In one authoritative volume, here are two landmark story collections by one of America’s most beloved authors, plus 27 stellar, speculative, and strange tales from other collections, including 7 restored to print The author of over 400 short stories, Ray Bradbury was a master not only in the science fiction genre, for which he is best known, but also in speculative, horror, and dark fantasy. Here are two of Bradbury’s most beloved collections, along with twenty-seven other stories, that together represent the best of Bradbury’s stories of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The Illustrated Man—the more Earthbound science fiction companion to Bradbury’s classic collection The Martian Chronicles—contains eighteen short stories bound together by the unifying metaphor of a strangely tattooed outcast. The stories explore both the dehumanizing possibilities of space-age technology—in “The Veldt” and “The Rocket Man”—and the pessimistic, dark side of humanity, as in “The Visitor.” The October Country collects nineteen short stories: macabre carnival tales, speculative horror, and strange fantasy. “Uncle Einar” and “Homecoming” concern the monstrous and immortal Elliott family. In “The Next in Line,” a woman becomes convinced that she’ll never leave the small, Mexican town she’s traveled to on vacation. And in “Touched with Fire,” two old men have learned to predict future murders. This edition restores the original artwork by Joe Mugnaini. Rounding out the volume are twenty-seven other short stories from the first half of Bradbury’s career selected by Bradbury scholar Joanthan R, Eller, including “Frost and Fire,” in which humans on another planet live only eight days; “The Pedestrian,” about the only man in the world who does not watch television, and “I Sing the Body Electric!,” in which a family purchases a robotic grandmother. Also includes such hard to find stories as “R is for Rocket,” “Asleep in Armageddon,” and “The Lost City of Mars.
Author
Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947. His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies. Ray Bradbury's work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. He has been awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. In November 2000, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was conferred upon Mr. Bradbury at the 2000 National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City. Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary. He has been nominated for an Academy Award (for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright), and has won an Emmy Award (for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree). He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the creative consultant on the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World, and later contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France. Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie lived in Los Angeles with their numerous cats. Together, they raised four daughters and had eight grandchildren. Sadly, Maggie passed away in November of 2003. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along."
