Description
Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here are thirty-two of his most famous tales—prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits that spring from the canvas of one of the century’s great men of imagination. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safari, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising and outrageous manifestations of the future but also to the wonders of the present that we could never have imagined on our own.
In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston’s classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.
Table of Contents:
- The fog horn
- The April witch
- The wilderness
- The fruit at the bottom of the bowl
- The flying machine
- The murderer
- The golden kite, the silver wind
- I see you never
- Embroidery
- The big black and white game
- The great wide world over there
- Powerhouse
- En la noche
- Sun and shadow
- The meadow
- The garbage collector
- The great fire
- The golden apples of the sun
- R is for rocket
- The end of the beginning
- The rocket
- The rocket man
- A sound of thunder
- The long rain
- The exiles
- Here there be tygers
- The strawberry window
- The dragon
- Frost and fire
- Uncle Einar
- The time machine
- The sound of summer running.
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, “Live forever!” Bradbury later said, “I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.”
340 page paperback
Harper Perennial, 2001
