Ray Bradbury's _S is for Space_ (1966) is a companion collection to _R is for Rocket_ (1962). I remember that there was mild critical disappointment when these collections first appeared. The problem was not with the quality of the stories-- which were quite good-- but over the fact that most of them were "recycled Bradbury". That is, they were tales that had been previously published in other collections. Nowadays, this doesn't seem to be an issue of great importance.
"The Pedestrian" is here, one of Bradbury's best. It's the short, tight little gem about the last pedestrian who one night encounters the last police car. The world of this story, with shadowy figures glued to their television sets, is the world of _Fahrenheit 451_ (1953). The story was first published in _The Reporter_, a news weekly that deserved a longer life than it had.
"Pillar of Fire" is a novelette length manic tribute to Edgar Alan Poe and fantastic Romanticism. A hate-filled madman rises from the dead and wreaks havoc on a rational, ordered, emotionless society. Ask yourself with whom you identify.
"The Man" is the one about the spaceship captain searching from planet to planet for the second coming of Christ. James Blish (1964) pointed out a theological flaw in the story. An omnipotent God could arrange for a second coming simultaneously on all planets without requiring His Messiah to travel from one planet to another by rocket. But I think that Bradbury's main point still stands: There will always be people who are looking for a grail over the next horizon.
There are two stories from _The Martian Chronicles_ (1950): "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed," about the Earth colonists who go native; and "The Million Year Picnic," about a family's encounter with the "new Martians" that closes the chronicles.
Bradbury has a love-hate relationship with flying machines, and this is demonstrated in two fables: "Icarus Montgolfier Wright" and "The Flying Machine". The first was made into an excellent short movie animated by Joseph Mugnaini and narrated by Ross Martin.
When I was in high school, a classmate of mine was nicknamed (for reasons that I have long since forgotten) The Fungus. When he entered a room, he would cheerfully say, "There's a fungus amungus". "Come Into My Cellar" is a story about fungi. They may be among us even now.
Other stories include "Crysalis," one of Bradbury's earliest solo stories (his very earliest pieces were colaborations); "Time in Thy Flight," a reflection of Bradbury's love of Halloween; "The Smile," a nod to Leonardo da Vinci and a savage attack against American anti-intellectualism; and "The Trolley," an exercise in nostalgia. Here in Chattanooga, there are still places where we have tracks where the old trolley cars used to run. Every so often, somebody talks about bringing them back. But so far, nothing much has come of it. Too expensive. The economy won't allow it. We'd have to raise taxes. Maybe next year, you betcha.
These are stories representing Bradbury at his best. Many of his later tales would have the style and the sentiment as these-- but not quite the same substance or sparkle.
_Reference_: Blish, James. "Cathedrals in Space". In _The Issue at Hand_. Chicago: Advent, 1964, 57-58.
