading a party of refugees struggling to reach Quetico—the heavily-forested backwoods area north of what used to be Minnesota. Time is running out. The Kinoys—aliens who detected the first space launch and have moved in to wipe out the human race—are hot on their heals. Flashback? Precognition? Or just plain dreaming?

See also "Time and Time Again" (Dimension X, X Minus One)

"...is an adventure of the mind. We don't know very much about the mind—a lot less than the psychologists pretend they do. In particular, we know very little about those peculiar qualities of mind that have made it possible for some individuals to see things at a great distance, either in space or in time, but these incidents have happened." --- from the intro

Fly Away Home    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Genius

As a sociological study, a group of scientists has seeded a planet with colonists and deprived them of technology and all memory of their stellar origin. The experiment is overly successful when the 'natives' start developing at an alarming rate—fast enough to worry the Galactic Imperial Armed Forces who dispatch an investigator, Grand Marshall Gorham, to determine whether or not this planet of geniuses should be destroyed.

"The term genius is fairly common in our language today. I wonder how many of you realize that the term originated with the old Arabian Night's concept of the Genie—you know, the magical creature that came in a bottle and had such wonderful powers. This story is about a whole planet of geniuses. Genie. Ah... interesting people to try to enslave, you know. Laboratory scientists have as much fun as anybody else, you know. One of the laboratory laws, sometimes called Finagle's Law or Murphy's Law goes: 'In any laboratory experiment, if anything can go wrong... it will.' Well, this is the story of a planet-size laboratory experiment, in which something could go wrong." --- from the intro

Gift, The    *LOST*

"A busy scientist meets a strange woman in an elegant restaurant, Le Maison Blanch. She has the same unusual last name as his. She's a very strange woman, indeed, with a most unusual gift." -- RadioGoldIndex.

Happiness Effect, The

In the world of the future, surgical techniques have progressed to the point where specially trained doctors or 'brain writers' can surgically alter the synapses in a patient's brain, thus eliminating undesirable social behavior. As an added benefit, they can also alter other structures so the patient will be happy about any of the changes made! The world has never been a happier place.

"There's the old saying, "You'll do it and like it", and... eh, of course, a man can, by physical force, make you do it. How would you like to have it so you would Like it, too? There are two basic ways that you can be happy in this world. One, of course, is to have everything you want, in just the way you want it, and never have any difficulties or troubles. This method is ideal, perhaps, but not very probable. Only one person in the world could have that, I guess. The other method, for absolute, complete happiness, would be to Like anything that you got. No matter what it was." --- from the intro

Happiness Idea, The

His Head in the Clouds    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

How Big is a Man?

Hunting Lodge, The

Ever since eastern Europe had been transformed to recreate the country of Transylvania, strange things have been happening. Special Agent, James Martin, from the U.N. manages to obtain a rare interview with the reclusive Transylvanian prime minister, who has surrounded himself with robot guards to protect himself from assassins. But assassins can be very determined... Adapted from the story The Hunting Lodge, by Randall Garrett. In the written story, Martin is spy named Gifford, Decklitz is Senator Anthony Rowley, and the action takes place at the Senator's hunting lodge instead of in Transylvania... but the basic theme is the same.

"The problem of dealing with robots is a rather peculiar thing. You know, when you deal with another human being you can say, 'Well, ah, you know what I mean?' And he can say, 'Yeah, yeah I see what you mean.' When you're dealing with a robot, though, you have a different situation. If you say, 'You know what I mean?' the robot says, 'Duh... No. Tell me.'" --- from the intro

Immigration Impossible

Inferiority

An expedition to obtain diamonds from a strange mountain on Venus leads a pair of life-long friends to question their relationship and consider the importance of compassion versus justice. A previous expedition resulted in the unexplained death of the leader. Now that leader's son and his best friend return... but one of them seems to have a chip on his shoulder.

"Hate and love are really quite close to each other. Usually hate stems from a misunderstanding of something which properly understood, would make love. One of the concepts that many people don't see... miss... eh, just get all wrong, is the fact that there is superiority and there is inferiority. But those things are specialized and narrowed into special areas. If you don't recognize them, the system won't work at all. If you do recognize them, well you know, each must then recognize two things: that he is superior and that he is inferior. This is the story of a man who hadn't learned, hadn't found out, the importance of special superiority and special inferiority." --- from the intro

Last Doctor, The

Last Physician, The

A young woman, Mariced, bangs on the door to the dome and pleads for Kran, the last physician on Earth, to help her. There's something wrong with her sister—hot and cold in turn, delirious, coughs and coughs. But Kran is 125 years old, hasn't had a patient in eight-five years... and there seems to be something wrong with his mind...

"When a man has learned how to do something, he wants that something to be important and needed and wanted in the world. Well, progress tends to eliminate various old necessities and replace them with new ones, and sometimes people are unwilling to change. Once upon a time, there was the occupation of buggy-whip maker, for example. And I wonder how many people today make their living chipping flint points for arrows. Various professions have been eliminated, and various others will be... by automation... by other forces of society. But sometimes an individual fights back. And that can cause trouble." --- from the intro

Liar, The

Human engineers at a robot manufacturing plant discover that, due to an unknown flaw, one of their new robots can read minds. As they struggle to understand the source of the flaw, each starts secretly asking the robot about what the others are thinking. Should they believe what it tells them?

"Tonight's story is about a liar. Ever stop to figure out just what you mean by "a liar"? A liar is somebody who doesn't tell the truth. Somebody who injures people by not giving the true facts. But suppose you had somebody who injured people by telling the truth? Would he be a liar?" --- from the intro

Look Out! Duck!    *LOST*

A hatching of fifty ducks on a space freighter—en route to the swampy planet, Okeefenoke—causes problems for the crew and a veterinarian named Dr. Drake when they are compelled to increase shipboard gravity by 50% so the hatchlings can develop properly.

Made in Avak

Man from the Past, The

Martian Queen, The

Meddler's Moon

A convoluted tale about a man who travels 50 years into the past to make sure his grandparents are properly married. Not an easy task. The grandparents haven't been properly introduced. In fact, they are both involved with other people and resent having their lives meddled with.

"'Last night as I was going up the stair, I met a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. My gosh I wish he'd go away.' Gelette Burgess who penned those immortal lines. Ah... how do you get rid of a little man who isn't there in the first place? Well, Peter Manson was a physicist, a scientist, and his trouble started with a little man who wasn't there." --- from the intro

Webmaster note: I think this reference is to the poem "Antigonish", penned by William Hughes Mearns, not Gelette Burgess. Gelette Burgess is known for a similar nonsense poem about a purple cow.

Mimic, The

Marge—twenty-four years old, red hair and a dimple—has been happily married to Dave Spaulding for three years. And tonight her brother, Ted Kennedy, is finally coming home after spending five years in space! Five years. A lot can happen in five years. Ted's been to Deneb. He's been to Altair VI. He's seen a lot of strange things...

"Sometimes it's fun to try to pit yourself against a puzzle. Try considering tonight's story as a puzzle. It's the story about a monster... that's a familiar theme in science fiction and fantasy, but tonight's story deals with an impossible monster, see if you understand enough of the relationship of living things to figure out why this monster is impossible." --- from the intro

Moon Is Red, The

The Cold War in space. An American astronaut en route to the moon has a hard decision to make when he is ordered to circle the moon and return to Earth without landing. Apparently the Russians have already landed and claimed the moon as their own. Should he return to Earth or land anyway and risk starting a war?

"The scene is a missile-testing base somewhere in the continental United States. The time? Half-past two on a Tuesday afternoon, five, maybe 10 years from now. A rather unusual missile is getting worked over. Blast off is 10 minutes away, and the countdown is in its last stages. And a man is sitting inside this missile, waiting. The United States is about to make its first attempt to send a manned rocket to the moon." --- from the intro

Mountain of Diamond, The

Mutant, The

Mutants created by radiation from nuclear war are generally kept segregated from society, but one sensitive and lonely mutant, capable of telepathically controlling people, decides he's had enough of isolation and is ready to seek fulfillment.

"...things are better than others, but that we should never say that anything is wrong, that it has no value. That's not true. There are things that are wrong. Yes, some things are just plain wrong, no rightness about them. Atomic war is one of those things: iff we get started on a real atomic war. You see, ordinary war destroys Men, atomic war can destroy Humanness, by producing mutations that aren't human. But there's another thing that's wrong too, and that's the wrongness of fooling yourself, not merely others, but fooling yourself. And that's tonight's story." --- from the intro

Nago

New Transylvania

No Way Out

Mankind has spread throughout the Solar System with independent colonies on Mars, Venus, and Callisto, but still faces catastrophic overcrowding on Earth: 18 billion and increasing at a rate of 500,000 per day. Lester McClellan, the Secretary-General of the UN, must somehow convince the ambassador from Venus to open the colonies to Earth's teeming billions. And if they don't agree? Well, there just might be war.

"In the Biblical story of the Handwriting on the Wall, ah... you know everybody could see that handwriting. The king, Belshazzar, could see it clearly enough; trouble was he couldn't tell what it meant. If you recall he had to call in an interpreter. Lot of people can see handwriting on the wall, the argument is: what does it mean? The thing that makes reading that handwriting on the wall so difficult many times, is that the message is one we don't want and we don't want to be able to read." --- from the intro

Noise Level    *LOST*

"Psychology plays a major role in scientific experimentation. The Exploring Tomorrow adventure drama for tonight at 10:15 uses this theme as one of the bases for its story. The adventure to be presented by director Sanford Marshall is an original John Fleming drama depicting how Air Force chiefs used a hoax to goad their experimentors into perfecting an antigravily device, one that actually works!" --- Janesville Daily Gazette, as quoted at Digital Deli Too..

Old Man, The    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Overpopulation

Planet of Geniuses

Precedent    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Psyonics    *LOST*

"An interesting story dealing with the subject of 'Psyonics', the science of telepathy and telekenesis will be offered at 9:30 p.m. on Exploring Tomorrow. --- Pacific Stars and Stripes, as quoted at Digital Deli Too.

Secret, The

Solution Impossible

Sound Decision

When a damaged space liner en route back to Earth seems on an imminent collision course with the planet, the authorities on the ground and the pilots on board must face a hard question—what price the lives of the passengers?

Note: This story was written by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett and adapted for radio by Randall Garrett. My copy of this show has the ending from "Time Heals" spliced on to the end of it and erroneously credits Poul Anderson. Not really sure why anybody would do such a thing...

"Let's consider the proposition that interplanetary space flight has become a commercial proposition; there are regular liners running between the planets, and the Martian Queen, we'll say, is such a liner: a spaceship making a short-run orbit from Mars to Earth. Ah... this time, she's carrying a hundred and fifty passengers and a crew of thirty or so. She's made a long, uneventful trip from space, and now she's approaching the last leg of her voyage—the deceleration for landing." --- from the intro

Sourdough    *LOST*

Robert Silverberg has verified he sold a script with this name to Exploring Tomorrow. It is unclear whether the script was ever produced and, if so, what name was used.

Space Baby, The

An expectant mother aboard an orbital station is injured in a meteor impact, and her baby will need an incubator to survive—a piece of equipment simply not found aboard a space station. Can one be shipped up on an emergency shuttle? Can one be built? Where would they find the parts? There must be something they can use!

"When men start a new project, it starts with a plan. The plan has to be carried out, worked through, the details arranged for. You don't have any trouble until the thing you did not expect turns up. So far, human research has achieved an unmanned satellite in space. The sole purpose of any of these devices, any machine, is to serve human beings. The machine goes first to try things out, but the sole purpose of doing it is so that men can follow, and women, too, but there are problems of purely human nature that sometimes complicate the most scientific of plans." --- from the intro

Speak No More

Stowaway, The    *LOST*

"The first mission to the moon is not only off course, but is being subjected to several changes in plans." --- from RadioGoldIndex.
NOTE: "The Stowaway" is often listed as an alternative name for "The Cold Equations", but the plot as stated by RadioGoldIndex is quite different from the Tom Godwin short story. I believe this show is LOST.

Stranger with Roses, The

Telepaths

Alan Carvel finds his telepathic abilities give him an edge when it comes to seducing young women like Jeannie, but he is feeling increasingly constrained—not by his own conscience, but by the conscience of the only other telepath in the world, Lorraine, who is constantly jabbering at him to do the 'right' thing. A showdown is brewing.

"There is the old saying that, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." You know, it isn't really power that corrupts, but immunity—immunity to punishment and control, and every fool with a little power, wants to achieve that immunity. Usually it's held that Like attracts Like, that two individuals with the same great fundamental characteristic will be normally attracted to each other. You know, this isn't necessarily so. It may not be true. You may have two people who don't like each other, but are forced by the very nature of the fact that they have a unique characteristic to endure each other." --- from the intro

Time Heals

Jim Hart, a man with inoperable cancer who has less than a year to live, forsakes his friends and loved ones and volunteers for cryogenic stasis with the hope that the medical world of the future can cure his disease. He wakes up 800 years in the future and discovers a personal fate worse than what he left behind.

"We all believe, pretty solidly, that sooner or later almost any problem you name, is going to be solved. So, ah... apparently all you'd have to do is just sort of stand by, and if you could wait, ah... it would be solved for you. Ah... I don't think that works right. There's another thing to consider." --- from the intro

Time Traveler

Tough Guy    *LOST*

"A story about a kid who was sure he was tough, real tough, a real tough guy, until he ran up against some people who were in the business of learning things. You know, sometimes you have to find out things like whether a man's eyeballs fall out when he's decelerated too suddenly. These men aren't tough... they're just curious." --- from the closing credits of 'The Cold Equations'.

Trouble with Robots, The

Venus' Diamond Mountain

Vincent Deem, 1997

David Childs' wife, Sari, runs a boarding house with no boarders until the day Mr. Vincent Deem arrives and wishes to rent a room. Sari is reluctant... and scared. Mr. Deem is just plain weird in a way that is hard to describe. Maybe it's the out-of-date clothes he wears. Maybe it's his surprise at learning the year is 1997. Sari searches his luggage... and finds roses. There haven't been any roses since the war of 1980...

My copy of this is incomplete (probably). It ends quite abruptly at about 14:10.

"Sari was sitting on the porch resting when she first saw him. Not a tall man, a kind of softness about him and round blue eyes and a round face. A sunburned mustache that drooped and made him look a little sad. He came walking out of the city with the graceful towers rising behind him, into a hot blue sky, and for a moment he seemed unreal." --- from the intro

Unknown    *LOST*

"John Campbell Jr. offers another interesting story at 9:30 p.m. when Exploring Tomorrow presents a program dealing with a cultural war between planets and the difficulty individuals have in fighting a culture unassisted." --- Pacific Stars and Stripes, as quoted at Digital Deli Too.

Unknown    *LOST*

"A turn missed by a 25th of a second in a space ship causes one of the best pilots in the crew to be dismissed from his job on Exploring Tomorrow at 9:30 p.m." --- Pacific Stars and Stripes, as quoted at Digital Deli Too.

War Game

The planet Avak, in the Deneb star system, is overpopulated and bristling with energy to expand into other systems. They fought a little war about 10 years ago, but now they have devoted themselves to peaceful commercial and industrial purposes. Interstellar trader, Captain Bratton, has just returned to Earth from Avak with a cargo of children's toys which arouse the suspicion of an Earth customs official who wonders if they really are just toys. Adapted from the story War Game, by Philip K. Dick. In the written story, the planet in question is Ganymede.

"Generally speaking, what a fella means when he says, "It was a fair fight" turns out to be... "I won the way I expected to". Ah... Avak was in the position that they weren't supposed to win. They were going to have to use an unexpected method. Of course, that would be called unfair, wouldn't it?" --- from the intro

With All the Trappings    *LOST*

"An FBI agent is assigned to a super-secret government installation at Eden Valley. A group of spies are trying very hard to discover the secret. An interesting idea." --- RadioGoldIndex

First Lines of John W. Campbell's Introduction

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