ReadMultiplex.com: A 1956 Forgotten Radio Satire of Empire, Amnesia, and the Fragile Future Utopia

From ReadMultiplex.com Podcast. by Brian Roemmele

May 14, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 48

About this episode

The episode discusses the 1956 radio satire 'Skulking Permit' and its relevance to contemporary issues of memory and bureaucracy.

In the golden age of American science fiction radio, few episodes captured the absurd machinery of bureaucracy and the quiet horror of lost history quite like X Minus One’s “Skulking Permit.” First broadcast on NBC on February 15, 1956 (and rebroadcast on July 4, 1957), the episode adapted Robert Sheckley’s short story from the December 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It remains a razor-sharp parable about how autocratic thinking devours memory, how isolation can breed innocence or oblivion, and how the rediscovery of one’s true origins can shatter a civilization’s self-image. Today, as we stand on the cusp of an AI-mediated Great Forgetting, one Brian Roemmele has chronicled in his writings on the Amnesia Generation, this story reads less like quaint 1950s satire and more like a warning siren for our own future. Read more at: ReadMultiplex.com Support this wrok by buying us a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/brianroemmele

People in this episode

Host: Brian Roemmele

Topics covered

science fiction
bureaucracy
history
AI
satire
memory

Keywords

X Minus One
satire
bureaucracy
AI
memory
history
Robert Sheckley

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Galaxy Science Fiction

Books & works: X Minus One’s “Skulking Permit”, Robert Sheckley’s short story