100 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Outstanding Collection of Inventive and Deeply Felt Tales, September 12, 2003
If any twentieth-century American writer deserves a revival, it's Ray Bradbury, king of the dime novels and refiner --- if not the inventor --- of mainstream science fiction. Unlike contemporaries H.P. Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick and disciples like William Gibson and Stephen King (who has greedily borrowed Bradbury's otherworldly horror + local color equation), Bradbury isn't very widely read by people beyond their teenage years. His novels THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and FAHRENHEIT 451 are mainstays of junior and senior high school reading lists across the country, and therefore have acquired the stigma of youth-oriented fiction (which seems ironic now that so many adults are giddy like schoolchildren over Harry Potter). As if out of spite for being force-fed his work so early, many people seem to ignore Bradbury as they grow older, consigning him to the world of adolescence.
All of which is unfortunate, for Bradbury stands as a singular chronicler of the second half of the twentieth century, peeking into our dark corners to see what scares us. BRADBURY STORIES: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales presents these demons anew, collecting pieces from every stage of his long career, from his dime novel beginnings to his work in Hollywood to his recent resurgence with original books like LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE and ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD. For those who haven't read Bradbury since high school, this collection serves as a fitting introduction to the surprisingly wide range of styles and subjects he has addressed; for longtime fans it is a reminder of the author's ability to evoke "the monsters and angels of my imagination" through dreamy prose and unforgettable imagery.
As well as any other American writer of the last century --- and certainly better than any other "genre" writer --- Bradbury creates a particular mood and setting in his stories that is best described as eerily autumnal. In THE OCTOBER COUNTRY, arguably his best collection, he describes this setting as "that country where it is always turning late in the year, that country whose people are always autumn people, thinking autumn thoughts." In the cycle of seasons, fall is the season of death --- falling leaves, browning grass, chilling winds, early darkness --- before rebirth, and in Bradbury's stories death always lingers nearby, tracking and chasing characters and greeting them in unsuspected places.
Whether or not they conjure the supernatural, the stories in this large collection show that this narrative texture, this October country setting, transcends that one collection and informs almost everything Bradbury wrote.
Furthermore, the October country Bradbury evokes is a flip-side America, one where the American dream has been subsumed by collective nightmares. If nothing else, BRADBURY STORIES demonstrates the writer's talent for heatedly and unpretentiously addressing social and political ills through his imaginative stories.
"And the Rock Cried Out," for example, follows two wealthy travelers in Africa who discover they're the last white people on earth. Their punishment for the West's constant imperialism is the loss of all worldly possessions and a life devoted to menial labor.
In "The Garbage Collector," a man learns that if a bomb hits the city, he will have to collect the dead in his truck. The title character must decide whether to quit his job and assuage his conscience or keep working to support his family. To Bradbury's credit, it's difficult to tell which crime is more outrageous --- the civic government viewing its citizenry as refuse or making its employees compromise their morals for family.
Any collection of this size is necessarily defined by what it omits as much as by what it includes. BRADBURY STORIES contains so many wonders, but where are "The Scythe," "The Crowd," and "Homecoming" from THE OCTOBER COUNTRY? What happened to "The Picasso Summer" and (a personal favorite) "Some Live Like Lazarus"?
Such glaring oversights are certainly not the fault of Bradbury, unless you count prolificacy and quality among the most grievous of literary sins. Nor are they the fault of the editors and compilers, who doubtlessly had to make many painful cuts. Instead, they serve as a cry for another volume, perhaps entitled 100 MORE BRADBURY STORIES. It is maybe only a slight exaggeration to say that he could fill 100 such volumes with highly inventive and deeply felt tales.
--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner from Bookreporter.com
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Guy de Maupassant, the English Version, March 31, 2005
It may very well have been a novel by Ray Bradbury, though it could have been one by Zenna Henderson, Isaac Asimov, or any one of a dozen other authors, that I was holding that summer, long ago, when I heard my father mutter as he stomped out the door with the hoe in his hand, "You read too much!" Suffice it to say that I am no stranger to Ray Bradbury's longer works, but this was my first exposure to a collection of his short stories, and I was not disappointed.
When we describe this collection as one of short stories, we do mean short. Most of the stories here run from two to six pages in length, and it is to Bradbury's credit that he packs almost every one with significance and meaning far beyond the scope of the story itself. Here, the reader will find profound observations on the human condition, on the thin veneer of civilization that can be easily ripped asunder, on the human need for approbation, on the human need for love, on the human need for belief and spirituality, and on every other characteristic that makes one human. Do not misconstrue my comments: this not a book of essays preaching and pontificating on any of these profound things; this is a book filled with fascinating characters and wondrous interactions. Bradbury never beats his reader over the head with profundity; it is the reader himself who adds that to Bradbury's intriguing tales.
Tales-that's the word I've been searching for. This is a book of tales. Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" is a short story. Ray Bradbury's "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" is a tale. In fact, let us use the French word "conte" as we would to describe the little slices of the world that we see in the contes of Guy de Maupassant. Bradbury is the English de Maupassant as de Maupassant is the French Bradbury.
I used to picture Bradbury as purely a writer of science fiction, but I was wrong to limit him to a specific genre. This collection of one hundred tales is proof irrefutable of Bradbury's broad range and scope. The book should take one quite a while to read, by the way. True, one could blast through it with all those remarkable speed reading techniques, but what a shame to do so. These tales need to be read one at a time and then pondered and mulled over as one would savor the taste of fine food and good wine. To gulp them down in a feeding frenzy is to forgo the pleasure of remembering them and of adding their implicit lessons to one's own repertoire of knowledge. In fact, the three months I spent on this book was too brief a period. I shall keep it at hand and reread these tales, perhaps one a week for the next one hundred weeks. This feast is incredible, and I would not have it fade from memory too quickly. Please join me at the table and dine on Bradbury's joyously creative wit and wisdom.
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30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
His future is our past; but his stories still worthwhile, September 6, 2003
By A Customer
Ray Bradbury, through longevity, has reached the stage of being called "beloved science fiction writer" and that should be the tip-off that the stories here are kindly precyberpunk SF ghost stories, many of which, like old Twilight Zone episodes, deal with well-worn themes (last man on earth; taking a train back to your boyhood home to find it unchanged from the day you left; stop watch that stops all time, etc.) that were fresher when they originally appeared half a century ago.
Bradbury's strengths include his sensitivity to the human condition and how he weaves his characters through extraordinary -- often supernatural -- conditions: his stories can be quietly lyrical and benign, pleasantly undemanding while entertaining.
But they can also pack a wallop. I imagine a first time reader of "A Sound of Thunder" will still face the dénouement with surprise, if not awe. Many of his stories have lessons attached and the classic SF type warnings about what might happen if we don't mend our ways, etc.
This collection is like a handsome and well-oiled grandfather clock that still has no problem telling us the time even though the mechanism's own time is long past.
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