The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury Episode #299
Ray Bradbury | December 26, 2024-
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The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury Episode #299
Ray Bradbury
THE ONE WHO WAITS
Episode #299 · Written by Ray Bradbury · Narrated by Scott Miller
An unseen presence lingers beneath the Martian surface, patient beyond human comprehension. When explorers arrive, their attention is fixed on flags, reports, and survival logistics, unaware that something older has already been watching them from below.
The story moves with a slow, unsettling confidence, allowing the listener to feel control slipping from one mind to another. Identity becomes fragile, speech turns unreliable, and simple physical sensations carry terrifying weight. What begins as curiosity hardens into inevitability.
Rather than relying on spectacle, the tension grows through repetition and voice, as waiting itself becomes an active force. Each transition tightens the grip, asking how long a self can endure once it has been entered.
This is one of Bradbury’s most intimate Mars stories, stripped of grand civilizations and focused instead on the cost of presence. The horror does not come from invasion, but from continuation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ray Bradbury’s science fiction and fantasy appeared throughout the 1940s and 1950s in magazines such as Weird Tales, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Astounding Science Fiction. His Mars stories, later collected in The Martian Chronicles, redefined the planet as a place shaped by memory, regret, and unintended consequence rather than conquest.
Stories like “The One Who Waits” show Bradbury refining the techniques that would later define works such as Fahrenheit 451 and “There Will Come Soft Rains,” using lyrical language to explore fear without relying on monsters or technology. Here, Mars becomes a stage for possession, patience, and the quiet erosion of identity.
LISTEN TO THE STORY
Listen to The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury — a classic sci-fi descent into possession beneath the Martian sands.
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
- Alien Equivalent by Richard R. Smith
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