The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury Episode #76

Ray Bradbury | June 19, 2023

The Creatures That Time Forgot by Ray Bradbury Episode #76
Ray Bradbury

THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT

Episode #76 · Written by Ray Bradbury · Narrated by Scott Miller

Every dawn on this sun-scarred planet is a gamble with avalanches, firestorms, and instant old age—and Sim has only eight days to outrun all of it. When visions of a distant metal seed take root in his mind, he risks war, love, and his last breath on a desperate attempt to reach it.

On a planet lashed by ice at night and seared by unbearable fire at day, human life has been crushed into a furious sprint. Babies are born already half-aware, children become fighters in hours, and by the eighth day old age has burned them away. Sim arrives in a cave full of dying elders, a father already half-mad, and a mother racing the clock to keep him alive. Telepathic flashes and racial memory let him understand the horror almost immediately: he has eight days to live, and every dawn and sunset is a deadly event. There is no sleep, only talking, eating, learning, loving—and then the sudden collapse into dust.

But Sim’s mind catches hold of something dangerous: the image of a distant, unbroken metal “seed” resting on a mountain beyond the valley of avalanches and fire. While others throw themselves into reckless play, quick romances, and senseless wars for three extra days of life, he chooses a harder path. He seeks the hidden Scientists in the deep caves, volunteers to work instead of chasing fleeting pleasures, and then joins a doomed assault on a rival cliff for the chance to live just a little longer. Along the way he finds an enemy in the vicious Chion and an ally—and fierce, fragile love—in Lyte, who refuses to abandon him even when the sun and stones are killing them both.

What follows is a breathless race across a landscape that changes by the hour: dawn avalanches, flash-flood rivers that carve new channels every night, storms that can be both salvation and trap. Sim and Lyte gamble their entire short existence on reaching the silent metal ship before the planet’s lethal cold or burning daylight destroys them. Inside that ship might be the answer to everything—why their ancestors fell here, how their lives were twisted into eight frantic days, and whether there’s any way to slow the terrible clock that rules their bodies. “The Creatures That Time Forgot” is high-concept science fiction wrapped around a deeply human question: what would you risk if your whole life was only a week long?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray Bradbury stands as one of the most beloved and influential voices in science fiction and fantasy. Over a career spanning decades, he turned rockets, small towns, carnivals, and distant planets into stages for intensely personal dramas. In works like The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and his landmark novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury blended lyrical prose with big, unsettling ideas about censorship, memory, nostalgia, technology, and what it means to be human. He was less interested in gadgets than in hearts and minds, and that’s why his stories still feel alive today.

Bradbury’s tales often follow ordinary people confronting extraordinary pressures—whether it’s a fireman ordered to burn books, colonists learning to live on Mars, or, here, a boy trying to stretch a single week into something like a lifetime. “The Creatures That Time Forgot” showcases his ability to make an imagined world feel physically real: you can taste the thawing fruits of dawn, feel the furnace wind of sunrise, and flinch at the rocks cascading from the cliffside. At the same time, he pulls you inside Sim’s thoughts as he wrestles with duty, love, fear, and the wild hope that there might be more to life than eight doomed days. It’s vintage Bradbury—emotional, imaginative, and impossible to forget once you’ve heard it.