For me, "The Human Operators" was a story that whizzed by and made little impression on the page, but like "Laugh Track," it gained immeasurably from Ellison's oral delivery. It helps that his voice sounds clearer, less gruff and grizzled, than on "Go Toward the Light" or "Laugh Track" (although it does show occasional signs of age and wear by cutting out -- not resonating on the latter part of a word -- as if he has creeping laryngitis).
Ellison gives his narrator a very boyish vocal style, to communicate the ignorance and naivete in which Ship has kept him. He heightens this textually by changing contractions back to more stiff and formal complete words ("don't" to "do not"), and dropping a lot of definite and indefinite articles whenever the narrator uses words that are new to him ("I am waiting for the female" becomes "I am waiting for female" and "I thought 'giving her a baby' would mean going into the stores" turns into "I thought 'giving her baby ...').
The few laughs in this slavery-to-freedom plot come from Ship's voice, which is filtered of course. Ellison makes Ship highly imperious, stilted, and metallic, and plays with Ship's remarks a bit: "Is the Intermind(uh) to-tal againe!?" Although the narrator chuckles, repeats words, stutters, and oohs and ahhs, apart from the contractions and dropped articles the text is largely unchanged from my 1971 Walker edition -- except when the female human operator adds of the Home Galaxy "I don't know what the name of it is. I would not know which way to go"; and the narrator adds a few clauses to the final long paragraph about the aquatic planet, of air "that had not been re-sourced, that had not been refiltered and recirculated ... ."
Ray Bradbury, who has recorded several dozen of his own stories for various audio publishers over the years, does his marvelous 1949 tale "Kaleidoscope" on this tape. It has half a dozen different voices, and he does them well. Interestingly, there are some lines of dialogue and description about Stimson that do not appear in my 1980 Knopf collection, The Stories of Ray Bradbury.
And, not to be outdone by Warner and Dove, Stellar Audio also screws up its cassette label, indicating that "Kaleidoscope" runs across side 1 and into side 2 of this 90-minute tape when it is the Ellison that is the longer, and begins on side 1 after the Bradbury.
