Pendulum: The Last Witness of a Forgotten World

John Layeville expected history to remember him as the man who unlocked the secret of time travel. Instead, a disastrous experiment turned him into the most infamous prisoner on Earth, sealed inside an enormous swinging pendulum and displayed as a warning to anyone who dared challenge accepted science. What begins as a cruel sentence soon becomes something no one can explain. Years pass, then centuries, yet the prisoner remains alive while generations come and go around him.

Pendulum unfolds through Layeville’s remarkable journal, allowing listeners to witness history from an extraordinary viewpoint. Empires fade, technology reshapes civilization, robots inherit humanity’s work, and even they prove no more permanent than their creators. Unable to escape, Layeville becomes the only observer who watches Earth’s future from a single moving prison. Bradbury and Hasse expand the story from personal tragedy into an astonishing vision of deep time while never losing sight of the man at its center. Every new age leaves listeners wondering whether the pendulum will continue its endless arc—or whether something beyond imagination will finally bring it to a halt.

Pendulum first appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941. Written by Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse, it remains one of their most memorable collaborations.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) wrote more than six hundred short stories and classics including The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451. His fiction appeared in Weird Tales, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and The Saturday Evening Post. Henry Hasse (1912–1977) published science fiction and fantasy in Amazing Stories, Super Science Stories, and Planet Stories, with Pendulum among his best-known works.