Jonah of the Jove-Run by Ray Bradbury Episode #113

Ray Bradbury | October 6, 2023

Jonah of the Jove-Run by Ray Bradbury Episode #113
Ray Bradbury

JONAH OF THE JOVE–RUN

Episode #113 · Written by Ray Bradbury · Narrated by Scott Miller

A washed-up old spacer with a strange gift may be the only hope for a ship trying to reach Jupiter through a lethal storm of asteroids. But trusting him means gambling lives, loyalty, and the future of an entire colony on a man everyone believes is finished.

Jonah of the Jove-Run is a tense, character-driven space drama from a young Ray Bradbury, written long before he became a literary icon. Jupiter’s colony is running out of time, and the crew of the rocket Terra must deliver food, machinery, and hope—before the families waiting on the giant world die. But between Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt, a shifting minefield of rock and metal that no ship can cross without a fully functioning radar computator. The backup unit is gone, shot down in space, and the Terra is grounded unless someone can do the impossible.

Enter Nibley—an old man every pilot, engineer, and officer dismisses as a washed-up drunk. Once, he could out-calculate machines and chart the impossible in his head, but the years have not been kind, and the universe has moved on without him. Yet Nibley still insists he can take the ship through the asteroids using nothing but instinct, experience, and something that feels a little too close to psychic math. Nobody wants him. Nobody trusts him. But there may be no other choice.

Bradbury turns what could have been a simple space-run into a story about dignity, redemption, sacrifice, and the fine line between genius and madness. The tension builds not through lasers or aliens, but through human fear, stubbornness, and the terrible weight of responsibility when lives depend on a single decision. And when sabotage is uncovered aboard the ship, the danger becomes more than meteors—there’s a traitor on board who wants the mission to fail.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is Bradbury before the fame, before the awards, before Fahrenheit 451—a writer already obsessed with the human heart inside the machine. His early work shows how science fiction could be emotional, personal, and deeply dramatic, and Jonah of the Jove-Run stands as one of his strongest stories from the 1940s magazine era.

If you love classic science fiction built on character, tension, and humanity instead of tech jargon and explosions, this is a story worth rediscovering.