Ray Bradbury

writer, host
Short Story

The Lake


In this tragic tale, Doug returns to the lakeshore where a decade before, at age twelve, he built sandcastles with Tally, his first love. —Michael Main
Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a colony of gulls circling around a half-bulit
                sandcastle on a lake shore.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Interim


No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Undetermined Time Travel
Short Story

Tomorrow and Tomorrow


When a typewriter appears on the floor of his boarding room and begins typing messages from the future, down-on-his-luck Steve Temple thinks it must be his old jokester friend Harry—but he’s wrong about that, and the fate of the world 500 years down the line now depends on what Steve does about a recently elected man. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” doesn’t have the notoriety of that other Bradbury story about time travel and an elected official, but even though this one’s riddled with ridiculous ideas on time, it does accurately predict text messaging! —Michael Main
Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimensional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a row of faces above a row of cylinders, receding into
                the distance.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Shape of Things


No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

I, Mars


No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Forever and the Earth


At age 70, Mr. Henry William Field feels that he’s wasted his life trying to capture the world of the 23rd century in prose, but he also feels there’s one last hope: Use Professor Bolton’s time machine to bring a great writer of the 20th century forward to today.
I’ve called you because I feel Tom Wolfe’s the man, the necessary man, to write of space, of time, huge things like nebulae and galactic war, meteors and planets, all the dark things he loved and put on paper were like this. He was born out of his time. He needed really big things to play with and never found them on Earth. He should have been born this afternoon instead of one hundred thousand mornings ago.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Night Meeting

  • by Ray Bradbury
  • in The Martian Chronicles (Doubleday, May 1950)

On his own in the Martian night, Tómas Gomez meets an ancient Martian whom he can talk with but not touch.
How can you prove who is from the Past, who from the Future?
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Fox and the Forest


Roger Kristen and his wife decide to take a time-travel vacation and then run so they’ll never have to return to the war torn world of 2155 AD.
The inhabitants of the future resent you two hiding on a tropical isle, as it were, while they drop off the cliff into hell. Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them. It is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave. I am the guardian of their collective resentment against you two.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time in Thy Flight


Mr. Fields takes Janet, Robert and William back to 1928 to study their strange ways.
And those older people seated with the children. Mothers, fathers, they called them. Oh, that was strange.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Playground


Unlike the the TV adaptation of this fantasy, there’s no doubt in this original version that time travel plays no role in the lives of Charles Underwood and his son. —Michael Main
He heard the voice and turned to see who had called him. There on top of a metal slide, a boy of some nine years was waving. “Hello, Charlie . . . !”
A silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders among planets and stars is
                suggested by a grayish blue background with black and white shading and blocking.
  • Undetermined
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

A Sound of Thunder


Eckels, a wealthy hunter, is one of three hunters on a prehistoric hunt for T. Rex conducted by Time Safari, Inc.

This was not the first speculation on small changes in the past causing big changes now (for example, Tenn’s “Me, Myself, and I”), but I wonder whether this was the first time that sensitive dependence on initial conditions was expressed in terms of a single butterfly.
Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

A Scent of Sarsaparilla

  • by Ray Bradbury
  • in Star Science Fiction Stories, February 1953

Mr. William Finch is certain that the nostalgic feeling of cleaning out an attic is more than mere nostalgic, but his wife Cora is more down-to-Earth.
Consider an attic. Its very atmosphere is Time. It deals in other years, the cocoons and chrysalises of another age. All the bureau drawers are little coffins where a thousand yesterdays lie in state. Oh, the attic’s a dark, friendly place, full of Time, and if you stand in the very center of it, straight and tall, squinting your eyes, and thinking and thinking, and smelling the Past, and putting out your hands to feel of Long ago, why, it. . .
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  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Dragon


On a dark night on a moor, 900 years after the nativity, two knights face down a steaming behemoth.
It was a fog inside of a mist inside of a darkness, and this place was no man’s place and there was no year or hour at all, but only these men in a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm, and white thunder which moved behind the great falling pane of green glass that was the lightning.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Time Machine


Charlie takes his pals Douglas and John to visit the old Colonel who—says Charlie—has a time machine that travels in the past. —Michael Main
War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose al the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it.
A memorial statue of a soldier is surrounded by 26 abstract figures of red,
                white, and blue soldiers.
  • Mainstream
  • Audience: Families
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

The Trolley


No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Tyrannosaurus Rex


We could have told special effects meister John Terwilliger that the only way to get a truly monstrous T. rex on film is to build a time machine, but alas, he relied solely on stop-motion animation with no time travel, and look at the abuse he gets for his efforts from the renowned producer Joe Clarence. —Michael Main
Step by step, frame by frame of film, stop motion by stop motion, he, Terwilliger, had run his beasts through their postures, moved each a fraction of an inch, photographed them, moved them another hair, photographed them, for hours and days and months.
A white two-story hotel with a columned porch, built out on a pier surrounded
                by boats and two maids dangling their feet off the pier.
  • Mainstream
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

The Kilimanjaro Device


This story is Bradbury’s tribute to Hemingway, a time-traveling tribute told from the point of view of a reader who admired him and felt that his Idaho grave was wrong.
On the way there, with not one sound, the dog passed away. Died on the front seat—as if he knew. . . and knowing, picked the better way.
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  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Utterly Perfect Murder


A moving story of an outcast boy who continued to feel the pain of how he’d been excluded throughout his adult life. You’ll need to decide for yourself whether time travel creeps in. —Michael Main
I tossed the few bits of gravel and did the thing that had never been done, ever in my life.
An abstract design of a person in a bed seen through a double-hung window inset
                in a stone wall.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

The Halloween Tree


No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

A Touch of Petulance

  • by Ray Bradbury
  • in Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley (The Viking Press, August 1980)

On his way home on the train, Jonathan Hughes meets Jonathan Hughes + 20 years and receives a warning that his marriage to a lovely young bride will end in murder. —Michael Main
Me, thought the young man. Why, that old man is . . . me.
Blood red letters state the title Dark Forces, with a yellow subtitle "New
                Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror".
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Toynbee Convector


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 [. . .]
Futuristic white buildings with rounded corners, tall spires, and black stripes
                sit beside an hourglass on a pedestal.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s01e02)

The Playground


Charles visits his boyhood playground, at first on his own and then with his own son. There, he sees Ralph, the bully who tormented him, who’s still a boy and who still seems to be tormenting Charlie.

Perhaps Ralph was meant to be a ghost bully, perhaps the curly haired boy is young Charlie, perhaps Charlie switches bodies with his own son, or perhaps there’s time travel invovled. We doubt that even Captain Kirk could sort out all those perhapses in this TV version of Ray Bradbury’s story starring William Shatner. But clarity can be had if you read the original story, which takes about the same amount of time as watching the TV episode but shows the rich inner life of Charles Underwood and leaves no ambiguity about what’s up with “Ralph.” —Michael Main
Ralph? The bully. When I was a kid, he used to wait for me on the corner every day.
William Shatner (as "the Papa") sits in a swing at night, looking on in horror
                at something nearby.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s02e10)

Tyrannosaurus Rex


It’s hard to believe with a title like this, but just like Bradbury’s original “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” this adaptation for TV had no time travel. —Michael Main
My beauties. Not alive, but alive. Dead, but not dead. Clay and then liquid rubber. Yes, oh yes. I moved you and then frame by frame photographed you.
Cris Campion (as John Terwilliger) sits at his workbench building a T. rex
                model and eating peanuts.
  • Mainstream
  • No Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e03)

The Lake


The TV adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Lake” focuses more on the adult man, who’s now thirty-something Doug, but the story structure and pathos of his lost childhood love remain intact. —Michael Main
If I finish it, will you come?
Exactly half of a large sand castle with a trail of footprints looping around
                it.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e06)

A Sound of Thunder


Bradbury himself wrote the teleplay for this first on-screen adaptation of his famous story, and somehow he managed to do it without the word “butterfly” appearing in the script (though we do see the critter at the end). —Michael Main
Travis: We might destroy a roach—or a flower, even—and destroy an important link in the species.

Eckles: So?
A gaping T rex shows its sharp teeth and red gums.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e06)

Touch of Petulance


A faithful adaptation of Bradbury’s 1980 story of a man who returns to his warn his younger self about the future course of his marriage. —Michael Main
We are one, the same person: Jonathan Hughes.
Sitting on a train, Eddie Albert (as old Jonathan Hughes) looks out over a
                newspaper.
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e08)

The Toynbee Convector


At the end of Bradbury’s adaptation of his own earlier story, he adds a holo-twist that viewers of The Ray Bradbury Theater may have enjoyed. —Michael Main
Stiles: For years I brooded on it. I was in complete despair, and then one night, I was rereading H. G. Wells and his wonderful time machine, and then it struck me. “Eureka!” I cried, “I’ve found it. This [pounds book in hand] is my blueprint.”
James Whitmore (as one-hundred-thirty-five-year-old Craig Bennett Stiles) sits
                in his Wellsian time machine with bright bluish light streaming through the high
                windows behind him.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s05e06)

The Utterly Perfect Murder


I felt that Bradbury’s adaptation of his own 1971 story lost its impact by turning young Doug’s childhood tortures into clichéd scenes—and still leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether there’s a moment of time travel. —Michael Main
Old Doug: Doug, Doug. . . . Come on out and play.
A black-and-white overhead photo of a young boy playing a grand piano.
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Quid pro Quo


An author, frustrated by the wasted talent of Simon Cross, builds a time machine to bring the wasted Cross back to meet the promising young Cross.
You do not build a time machine unless you know where you are going.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

A Sound of Thunder


Bradbury’s time safari story is not improved by 90 minutes of melodramatic nonsense. —Michael Main
A butterfly caused all this?
A glowing, rose-colored hand grasps at a bronze-colored butterfly.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel