The Toynbee Convector
- by Ray Bradbury
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Time Phenomena
- English
- “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury, Playboy,January 1984.
You’ll enjoy this story, but I’ll give away no more beyond the quote below. By the way, if you get the original publication, you’ll also see Kurt Vonnegut and Marilyn Monroe.
—Michael Main
What can I do to save us from ourselves? How to save my friends, my city, my state, my country, the entire world from this obsession with doom? Well, it was in my library late one night that my hand, searching along shelves, touched at last on an old and beloved book by H. G. Wells. His time device called, ghostlike, down the years. I heard! I understood. I truly listened. Then I blueprinted. I built. I traveled [. . .]
Tags
(6)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: The traveler was around in the 1960s and traveled at age 30, which places his travel (most likely) in the 1990s.
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: The story takes place exactly 100 years after the travel, which was in the 1990s.
- Time Travel Methods
- Wellsian Time Machines: “The young man sat in the center of it all, unable to speak, gripping the armrests of the padded chair.”
- Themes
- Groupings
Variants
(3)
- “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury, Playboy,January 1984.
- “Le convecteur Toynbee” [The Toynbee convector] by Ray Bradbury, in A l’ouest d’octobre (Denoël, December 1989).
- “Il Convettore di Toynbee” [The Toynbee convector] by Ray Bradbury, in Viaggiatore del tempo. Racconti (January 2003).
Derived Works
(1)
- “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury, directed by John Laing (26 October 1990).