In 1984, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story called “The Toynbee Convector”, in which a time traveller has just returned from a visit to the future.
As the time traveller describes it, the world of the future is wonderful. In just a century’s time, humanity has turned it all around: they’ve committed to peace, developed technologies that allowed them to feed the poor and protect the environment, and even made monumental leaps in space exploration.
The world has become everything it could be. So why didn’t the time traveller stay in this utopia? He couldn’t. Not only were the denizens of this “future perfect” helpful and welcoming- they knew he was coming!
In their future, he had already gone back and told everyone about his journey. In fact, it was his description of this ideal outcome that gave people hope in the first place. It was only after hearing they would succeed that people made a real effort to fix the world.
And so, the time traveller returns to the present, and he tells everyone of the wondrous things he’s seen. And sure enough, knowing what the world could be does give everyone hope, as well as purpose. They focus their efforts on turning the world into the one the time traveller described.
A hundred years go by. The time traveller, now an international hero, is quite elderly, but has hung on long enough to watch the world grow into the place he said it would be.
When the date of the young time traveller’s visit finally arrives, the world watches in gleeful expectation at the time and place where the time traveller told them he landed.
And he doesn’t come.
They wait and wait, and the date passes entirely, and the time traveller never shows up. Everyone is dumbfounded.
Finally a reporter confronts the aged time traveller, who reveals his secret: He lied.
The time machine never worked. But he knew that humanity was capable of making a better world. They just needed to be sure their efforts weren’t wasted. They needed a destiny to fulfill. So he gave them one.
I think this was as close to an autobiography as Ray Bradbury ever wrote. You see, Bradbury didn’t just write speculative fiction like so many of his contemporaries, stories about what could be.
Bradbury’s stories were about what SHOULD be.
In The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury showed us humanity at its best and worst over the course of mankind’s greatest endeavor.
He reminded us of the depths of wonder and fear we were capable of as children in Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
In his magnum opus Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury warned us of the dangers of losing touch with our humanity. He rekindled our love of art and literature by depicting a world where they were outlawed.
Bradbury wrote over 30 books and close to 600 short stories. He wrote again and again about the beauty in the world that we so often overlook. He did this because he knew we were capable of regaining that childlike vision, of seeing the world the way he did.
He gave us a state to which we should aspire. He gave us a destiny to fulfill.
Ray Bradbury died today. But he leaves behind a legacy of the entire world. Thanks to his work, many of us can see it for how beautiful it truly is.
The time traveller was 91.