A Little Journey

An elderly woman wants enlightenment and decides to find it off the Earth. She buys a ticket on a rocket and sets out, a small figure in a story about space travel that is led by an old person rather than a pilot or a soldier.

This is a short science fiction story by Ray Bradbury, first published in Galaxy magazine in August 1951. It was his last contribution to the years when Horace Gold edited that magazine.

The story mixes the sentimental with the transcendent, and the homely with the mystical. Bradbury was early in his career, and the same blend runs through The Martian Chronicles and "The Fireman", the shorter version of Fahrenheit 451.

Old women in space, and the strange outcome that awaits them, also appear in his story "Kaleidoscope", from The Illustrated Man. The ending here carries an understated power, and it is quiet rather than spectacular.