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Tag: Ricochet Silent Radio

Utah Wheels and Rails, Part 2 (Conclusion)

March 26, 2021

(Announcer:) Turn down the lights! You’ve tuned in to Ricochet Silent Radio, our long running theater of the mind. Last night, we began this week’s adventure, Utah Wheels and Rails, a work of fan fiction featuring actual Ricochet members in the Beehive State. And now, the second half, the conclusion.

(Voice of Jason Rudert:) A week went by. I sent the rocket booster metal X-rays to Houston, addressed to nobody special at “The NASA Archives”. I received a form letter of thanks, which was nice.

Utah Wheels and Rails, Part 1

March 24, 2021

Turn down the lights! You’ve tuned in to Ricochet Silent Radio, our long-running theater of the mind. Once again, Tales of the Pit conjures up images you can’t see, and sounds you can’t hear, in the first half of this week’s adventure, Utah Wheels and Rails, a work of fan fiction featuring Ricochet members in the Beehive State. And now, our presentation.

(Music cue) (Sound of a clock ticking. Then sounds of a cat.) (Voice of Jason Rudert) “Every cat I had would do that weird, deep, sorrowful meow when they’d killed something, or maybe when a mouse or bird would sneak in. I thought of it as their bragging meow, but you could also think of it as a high-pitched roar of triumph.”

Silent Radio Is Back!

March 23, 2021

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Get ready to gather around the old Philco console and turn down the lights! On Wednesday and Thursday this week, March 24 and 25, you’re invited to tune in to Ricochet Silent Radio, our long running theater of the mind. Once again, Tales of the Pit conjures up images you can’t see, and sounds you can’t hear, in our newest radio-scripted adventure, Utah Wheels and Rails, a work of fan fiction featuring actual Ricochet members.

In today’s world, what does it take to be actually countercultural? Culturally, Salt Lake City is a world away from Hollywood. Utah is (mostly) new territory for RSR; in 2016, we published a satirical takedown of the Sundance Film Festival. The new story reflects interest, respect and sometimes amusement at the very different ways of that city, as well as being a tribute to some of the cyber-friendships we’ve formed online. Who are the real non-conformists? You’ll find them right here.

Brooding Intelligence, Part 2

September 10, 2020

(Intro Announcer:) Tonight, the second half of Ricochet Silent Radio’s latest adventure! In a time of quarantine, Judge Mental plunges into Miami’s underground worlds of lap dancers, seamy politics, steamy love, and sudden violence!

Last night, we learned that four of America’s top spy satellite experts were driven to suicide when sinister forces of social media tempted them onto an island of carnal sin, blackmailed them, and targeted them for social cancellation and personal destruction.

Brooding Intelligence, Part 1

September 9, 2020

(Dramatic theme music climax. Network Announcer:) Tonight, Tales From the PIT brings you the first half of Brooding Intelligence, Judge Mental’s newest Ricochet Silent Radio adventure! It’s a tale of race and Red hokum, of faithful engineers and seductive strippers, of con games and espionage! It’ll take you from the warm embrace of a lover’s arms, to a deadly serious orbital race to prove once and for all whose spies have the coldest heart in the sky! And now here he is, Judge Mental!

(Voice of Judge Mental) Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself entering a bank wearing a mask and asking for money. But in the bizarro spring of the Great Quarantine, that’s just what I was doing. I’d been in Miami all of three hours.

Conclusion: Atomic Terror Over the African Coast

March 26, 2020

Pour a beverage, turn down the lights, and pull up a chair! Tonight, we finish the adventure told in imaginary old time radio style that we began two nights ago.

In the first episode, we met physicist and midwestern tycoon Hank Rhody, the mastermind and paymaster of a complex international scheme to secure and remove a long-hidden rogue atomic weapon from South Africa. The rest of Hank’s top-notch team of specialists, wizards, and heroes is known to every attentive Ricochet member. In the second episode, they contrive to buy the bomb and gather the electronic evidence that will incriminate its seller. Then they all make their escape in a rebranded Rhody jetliner, intending to take the fragile, laboratory-created bomb to a CIA nuclear disposal team 1500 miles north along Africa’s east coast.

Part 2: Atomic Terror Over the African Coast

March 25, 2020

Pour a beverage, turn down the lights, and pull up a chair! Tonight, we continue the adventure we began last night, the thirteenth series of Ricochet Silent Radio, fan fiction about Ricochet members written as scripts inspired by the spirit of old-time radio. This week’s three-part tall tale is Atomic Terror Over the African Coast.

In the first episode, physicist and Midwestern tycoon Hank Rhody has told his covert team about a 40-year-old South African prototype nuclear weapon on the verge of being sold to the highest terrorist bidder. ”Hank the Bank” is the mastermind and paymaster of the complex international scheme to secure and remove it. The rest of the top-notch team is known to any astute Ricochet reader.

RSR 13! Atomic Terror Over the African Coast

March 24, 2020

Pour a beverage, turn down the lights, and pull up a chair! Tonight, we begin the thirteenth series of Ricochet Silent Radio, fan fiction about Ricochet members written as scripts inspired by the spirit of old-time radio. This week’s three-part tall tale is Atomic Terror Over the African Coast, a tip of the hat in tribute to veteran RSR star Hank Rhody’s own 2016 entry in imaginary media, Atomic Terror Over the Pacific. We’ve recruited a few more feature performers from the overstocked pool of fascinating characters on the Member Feed, and we’re always looking for a few more!

Plus, of course, we’ll never neglect RSR’s longtime audience favorites. In view of the ongoing national emergency, this program may be interrupted by Ricochet editors at any time for news bulletins. Our sponsors will present this program with minimal commercial interruptions.

But first–(Recorded ad theme) Take a breath…it’s springtime! The cares of winter are over. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we’re tending a crop of the world’s finest tobacco for you and you, Mr. and Mrs. America. So taste the flavor, and savor the springtime with Salem!

Member Post

Internet's Hank

February 26, 2020

Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Sit back for another edition of Ricochet Silent Radio! Once again it’s time to check back in with the knuckle-dusters of the intelligence community, the six-shooter samurais that protect our way of life, Whiskey Sam Dagger Hate! Turn your mind to that flashing rhinestone of the desert, Las Vegas, […]

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Arahant Begins: A Ricochet Silent Radio Origin Story

October 28, 2019

I had a most unusual wartime career. I’m from Illinois but my great-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy. A touch of rebellion and a streak of belligerence runs in the family. The Depression hit us hard. Before Pearl Harbor, I was living in a tiny, fifth-floor, walk-up apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan, taking night courses in business administration at City College. I wrote stories in my spare time and worked for a midtown publisher, Street and Smith. On December 12, the morning after Hitler declared war on the USA, a friend and co-worker of mine joined the mobs at the recruiting station near the office. Bob and I both went Navy. That was the last I saw of him for a couple of years, and they were busy years. I was a radio operator on a sub tender in the south Atlantic. The Navy trained me well. I thought I had no natural aptitude for technology. It seems ironic given how things turned out.

In September 1943, mid-winter south of the Equator, I was suddenly shipped Stateside. No explanation. Two weeks later, I reported to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and was ordered to report for tests at the Naval Research Laboratory. They had some kind of psychological screening program. I was sent to a crowded waiting room at the base hospital. The air was blue with cigarette smoke, cursing, and boredom. Waiting, waiting, waiting. To my surprise, my old New York pal Bob walked in, but that moment, before we even had a chance to say hello, a duty officer appeared with a clipboard. When it’s alphabetical, I usually go first, like I did here. He barked out, “Arahant! Asimov! Heinlein! Hubbard! Get in here, on the double!”

Ricochet Silent Radio, Conclusion: Lord Protector of the United States

January 25, 2019

Turn down the lights! It’s time for another Ricochet Silent Radio adventure in our ongoing series…Tales From the PIT! (Music theme intro cue)

Yes, you’ve tuned into 1954’s boldest new radio sensation. Rocket with Ricochet into the infinite horizons of the far-off world of the future. At the beginning of the 21^st century, one man will uphold justice…by breaking the law! A total outsider to politics, a moody, gifted loner with a vigilante streak, has risen to power over a great continental nation. Incredible…but possible! It’s been a troubling question for republics since the times of the Caesars; what happens in those few, crucial times when saving the country from chaos seems to demand utterly undemocratic means?

Ricochet Silent Radio, Part 3: Lord Protector of the United States

January 24, 2019

Turn down the lights! It’s time for another Ricochet Silent Radio adventure in our ongoing series…Tales From the PIT!

Yes, you’ve tuned into 1954’s boldest new radio sensation. Rocket with Ricochet into the infinite horizons of the far-off world of the future. At the beginning of the 21st century, one man will uphold justice…by breaking the law! In parts 1 and 2, we followed the journey of John Mantle, a.k.a. Judge Mental, former spaceman, computer expert—and arrow of vengeance—whose intelligence and ruthlessness brings him to the attention of Skipsul Harrigan, deputy to the President of the United States. Mantle is press-ganged into Federal service, acting as confidential White House liaison to rich financiers and industrialists like Gregory Arahant and Jason Rudert. The country is already in a state of chaos, approaching civil war when a devastating series of events leaves John Mantle in command.

Ricochet Silent Radio, Part 2: Lord Protector of the United States

January 23, 2019

Turn down the lights! It’s time for another Ricochet Silent Radio adventure in our ongoing series…Tales From the PIT!

You’ve tuned into 1954’s boldest radio sensation. Rocket with Ricochet into the infinite horizons of the far-off world of the future. At the beginning of the 21st century, one man will uphold justice…by breaking the law! Last night, our story began in the distant year of 1997, with the turbulent saga of John Mantle, a young spaceman whose improvised, desperate defense of the space station against a trio of orbiting pirates returns him to Earth as a hero. Hard times and the challenge of a new national data bank call him back to Federal service, but the covert opportunity to mete out his own justice to the men who paid for the pirate raid can’t be resisted for long.

Ricochet Silent Radio, Part 1: Lord Protector of the United States

January 22, 2019

Turn down the lights! It’s time for another Ricochet Silent Radio adventure in our ongoing series…Tales From the PIT!

Yes, you’ve tuned into 1954’s boldest new radio sensation. Rocket with Ricochet into the infinite horizons of the far-off world of the future. At the beginning of the 21st century, one man will uphold justice…by breaking the law! Incredible…but possible! Is this a Buck Rogers fantasy, or could it be a deadly accurate prediction of America’s tomorrow? Ricochet’s imaginary network of classic radio brings you a daring glimpse into what just might be–(Theme music climax)–Tomorrow’s world!

Ricochet Silent Radio Returns to the Air: Monday 5:30 pm ET

January 18, 2019

Don’t touch that dial! Next week, from Monday through Thursday, Ricochet’s theater of the imagination presents Judge Mental in 1954’s strangest and boldest futuristic radio script fantasy about the beginning of the 21^st century, “Lord Protector of the United States.”

It’s been a troubling question for republics since the times of the Caesars; what happens in those few, crucial times when saving the country from chaos seems to demand utterly undemocratic means? How can a total outsider to politics, a moody, gifted loner, a former astronaut and computer wizard with a vigilante streak, rise to power over a great continental nation? How dare he try to resolve its roiling race to bloodshed? There aren’t really topical questions here, just timeless ones. In next week’s story, nineteen fifty-four looks ahead almost a half century to a changed world, made richer by technology like atomic helicopters and automated kitchens. But human nature doesn’t change.

Remember, the premise is that this is a 1954 broadcast. Prophecy has limitations. Although every home in end-of-the-century America has three dimensional television, the country still has 48 states. The Dodgers never left Brooklyn. Airlines are still only gradually taking over from passenger railroads. Ed Sullivan is still on the air. Rock and roll? The women’s movement? Not even an imagined part of the world of 2000, though there’s awareness of civil rights, and a belief among all races that the country would have long since worked out those problems by then.

Member Post

August 13, 2018

Once again, Ricochet Silent Radio leaps into your home via the magic of audible sound! RSR brings you familiar Ricochet personalities placed in the worlds of classic old time radio. Tales From the PIT brings you excitement, adventure and romance over these affiliated stations. Tonight we present One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall, […]

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Member Post

March 9, 2018

The Rhody family’s half billion dollar investment in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is finally about to pay unimaginably large dividends. Tourists in Europe, Asia and South America are lured by the new resort’s Playboy connection. Two mid-westerners on the Rhody payroll are on the west coast, tacitly protecting the fragile new alliance between two financial empires. […]

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Member Post

March 8, 2018

Who creates the future? Does it have a will of its own? For nearly twenty years Playboy Magazine has seemed to be on an unstoppable winning streak, financially and culturally. Last night we learned that if Hugh Hefner really had the key to the Seventies, the Copper Range development team wanted to be in business […]

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Member Post

March 7, 2018

This week, Tales From the PIT presents Northern Command. In the lingering warmth of the summer of 1969, the Rhody-led Wisconsin Mining and Manufacturing Corporation has unveiled a vast, nearly completed new resort and theme park set amid the natural beauty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on the shores of Lake Superior. They’ve turned the abandoned […]

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Member Post

March 6, 2018

This week, Tales From the PIT presents the wide-open saga of a 20th century American family that dares and wins, an empire builder’s story of men, forests, mines, metal and money. Last night, we met the leading men. Tonight we continue the story of their grandest gamble. Part Two: Pharaoh, Behold Your City Preview Open

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