Santos Ortega stars in a time travel story by Walter Black. It’s 1939 and his scientist friend has invented a time machine which he has successfully tested on animals. One of his wealthy friends expressed great concern about Adolf Hitler’s incursions across Europe and the nature of his policies and objectives. This friend and his wife met Hitler by accident in 1908 during their honeymoon. He wants to go back to that moment and prevent the havoc that occurred with his rise to power. His wife agrees to go with him. They successfully make the trip to that biergarten where they meet the future leader, and they meet him again the next day. Something is wrong. They know Hitler is an extremist (and a bad artist and architect when they see some of his work), but their trip back in time to 1908 did not carry the knowledge and insights they had in 1939. This means when they return to 1939, their “mission” was never completed, and they have limited memory of any details of the process.
The story is entertaining light sci-fi for 1960, but what is more interesting is that it was written and originally broadcast during WW2. It was originally presented on The Mysterious Traveler on August 20, 1944; no recordings of that broadcast are known to exist. It was rather cutting-edge for its time. The topic of going back to change events related to Hitler was relatively new in sci-fi and fantasy publications. The first notable one was in Weird Tales July-August 1941. It was written by Massachusetts senator Roger Sherman Hoar, who wrote science fiction stories with the pseudonym “Ralph Milne Farley.” It was released in July 1941, when Europe was in severe turmoil and the US was not yet engaged in the war effort but was being pressed to do so. The story was I Killed Hitler and it can be accessed at https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v35n10_1941-07_sas/page/n71/mode/2up Another early story was My Name is Legion by Lester del Rey which appeared in the June 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It is accessible at https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v29n04_1942-06_dtsg0318/page/n67/mode/2up This indicates that Walter Black’s story was not a new idea, but it was early in the process of stories that explored time travel and the possibility that it could be a tool to change the nature of current events and escape from them. All time travel stories have plot holes and scientific and philosophical issues. Detailed analysis of them might be an interesting thought exercise, but too much of that saps the entertainment value right out of them. Don’t overanalyze it. This Black story is simple, and is a very interesting perspective on the topic, and only takes a little over twenty minutes to provide it.
The program was recorded on Thursday, September 22, 1960. Rehearsal began at 4:30pm and ended at 8:00pm. Recording was from 8:00pm to 8:30pm.
The only surviving recording is an Armed Forces Radio Service one, and is likely numbered as AFRS#803. It is in excellent sound, and replaces many lesser quality recordings that have been in circulation for decades.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP600925
THE CAST
Santos Ortega (Justin Driscoll), Vera Allen (Emily Driscoll), Robert Dryden (Adolf Hitler), Ted Osborne (Oren Scruggs), Bill Lipton & Marion Russell (the Driscolls in flashback on their honeymoon), Marion Russell (Margaret)
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