Dimension X
Report on the Barnhouse Effect (Dramatized)
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About this listen
A professor discovers the secret of mind over matter - then struggles to keep his power out of the hands of the military. Based on a Kurt Vonnegut story, this episode of Dimension X originally aired on April 22, 1950.
Featuring "adventures in time and space told in future tense", Dimension X aired over NBC from April 8, 1950, through September 29, 1951. The series adapted stories by the modern masters of science fiction, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, and many others.
Hear more science fiction dramatizations.©2006 Radio Spirits Inc. (P)2006 Radio Spirits Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
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We Are What We Pretend to Be
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- Narrated by: Colin Hanks, Oliver Wyman, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
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Called “our finest black-humorist” by The Atlantic Monthly, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.
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Not a place to start.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
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Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
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- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
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Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Sinbad
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- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
I had an uncle who left his hometown and the family business there to become a fine actor. His talent was a minor one, but a pretty one. It lasted for 15 years and was gone. He came home with the ashes of it and died 20 years later, poor and, as it happened, drunk.
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Short and Sharp
- By Elle Gato on 07-30-24
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
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Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
-
-
Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
We Are What We Pretend to Be
- The First and Last Works
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Colin Hanks, Oliver Wyman, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called “our finest black-humorist” by The Atlantic Monthly, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.
-
-
Not a place to start.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
-
-
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Sinbad
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I had an uncle who left his hometown and the family business there to become a fine actor. His talent was a minor one, but a pretty one. It lasted for 15 years and was gone. He came home with the ashes of it and died 20 years later, poor and, as it happened, drunk.
-
-
Short and Sharp
- By Elle Gato on 07-30-24
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
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Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
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“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
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The survival of the human race is a total bore!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
Critic reviews
"The landmark series was Dimension X, which was broadcast by NBC....It was the first radio series to treat science fiction in an adult way." (Mike Ashley, Transformations: The History of the Science-Fiction Magazine 1950 to 1970)
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What listeners say about Dimension X
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Cather
- 05-28-07
NOT HEINLEIN!!!! But good
I bought this because it had Heinlein's name on it-- I saw the Vonnegut reference but assumed RAH had some hand it the adaptation. This does not appear to be the case-- Heinlein is not mentioned at all. But you know, Vonnegut doesn't stink.
If you're looking for post-fifties production values or acting styles, look elsewhere. But it's a good story, and pretty well done for the time.
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- Kristi R.
- 03-05-13
Radio story about Man with the Magic Mind!
What did you love best about Dimension X?
The story was imaginative and made you think. What would you do if you had the power to think things into happening? Of course, the military would want you very badly. The dilemna Mr. Barnhouse faces is creative and thought provoking.
What other book might you compare Dimension X to and why?
This was a pretty original story, but I guess there have been some Twilight Zone tv shows that have been similar. Just can't think of any at this time.
Have you listened to any of the narrator’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
The actors in this play were wonderful, but I doubt are still working today. This is from the 1950's, so I dont' think this is relevant.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
When the Professor disappeared and was tracked down by another military. The way he solved the problem was the only solution I could think of and also the up in the air ending always is good!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- James
- 05-08-07
Needs better audio
Great story, Great Actors, but the experience is ruined by very poor audio... the sound effects overwhelm the dialog to the point of making it unbearable to listen to. PLEASE PLEASE check the Levels and re-release.
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1 person found this helpful