It is 1938-39. Nazis invade Czechoslovakia. Martians invade New Jersey. Soviet agents infiltrate the Manhattan media.
The Mutual Broadcasting System is struggling to save a failing mystery show, Adventures of Gideon Cairn. A dashing, obscure Canadian actor is hired to play Gideon Cairn, and a troubling element of the occult is introduced in the scripts. Then, at the end of one Sunday-night broadcast, the actor makes an unscripted...
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It is 1938-39. Nazis invade Czechoslovakia. Martians invade New Jersey. Soviet agents infiltrate the Manhattan media.
The Mutual Broadcasting System is struggling to save a failing mystery show, Adventures of Gideon Cairn. A dashing, obscure Canadian actor is hired to play Gideon Cairn, and a troubling element of the occult is introduced in the scripts. Then, at the end of one Sunday-night broadcast, the actor makes an unscripted announcement: on the next weekly broadcast Gideon Cairn will provide information that will lead to the solution of a recent real-life assassination in Rockefeller Plaza.
This story of the week between the two broadcasts is told from three points of view -that of Michael, a young scriptwriter whose mind is infected by the fantasies of pulp fiction - that of Milton, a middle-aged radio producer with ties to the American Communist Party - and that of Marion, the senior writer on the show, whose experience has led her to distrust dashing actors, political ideologies, and the attractions of the kind of mystery fiction that she has been writing. Enter the NYPD, FBI, Communists, Fellow Travelers, Nazis, The Lone Ranger, Charlie McCarthy and Orson Welles. Read on...