The Stories of Ray Bradbury: Introduction by Christopher Buckley (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

Autumn came late this year, and it was not long ago that I was sitting in my couch on an afternoon, the windows open, watching the leaves of the trees on my street bend in the first strong winds of the changing seasons. Nostalgia always infects me this time of year. I'm sure that I am not alone. It was then, looking between the window and my bookshelves, that I felt the strong impulse to be reading Ray Bradbury. A few years ago I found an old copy of "Something Wicked this Way Comes," and I was reminded almost from the start of it, what a lovely writer Ray Bradbury has always been. I might say, more accurately, "what a lovely human being," because it infects everything her writes. There is a tenderness and magic to his thoughts, a quiet cadence, as if even the things we most fear are meant somehow to be touched and understood.

So I ordered "The Stories of Ray Bradbury," and a few other hardcover editions of his works. When they arrived I put them high and center on my shelves, between Dickens and Calvino, a few spines down from "The Wind in the Willows." Since then I have often carried this rather hefty volume of stories out of the house with me. I would worry about destroying it, but then I doubt Mr. Bradbury would have wanted that. So I carry it like a child might: jealously and with delight.

I am 40 years old now, though it amazes me that this has happened. It amazes me even more when I think that I am only ten years short of 50. So it has been decades since I read "Dandilion Wine" for my summer reading list. These stories are wonderful. I can imagine no better balm for the nerves than this book. I am carried away almost effortlessly, immediately, and lost completely. Sometimes, it occurs to me, that Ray Bradbury only really writes about the passing of time, but he surrounds that idea with such wonder, with such sadness, with joy and curiosity. Everything he writes seems to pivot on one basic premise: that we were all once children, and since then we have gotten taller.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Buy it. Buy the hardcover if you can afford it. This is something to leave on your shelves, to come to over and over and over again. Ray Bradbury should stand in the American library next to Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Steinbeck, and Hemmingway. He is an icon, to be remembered and cherished.

Ray Bradbury truly is an impressive author not just because of how prolific he is, but because of how committed he is to each of his ideas. As demonstrated by this collection, Bradbury is a jack of all trades, from enthralling sci-fi masterpieces such as "A Sound of Thunder" and "Frost and Fire" to gut-wrenching, very personal pieces like "The Lake."

This particular collection, in itself, is a masterclass of the art and craft of story. For example: in "The Night," a second-person point-of-view puts you in the shoes of a boy in the 1920s, and you feel just as scared as he is when his brother suspiciously doesn't come home on time; and in "There Will Come Soft Rains," the complete absence of living characters captures the bleakness of a fully-operational dwelling place crumbling to the ground in the fallout of nuclear war.

Definitely give this one a look. His stories may not be for everyone, but it is absolutely worth one's time and attention.

This collection reminds of the books of my youth (I'm in my early 40s), when I'd go grab a 30-40 year old book from the library and the pages and binding were intact, with plenty of life left in them. Let's just say they don't generally make them like that anymore. The vast majority of the books I purchase for my kids are made in China and can hardly withstand a month, let alone years and years of use. This edition is quite different. I purchased it for the content (the stories speak for themselves), but I was so pleasantly surprised at the quality. I hadn't realized how much book quality had deteriorated until I came across this book. It will certainly last me through my lifetime and probably that of my children. Printed and bound in Germany. Absolutely excellent. If you love Ray Bradbury, get this for your library--you won't be disappointed.

Going into this collection, you need to know two things Bradbury seems to hate: Technology, and happy endings.

Many of his works look at the emerging technology (in some cases, this is television) and project some horrid future based on it. The rest just find some other reason for the world to be terrible and the characters to be miserable. All Summer in a Day is the saddest story I remember from childhood. The world of Bradbury's stories is bleak, abysmal, often tyrranical, and over the course of the story, more often than not, things only get worse. I have yet to encounter a story of his where the characters end up happy.

They are also throught provoking, and often there is a layer of story beneath the story. The Veldt is especially interesting because you can read it two ways. Peter and Wendy's VR system (and that really was was the nursery was) suddenly produced physical objects from nowhere, with no hardware by which to do so, and without the inventors or manufacturers knowing it has that capability, or the parents, who didn't even investigate screams in their own home, were nuts. It's a different, even darker story if you question the sanity of these parents and of a psychitrist who claims to have never encountered a fact in his life.

This is a good collection, containing a large number of his most famous, most celebrated works. It's a great introduction and a great addition to the collection of any fan.

The list of stories in this collection:

Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle The Night Homecoming Uncle Einer The Traveler The Lake The Coffin The Crowd The Skythe There Was an Old Woman There Will Come Soft Rains (my favorite) Mars Is Heaven The Silent Towns The Earth Men The Off Season The Million-Year Picnic The Fox and the Forest Kaleidoscope The Rocket Man Marionettes, Inc No Particular Night or Morning The City The Fire Balloons The Last Night of the World The Veldt The Long Rain The Great Fire The Wilderness A Sound of Thunder The Murderer The April Witch Invisible Boy The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind The Fog Horn The Big Black and White Game Embroidery The Golden Apples of the Sun Powerhouse Hail and Farewell The Great Wide World over There The Playground Skeleton The Man Upstairs Touched with Fire The Emissary The Jar The Small Assassin The Next in Line Jack-in-the-Box The Leave-Taking Exorcism The Happness Machine Calling Mexico The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyes The Strawberry Window A Scent of Sarsaparilla The Picasso Summer The Day it Rained Forever A Medicine for Melancholy The Shoreline at Sunset Fever Dream The Town Where No One Got Off All Summer in a Day (This story is heartbreaking) Frost and Fire The Anthem Sprinters And So Died Riabouchinska Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Callar The Vacation The Illustrated Woman Some Live Like Lazarus The Best of All Possible Worlds The One Who Waits Tyrannosaurus Rex The Screaming Woman The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place Night Call, Collect The Tombling Day The Haunting of the New Tomorrow's Child I Sing the Body Electric! The Women The Inspired Chicken Motel Yes, We'll Gather at the River Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! A Story of Love The Parrot Who Met Papa The October Game Punishment Without Crime A Piece of Wood The Blue Bottle Long After Midnight The Utterly Perfect Murder The Better Part of Wisdom Interval in Sunlight The Black Ferris Fairwell Summer McGillahee's Brat The Aqueduct Gotcha! The End of the Beginning