Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

From Booklist
Perhaps Ray Bradbury is the latter-day O. Henry. He is most famous for his short stories--and short they are, rarely more than 15 pages. He attracts nonliterary readers in droves, and he has a raconteur's magnetic style. Those are O. Henry's virtues, making it quite possible to read him pleasurably today, even if you read only "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief." Since Bradbury is 50 to 100 years closer to us, just about every one of his stories is a gas, and his selection of 100 of them is something like a lifetime supply of nitrous oxide. No matter how calculated its surprises or how sentimental its denouement, a Bradbury story typically evokes a smile and a tip o' the hat. He acknowledges in the introduction here that he is in love with writing, and it is obvious there and in every story that, what's more, he is in love with life, so that even his eeriest, most mordant stories leave one feeling wonder, not bleakness: case in point, "The Illustrated Man." Even more to that point are his Irish stories, most of them set in and around Heber Finn's pub. Characteristically Celtic compoundings of grue and glee, these are read-aloud, memorize-and-recite gems of pure gab (especially "A Wild Night in Galway"). Ray Olson
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Book Description

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Encapsulating a career that has spanned more than six decades, this retrospective compilation confirms what everyone already knows: Ray Bradbury is the master of short fiction. Included in this "collection to end collections" are classics like "The Illustrated Man," "The Toynbee Convector," and "The Pedestrian" (the precursor to Fahrenheit 451), as well as little-known literary gems like "Almost the End of the World," a story about what happens when humanity loses television reception; "The Garbage Collector," Bradbury's reaction to an ignorant politician; and a bittersweet story ("Bug") about an aging man who lets reality get between him and the thing he loves most.

Bradbury's imagination is like the earth in its orbit: It never stops spinning. Year after year he keeps on producing original, captivating works -- be it short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, or verse. The scary thing about this collection is that several of his better-known short stories aren't included --and it doesn't even matter. He could release Bradbury Stories: The Next 100 Most Celebrated Tales and it would be just as good. A must-have for longtime Bradbury fans a the perfect gift for bibliophiles of all ages, this stylishly produced shelf-bender -- with a heartfelt introduction from Bradbury himself -- is a book to be cherished for generations. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For more than sixty years, the imagination of Ray Bradbury has opened doors into remarkable places, ushering us across unexplored territories of the heart and mind while leading us inexorably toward a profound understanding of ourselves and the universe we inhabit. In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas -- tales that amaze, enthrall, and horrify; breathtaking journeys backward and forward in time; classic stories with the undiminished power to tantalize, mystify, elate, and move the reader to tears. Each small gem in the master's collection remains as dazzling as when it first appeared in print.

There is magic in these pages: the wonders of interstellar flight, a conspiracy of insects, the early bloom of love in the warmth of August. Both the world of Ray Bradbury and its people are vivid and alive, as colorfully unique as a poker chip hand-painted by a brilliant artist or as warmly familiar as the well-used settings on a family's dining room table. In a poor man's desire for the stars, in the twisted night games of a hateful embalmer, in a magnificent fraud perpetrated to banish despair and repair a future, in a writer's wonderful death is the glowing proof of the timeless artistry of one of America's greatest living bards.

The one hundred stories in this volume were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining. This is Bradbury at his very best -- golden visions of tomorrow, poetic memories of yesterday, dark nightmares and glorious dreams -- a grand celebration of humankind, God's intricate yet poignantly fallible machineries of joy.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Los Angeles Times

Bradbury may be the last visible survivor of the Midwestern Protestants who once dominated Los Angeles, the "folks" who made the city over as a sleepy Iowa village decades before the city re-imagined itself as a high-tech, Asia-facing, multicultural metropolis. Famous for writing of rockets while refusing to drive a car, Bradbury embodies a contradiction: He's associated with his stories of the future, but his values are nostalgic, yearning for, and calling from, the past. — Scott Timberg

Library Journal

This massive retrospective of self-selected Bradbury stories offers a compendium of his eccentrics, misfits, losers, and small-town dreamers, who typically inhabit an uncanny setting or confront a strange, unsettling situation. Often, it is as if Sherwood Anderson's grotesques suddenly materialized in an Edgar Allan Poe short story. The anthology includes many of Bradbury's Irish anecdotes, village Gothic tales, ironic horror stories, and droll, minimalist sf narratives, frequently set on board his heuristic but obviously inauthentic spaceships or on Mars. While this anthology oddly excludes some of this reviewer's favorites-e.g., "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "The Veldt"-it still represents a generous sampling from his entire career, with several tales taken from his most prized collections, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. At times, after one has read tale after tale, Bradbury's raconteur style cloys; the writing can seem stiff with affectation, as if the author were determined to carry through almost any plot idea, however weak or quaint. At other times, he is gently mesmerizing, the story at hand offering a real treat. Recommended for all public libraries and academic libraries where interest warrants.-Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews