ALMOST HUMAN
[SHORT-STORY]
Originally published in 1943 in Fantastic Adventures under the byline of “Tarleton Fiske” (one of
a dozen or so Robert Bloch pseudonyms), “Almost Human” represented Bloch’s successful
melding of science-fiction and horror with a Frankenstein-motif. In 1949 he contributed an essay
“Why I Selected ‘Almost Human,’ to the anthology My Best Science Fiction Story. “It is primarily
a story of personality, human and non-human.”
A scientist builds a robot-- "Junior"-- capable of intelligence and consciousness, but the
machine is stolen by a criminal who has other ideas for its uses. Junior, however, has plans of his
own.
“With a strange cinema noir feel, a robot is controlled by a gangster who teaches the mighty
machine evil. As is always expected, the gangster is himself a victim of the robot, after it learns a
little about love and wants the gangster’s woman for itself. With direct reference to the
Frankenstein Complex but with a neat and unique gangster overlay, this simple story may support
less confident students studying the sub-genre of artificial intelligence.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
DIMENSION X (WNBC, NEW YORK)
[Saturday—8:05-8:30 PM]
May 13, 1950 “Almost Human” [EXTANT RECORDING]
PERSONNEL: George Lefferts (scriptwriter).
CAST: Jack Grimes, Rita Lynn, Santos Ortega, et al.
X MINUS ONE (WRCA, NEW YORK)
[Thursday—9:05-9:30 PM]
August 11, 1955 “Almost Human” [EXTANT RECORDING]
[“…a robot created by a scientist but taken over by a gangster…”]
PERSONNEL: George Lefferts (scriptwriter).
CAST: Joan Allison, Lin Cook, Jack Grimes, Joseph Julian, Santos Ortega, Nat Pollen, Guy
Repp.