On the floor, holding his wounded arm, the mayor looked up. “Put down your gun. You’re hurting yourself. You’ve never believed, and now that you think you believe, you hurt people because of it.”

–Ray Bradbury, “The Man,” 1948

“The Man” is one of those classic sci-fi stories that does what sci-fi ought to do: provide an environment to explore ideas that wouldn’t exactly fly in “realistic” fiction. “The Man” begins with a trio of space craft landing on a far away planet in another galaxy. The inhabitants of this planet aren’t really all that interested in the space travelers because they themselves have just been visited by “a remarkable man…good, intelligent, compassionate, and infinitely wise,” a man who “healed the sick and comforted the poor…fought hypocrisy and dirty politics and sat among the people, talking, through the day.” The story ends with the captain, who refused to believe until it was too late, setting off in chase of this man while most of his men stay in the place where “The Man” had visited.

Apart from asking that often niggling question about what would WE modern people do if Jesus Christ appeared in our midst the way he did during the Roman Empire, Bradbury explores two other, perhaps more interesting and certainly more disturbing, aspects of belief. The first is the unsettling idea that we have a limited chance at believing and that if we miss it, well, then we’ve missed it. The man who first goes into the alien town to see what’s going on, Martin, comes back believing; he never saw the Man, but he saw the effect of the Man on the town and believed. Captain Hart is so wrapped up on being the first of the three ships to land on the planet and protecting his fame that he dismisses the Man at first. Hart hears testimony of the Man and still refuses to believe. It is only when the other two ships are accounted for that Hart allows himself to “think he believes.” Unfortunately, his belief brings him none of the tranquility he desires. It’s clear that he’s going to spend the rest of his life chasing the Man but that his method is going to preclude him ever finding his goal.

Bradbury uses Hart’s frustration to examine a second disturbing aspect of belief: the rise of violence in service of faith. The Mayor states the problem rather succinctly. Hart never once believed that the Man was who everyone else thought He was. Even after hearing a thousand testimonies, Hart doesn’t really believe in the Man. He believes that he’s missed out on someTHING, and he wants to have IT. The Mayor can’t give him the answers he wants which increases Hart’s frustration. He knows that he has missed out on the most important event of a lifetime. He knows that these people have had that experience. Now he wants to have it as well. Therefore, is he not justified in using any means necessary to achieve the most important experience in a lifetime? The irony, of course, is that his violent act only makes his finding the Man more impossible. As the Mayor says, “Your hurting yourself.” The final irony of the story is that as Hart goes off into the the galaxy to chase down the Man, the Mayor “beckoned to the others and turned. ‘Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting.’ They walked into the City.”