The Visitor by Ray Bradbury Episode #154
Ray Bradbury | December 10, 2023-
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The Visitor by Ray Bradbury Episode #154
Ray Bradbury
THE VISITOR
Episode #154 · Written by Ray Bradbury · Narrated by Scott Miller
Mars is not a frontier here. It is a place of exile, where sick men wait out the end of their lives with nothing but memory for company. Earth exists only as a wound—remembered streets, remembered water, remembered air.
When a young newcomer arrives with the ability to make those memories feel real again, the impossible happens. Cities rise from dust. Rivers run where there should be none. For the first time in months, longing feels almost satisfied.
But relief is not shared equally. Access becomes power. Power becomes possession. As fear spreads among the exiles, one man’s attempt to protect what he loves begins to destroy it.
The Visitor is a tense, intimate science fiction story about isolation and desire turning corrosive under pressure. It replaces rockets and machines with jealousy, fear, and the danger of believing something precious must be owned to be saved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ray Bradbury published The Visitor in Startling Stories in 1951, during a period when he was producing dozens of short works each year for leading science fiction magazines. Many of his early Martian stories later formed the emotional backbone of The Martian Chronicles, where exile, memory, and loss recur as defining forces.
Bradbury’s career spanned more than seventy years and included novels such as Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine, along with hundreds of short stories that favored moral pressure over technical explanation. The Visitor stands as a clear example of his belief that science fiction works best when the future is used to expose human weakness rather than escape it.
LISTEN TO THE STORY
Listen to The Visitor by Ray Bradbury —
RELATED STORIES
Mars has always been the most familiar of alien worlds, close enough to imagine and distant enough to remain dangerous. Vintage science fiction turned the red planet into a testing ground for human ambition—an empty frontier, a dying world, or a civilization older and stranger than Earth itself.
These stories send explorers, settlers, soldiers, and scientists across the void to a place where survival is never guaranteed. Thin air, vast deserts, and abandoned cities create a landscape that is both harsh and haunting.
Whether the planet is home to ancient Martians, fragile colonies, or the last hope after Earth’s decline, Mars stories are about adaptation.
- Dwellers in Silence by Ray Bradbury
- Death-Wish by Ray Bradbury
- Defense Mech by Ray Bradbury
- The Visitor by Ray Bradbury
- The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury
- The Crystal Egg by H. G. Wells
- Never on Mars by John Wyndham
- Return of a Legend by Raymond Z. Gallun
- Message From Mars by Clifford D. Simak
- The Monsters Came By Night by Robert Silverberg
- The Martians and the Coys by Mack Reynolds
- A Zloor For Your Trouble by Mack Reynolds
- The Weapon by Isaac Asimov
- Arm of the Law by Harry Harrison
- Monster by William Morrison
- Fee of the Frontier by H. B. Fyfe
- A Message From Our Sponsor by Henry Slesar
- Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson
- Duel on Syrtis by Poul Anderson
- We're Off to Mars by Joe Gibson
- Death Walks on Mars by Alan J. Ramm
- The Old Timer by Richard R. Smith
- Trainee for Mars by Harry Harrison
- The Hermit of Mars by Stephen Bartholomew
- Martian Homecoming by Frank Belknap Long
- Lake of Fire by Frank Belknap Long
- The Hated by Frederik Pohl
- The Old Martians by Rog Phillips
- The Martian Shore by Charles L. Fontenay
- Madmen of Mars by Erik Fennel
- Martians Never Die by Lucius Daniel
- What's He Doing in There? by Fritz Leiber
- Don't Look Now by Henry Kuttner
- Jonah of the Jove-Run by Ray Bradbury
- The Goggles of Dr Dragonet by Fritz Leiber
- The Foxholes of Mars by Fritz Leiber
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