"The Toynbee Conundrum is not a work of fiction," began Bloomsday at the podium. "It is, however, a factual account that includes multiple works of fiction. Let's begin with facts. Arnold J. Toynbee was born of British aristocracy before the turn of the century. His grandfather was a renowned otorhinolaryngologist (ear/nose/throat doctor) whose death in 1866 is attributed to a mishap during an experiment with chloroform. His granddaughter is currently a prominent journalist and advisor to Britain's Labour Party."
"Toynbee, himself, rose to prominence as a historian. I will do no justice to his dozens of volumes of world history, since I haven't read them. But I do know that his views on the ebb and flow of civilizations, and on the methods of decline and ascent of cultures, set him apart. He talked about how the Sumerians invented irrigation to save themselves from extinction. He talked about the ideas of Christianity and communism and how such ideas transformed the social landscape of the globe. He also believed that Buddhism would someday transform Western Civilization in unprecedented ways. He was, to my mind, a chronicler of paradigm shifts, which makes him something of a paradigm shifter, himself. But that's an opinion, and I'd like to stick to facts for now. Toynbee died in 1975."
"Ray Bradbury is a renowned writer of science fiction and fantasy. Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes come to mind. Bradbury immortalized the name, Toynbee, in a short story called The Toynbee Convector. The time travel story was first published in Playboy magazine in 1984, and involves a scientist who misleads people about the world he has visited in the future. His lies about the future motivate and inspire the people of the present to create a future that never existed. When the future finally arrives, it is not the one he visited, but the one he had lied about, created out of the hope from the past."
"Stanley Kubrick directed many complex films, but none as grand in scope as 2001: A Space Odyssey. The 1969 film was a collaboration between Kubrick and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke and posits an alien lifeform that gives pre-humans the gift of sentience, then waits until an evolved humanity develops the technology to travel off the planet. The story's crescendo occurs near Jupiter where the sole survivor on a malfunctioning space station confronts a mysterious monolith that has awaited human arrival for eons. The story contains no obvious references to Toynbee or his writings."
"In 1983, playwright and screenwriter David Mamet published a short play that mentioned Toynbee in a peculiar way. The play, entitled 4:00 a.m., takes place on a late night call-in radio talk show not unlike the halcyon days of Larry King. In the play, a caller encourages the world to support "the theories of Toynbee" as presented in Kubrick's film, then reveals those theories to involve resurrecting all the past dead of Earth on the planet Jupiter. The show's host tries to correct the insistent caller, pointing out that neither 2001: A Space Odyssey nor it's source material, Clarke's The Sentinel, had anything to do with such theories, then points out the practical difficulties of such a mass ressurection."
"Here's another fact: starting in the mid - 1980s, messages have been carved into linoleum tiles and placed in the roads of many American cities referring to this apparently erroneous Toynbee/Kubrick connection. These are collectively known as Toynbee tiles.
"This one, for example at the corner of W. 3rd and Prospect, here in Cleveland." The large screen behind Bloomsday lights up with colorful message. "And another one, on the other side of downtown, at East 12 and Euclid." The screen fills with photo of a second tile, its message partially obscured by tar, but common with the first in its reference to Toynbee and Kubrick and resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. Over a hundred have been found, mostly East of the Mississippi, many seem the work of a common hand, though others appear to be copycat tiles. Freelance investigators have narrowed down suspects, yet tiles continue to appear even though some suspects have died."
"So those are the facts. And what are we to make of these facts? Anyone have a suggestion?" Bloomsday inquires of his puzzled audience.
