Born in England, G.K. Saunders graduated from New Zealand's University of Canterbury, before going to work with radio station 3ZD Christchurch.
In 1939, Saunders and his wife emigrated to Australia, where he was introduced to ABC Federal Controller of Productions Frank Clewlow. Clewlow was, at that time, recruiting staff for the ABC's Argonauts Club and the companion program, Children's Session. Begun in Melbourne in 1933, the Argonauts Club ran on ABC radio in Melbourne until 1934, when its creator, Nina Murdoch, moved to Adelaide. It was revived in 1941 as a segment of the nationally broadcast (excluding Western Australia) Children's Session (which would be re-named Children's Hour in 1954, and run under that name until 1972).
Saunders wrote scripts regularly for the Children's Session and for the Macquarie Radio Network's Lux Radio Theatre, until he was recruited into the CSIRO with Australia's entry into World War II. He continued to write scripts during the war years, but in far smaller quantities.
After the war, he was able to concentrate on radio scripts again, including a succession of science-fiction serials for the Children's Hour in the 1950s. The names of these serials are difficult to locate, but his output certainly included 1953's The Moon Flower, which science-fiction writer Bruce Gillespie decribes as follows:
'A radio serial begins. It is called The Moon Flower, and is
written by G. K. Saunders. In that serial, a group of what sound like
fairly ordinary people take off in a rocket and travel to the moon.
After much exploring, they find, at the very bottom of the deepest cave
on the Moon, one tiny flower. We know now that that is unlikely; but in
1952 scientists still thought there might be some form of life on the
Moon.
It is hard to describe the impact that that serial had on me. For a
start, it was presented as being based on 'real science'. The serial was
often slowed down for little lectures on travelling in free fall in
space, or the extreme temperatures on the Moon, and stuff like that. It
was all new to me. And then it offered at its end that thrill of
discovering a tiny piece of life on the Moon - in an era when few people
expected humans to travel in space until the year 2000'. ('The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction').
Of Saunders's other serials, Gillespie only says:
'I could find almost nothing in print that gave me the same thrill except
for further G. K. Saunders serials on the ABC during the 1950s. In one
of them, its main characters make the first trip to the nearest star,
Alpha Centauri, and there find a planet filled with people much like
ourselves - who have never invented music. I've never met this idea in
any other SF story. Again I felt the thrill of coming across ideas that
nobody around me would ever have considered - that the world, our
civilisation, might be entirely different from the way we expect it to
be. ('The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction)'.
There is also some suggestion that Saunders's successful television serial The Stranger began as a radio serial on the Children's Hour.
In 1957, Saunders and his wife moved to England, where he worked as a television script-writer for the BBC. He continued to write for the ABC, however, including the 400-episode serial The Nomads, about a family travelling around Europe by caravan. Successful as the program was, politician Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes openly derided it (in a speech to the Ballarat Young Liberals) as Communist propaganda.
Little is known of the extent of Saunders' writing for the BBC, though he is credited with the radio plays 'A Touch of the Sun' (1962), 'Blood Test' (1965), 'The Nightwatchman' (1965), and 'The Man for the Job' (1972) (see 'Lost Radio Plays'). It is unclear whether or not these are speculative fiction.
He also wrote the television serials The Stranger (1964-1966) and Wandjina! (1966) for the ABC.
Further Reference
'From Mickey Mouse Directly to Drug-taking: The Wreck of the ABC's Argonauts Club'. Interview with John Appleton, former producer of the Argonauts Club and former Director of Children's Programming, ABC. MidstLifeCrisis (http://midstlifecrisis.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/from-mickey-mouse-directly-to-drugs.html). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)
Gillespie, Bruce. 'The Pleasures of Reading Science Fiction'. Originally given as a talk to the Spaced Out meeting, Sat. 15 Feb. 2003. Spaced Out (http://spacedoutinc.org/DU-15/PleasuresOfReadingSF.html). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)
'G.K. Saunders'. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_K_Saunders). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)
'Lost Radio Plays'. Radio Plays and Radio Drama (http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/RADIO1.HTML). (Sighted: 10/10/2012)
