Best of X Minus One

This one is for lovers of old time radio. And for science fiction geeks, too, who just don't know what they've been missing ...

From April 1955 to January 1958, American households from Boise to Buffalo tuned in to NBC Radio's popular science fiction program, X Minus One. A total of 129 unique episodes in 30-minute broadcasts aired weekly during that span. These programs involved all the great stuff that defines the genre to this day: time travel, space exploration, artificial intelligence and close encounters of every kind. There was even a dystopian tale or two about earth from the not-too-distant future thrown into the mix.

Good stuff.

Some X Minus One episodes were remakes from Dimension X, another old time radio show of the science fiction genre that had aired in 1950 and 1951. Most were adaptations of short stories penned by classic science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury direct from the pages of Galaxy, Astounding Science Fiction or Amazing Stories magazines. While more than a few were variations on the same story; only a handful of X Minus One broadcasts were born from original scripts.

Each and every episode of X Minus One, however, was introduced with announcer Fred Collins' classic countdown:

"Countdown for blast-off. X Minus 5, X Minus 4, X Minus 3, X Minus 2, X Minus 1 ... Fire. From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future. Adventures in which you will live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds. The National Broadcasting Corporation presents ... X Minus One."

What follows is a subjective countdown in no particular order -- with the exception of the number one choice -- and modeled on Collins' classic introduction, of the five best episodes from that old time radio, sci-fi classic: X minus One.