"The Toynbee Convector" by Ray Bradbury

LeVar Burton (0:03)

Hi, I'm Levard Burton, and this is LeVar Burton Reads. In every episode, I have handpicked a different piece of short fiction, and I've read it to you.

SPEAKER_1 (0:21)

The only thing these stories have had in common is that I love them, and I hope you have too.

LeVar Burton (0:34)

This is indeed the final episode of season 13 of LeVar Burton Reads, y'all. But here's the thing, you know how much I love reading aloud, and so rest assured, I'll figure out how to continue to engage with you in storytelling that we love.

And as it's the final episode, it really made sense to read something today by one of the greats, a speculative storyteller whose work has endured for decades, the great Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury's stories are so powerful and appeal to so many people, partially because they are lyrical and colloquial, often playful while all the time engaging with difficult truths. The story that I've chosen for today is one of Bradbury's tales about time travel. I think it's about human destiny and hope for the future. More than anything, I think it's about the power of human storytelling.

The Toynbee Convector was written in 1983 and first published in Playboy Magazine, then later featured in a collection of short stories by the same title, The Toynbee Convector, and it's still in print today. Go Ray. As one of the characters explains, the Toynbee in the name refers to the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who said, any group, any race, any world that did not run to seize the future and shape it was doomed to dust away to the grave in the past.

SPEAKER_4 (2:24)

Can't wait for you to hear this story.

LeVar Burton (2:27)

You'll find a content advisory for this story in the written episode description.

SPEAKER_1 (2:31)

And now, if you're ready, let's take that. Yay, us.

LeVar Burton (2:57)

The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury.

Bravo for me. Roger Shumway flung himself into the seat, buckled himself in, revved the rotor, and drifted his Dragonfly Super Six helicopter up to blow away on the summer sky, heading south toward La Jolla.

SPEAKER_4 (3:35)

How lucky can you get?

LeVar Burton (3:38)

For he was on his way to an incredible meeting. The time traveler, after a hundred years of silence, had agreed to be interviewed. He was, on this day, 130 years old. And this afternoon, at four o'clock sharp Pacific time, was the anniversary of his one and only journey in time.

Lord, yes, 100 years ago, Craig Bennett Stiles had waved, stepped into his immense clock, as he called it, and vanished from the present. He was and remained the only man in history to travel in time. And Shumway was the one and only reporter after all these years to be invited in for afternoon tea. And the possible announcement of a second and final trip through time. The traveler had hinted at such a trip. Old man, said Shumway, Mr. Craig Bennett Stiles, here I come.

The dragonfly, obedient to fevers, seized a wind and rode it down the coast. The old man was there, waiting for him, on the roof of the Time Lamisery, at the rim of the hang glider's cliff in La Jolla. The air swarmed with crimson, blue and lemon kites, from which young men shouted, while young women called to them from the land's edge. Stiles, for all his 130 years, was not old. His face, blinking up at the helicopter, was the bright face of one of those hang gliding Apollo fools who veered off as the helicopter sank down. Shumway hovered his craft for a long moment, savoring the delay.

Below him was a face that had dreamed architectures, known incredible loves, blueprinted mysteries of seconds, hours, days, then dived in to swim upstream through the centuries, a sunburst phase, celebrating its own birthday. For on a single night 100 years ago, Craig Bennett Stiles, freshly returned from time, had reported by Telstar around the world to billions of viewers and told them their future.

SPEAKER_4 (6:39)

We made it, he said.

We did it. The future is ours.

LeVar Burton (6:46)

We rebuilt the cities, freshened the small towns, cleaned the lakes and rivers, washed the air, saved the dolphins, increased the whales, stopped the wars, tossed solar stations across space to light the world, colonized the moon, moved on to Mars, then Alpha Centauri. We cured cancer and stopped death.

SPEAKER_4 (7:16)

We did it. Oh Lord, much thanks, we did it.

Oh, future's bright and beauty aspires, arise.

LeVar Burton (7:27)

He showed them pictures, he brought them samples, he gave them tapes and LP records, film and sound cassettes of his wondrous roundabout flight.