Customer Reviews

I Sing the Body Electric

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A lovely short story + 1 poem collection, with some Martian and Royal Hibernian cheek by jowl. My review is in alphabetical order rather than presentation order, for ease of reference.

"Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine" - One fine summer's day, a man arrived at the train station in Green Town, Illinois - giving the name Charles Dickens.

"Christus Apollo" - A poem, speculating on how many worlds in the wide universe have seen the birth of a Christ child.

"The Cold Wind and the Warm" - The Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin is having a dull winter, when six male ballet dancers descend out of the blue for a 24 hour stay, looking for an unlikely new place.

"Downwind from Gettysburg" - Phipps says that's where we must stand, the only hearing place. (He's always dreamed of making a movie with a farmer and his son standing at the edge of the crowd listening to Lincoln's address.). Instead, he built a tourist attraction in Illinois with a robot Lincoln - and someone has now 'assassinated' the robot.

"The Haunting of the New" - Another story near Dublin's Royal Hibernian Hotel, but not with the same characters. Nora's family has lived at Grynwood for the last 200 years, each generation wilder than the last. (On Charlie's first visit, two rival ballet mobs, separated by a language barrier (Manhattan vs. Hamburg) were visiting, along with a Duchess. Nora greeted Charlie stark-naked at the front door, only to have the Duchess strip down in response as she came in.) Sometimes Marion brings his Pekingnese dog troupe, which always gets drunker and sicker than he. Now (years later) Nora offers to sell Grynwood to Charlie - and for the first time, the house has no weekend guests. What happened?

"Heavy-Set" - That's one of his nicknames, as well as Sammy (for Samson). He spends all his free time bodybuilding, but there's something not quite right about him.

"Henry the Ninth" - He's the last man in Britain, this December, because everyone else has finally given up, left the island, and relocated south. (Obviously written, I must say, by somebody who never lived through a Florida summer, but I love it anyway.)

"The Inspired Chicken Motel" - The family stayed there while looking for work in the Depression. The motel chicken laid eggs "right out of Revelation".

"I Sing the Body Electric!" - This was turned into an episode on the original Twilight Zone, which was OK, but the source is better. It begins the week the world ended - the day Tim, Tom, Agatha, and Father returned from Mother's funeral. So Father picked up a Fantoccini brochure on buying an Electrical Grandmother...

"The Kilimanjaro Device" - The narrator is one of the loyal readers of an old man who died in the wrong place at the wrong time; they've all chipped in to try to change that. The writer isn't named. If you don't recognize him from the context, look up Ernest Hemingway and start reading.

"The Lost City of Mars" - This really ought to have been in The Martian Chronicles; it explains how the dry canals were reborn. A very rich man, looking for the fabled lost city of Dia-Sao, had the canals refilled so that he could search for it by water (air and land expeditions having failed). Wilder and Parkhill (from the 4th Expedition) are invited to join the canal yacht party. Nobody quite knows why the city was abandoned.

"The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" - The doctor's shirts were an easy talking point with total strangers - designed by Jackson Pollack.

"Night Call, Collect" - When Mars was evacuated at the beginning of the war, Emil Barton was left behind in one of the Martian cities, alone. He recorded messages and set up the computers to call him at random, so he could hear a human voice. But at eighty, messages left by twenty-year-olds can be hard to take.

"The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place" - A gang of Dublin men show up at Lord Kilgotten's place to burn it down (some of them also appear in 'The Cold Wind and the Warm'). But the old lord himself answers the door, invites them in, and offers them a drink (asking them to wipe their feet, which they do). And nothing is ever as easy at you think it will be.

"The Tombling Day" - As the bodies of the old cemetery are moved to the new, Grandma has come to see William Simmons one last time. And the real tragedies of the deaths of the young are explored.

"Tomorrow's Child" - The baby was born healthy, but in the wrong dimension - he looked like a blue pyramid. A terrible problem for his parents, who can't communicate with him, and for him - he doesn't know what the 'normal' world looks like, never having seen it that way.

"The Women" - One of the 'women' is the ocean, luring the husband of the other woman to his doom.

"Yes, We'll Gather at the River" - A line from a hymn, which springs to mind since "the Lord giveth, and the Highway Commissioner taketh away." The new highway is being built 300 yards from the tiny hamlet of Oak Lane. (If you like this, read the opening chapters of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, particularly the definition of a bypass).

I've been a big fan of Ray Bradbury for ten years now, since my high school American Lit teacher gave me "Dandelion Wine" to take home over Christmas break. It wasn't assigned reading, but he knew I liked to read, as he did, and he thought I might like it. He was right. Actually, I loved it. In the years since I've read almost all of Bradbury's writing and I've been consistently impressed. Bradbury is a short-story-writing poet whose subject is the intangible wonder we all experience in our finest moments of living and dreaming. Those moments are often far-too-fleeting, but Ray Bradbury knows how to chase them down with his typewriter. I've never read a Ray Bradbury book that didn't make me feel wonderfully alive.

When I began reading "I Sing the Body Electric" I was a little worried that it wasn't up to the par of his other short story collections. Bradbury sometimes writes in broad strokes that result in unfulfilling caricature. I felt this was true of the first couple stories. But after that, the book really took off, and I felt he was firing on all cylinders again and again. "Yes, We'll Gather at the River" has to be one of my favorite Bradbury stories. "Night Call, Collect," the title story, "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine," and "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" are other high points in the collection. He also takes some stylistic excursions in this book. "Heavy-Set" is an excellent prose portrait, but is not really like anything else he's written. There is also a poem included as the last entry in the book. If you've never read anything by Ray Bradbury, I highly recommend you pick up one of his many fine books. "I Sing the Body Electric" is right up with the best of them.

I remember reading this collection for the first time about 25 years ago. I was in maybe 7th or 8th grade and was going through a Bradbury period, reading everything of his I could get my hands on. To this day, Mr. Bradbury's writing touches me as few other writers ever have or will. Right now, as I write this small review, I can remember vividly, as if I were there right at this moment, lying in my bed and reading the title story. I remember the grace and humanity at its core and I remember reading the final sentence and weeping.

This is a magnificent book. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves stories and life.

Now that my children are quickly approaching their teen years - I find myself going back and looking to share with them the books that I loved as a teen; books and stories that not only introduced me into the sci-fi genre of writing, but made me pause and think of the possibilities that our world COULD hold. I Sing the Body Electric is one of those books. Ray Bradbury is at his most masterful with his stories here - some offering hope and comfort, others sharing glimpses into lives that reach far beyond our day to day realities. So, as my children reach their age of questioning and searching for knowledge, I want to share with them what I consider one of the greatest collection of stories of all time, not just of science fiction. My hope is that they too will read and marvel and wonder and question about the possibilities of what COULD be that Ray Bradbury presents in I Sing the Body Electric.

This is the kind of reading that should be taught in high schools. It is wonderfully imaginative, well constructed, and is fun to read. I hate to see this book in the SF category. It is about people and life. The real magic from the book comes from the hearts of the characters.

When I was about 14, I went through a several year phase of reading every science fiction book I could get my hands on. And now, fifteen years later, I decided to go back and try to read a few of the books I remembered. I especially remember enjoying books by Asimov, Bradbury, Dick, Wells and a few others. This was the first one I happened to read, and I was amazed. The first few stories were kind of 'iffy', but I was quickly pulled into each and every story. Ray Bradbury has a writing talent that few today can replicate. His mastery of words and his imagination are amazing.

I've read a few 'modern' sci-fi, and they've all failed to impress me. The true wonder of sci-fi is in books like this. Sure some of the ideas are out-dated, but who cares? It is science-fiction. Stephen King and the others I read didn't seem to capture the wonder that is in books like this.

I know that some prefer modern sci-fi, but for me, the 'oldies' are where the great science-fiction lies.

(Please note that the edition I am reviewing is the older publication that contains only the original 18 works that make up I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!.)

I usually adore Ray Bradbury short story collections, but I think it would be more honest of me to say that I "merely" very much enjoyed I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!. While I wouldn't rank this as his best work, it contains a number of seductively powerful moments. It's a wonderful set of quite varied fiction, however not all of the stories gave me the same emotional charge that I get out of other selections of Bradbury's writing. It's still a compilation worth reading, of course, since even Bradbury on a mediocre day is still better than the vast majority of short story writers.

As with other Bradbury collections, it is difficult to characterize the feel of this. The stories cover a smorgasbord of topics; included are stories about Mars colonies, Irish peasants, supernatural chickens, electric grandmothers, and a host of other mind-bending fictions. You have to admire his creativity if nothing else. And he has a fantastic way of making even the most bizarre of artifacts seem as familiar as apple pie and the smell of freshly cut grass. His characters are painted with broad strokes, but they're so carefully crafted that you'll feel as though you've known them all your life.

Some of my favorite Bradbury stories are his most basic and uncomplicated ones, I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! being no exception. THE KILIMANJARO DEVICE is a simple tribute to Ernest Hemmingway written with a deceptive elegance. The science fiction overtones of DOWNWIND FROM GETTYSBURG, THE LOST CITY OF MARS and the titular story mask some very real human emotions. In some stories, youth and old age are brought together, with childlike enthusiasm touching characters at all points during their lives. In other stories, depression and gloom are all-encompassing and inescapable.

On the other hand, there are a few stories that I just didn't care for. And I must admit that the poem at the end (CHRISTUS APOLLO) did very little for me. Still, it's testament to Bradbury's ability as a writer that the poorest stories can only fill me with mild indifference. Very little here blew me away in the manner of his DANDELION WINE book, but there is nothing that I would refuse to read again.

I enjoyed I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! during my initial read. But I found myself appreciating the stories even more the second time around. Bradbury excels at painting the whole spectrum of humanity, from the most noble to its most pathetic. And he turns both extremes into very compelling stories. This is probably not his greatest collection, but it is definitely not one to be skipped.

I would like to note, as have some other reviewers, that I am working from the 18 story collection. It saddens me to say this, but these stories are a far cry from some of Bradbury's other material, and hardly worth the time for modern readers. Bradbury has an unnerving tendancy in his short stories to be one-dimensional, hokey, and heavy-handed; all these characteristics are on display in this collection. Also, I am willing to forigive his portraits of women in some of his earlier work, but these stories date as late as the 1960s, and Bradbury has to learn to write women in ways that are not hysterical or conniving.

While there are moments when Bradbury is able to recapture some of the awe and beauty of his earlier work, much of this is, sadly, sentimental hackery. Stories like "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine" and "The Man in the Rorscharch Shirt" are so obvious and dull as to be difficult to finish reading. "Tomorrow's Child" is so absolutely ridiculous and wrong-headed that is almost makes a person angry. I've read quite a bit of Bradbury, and this was the first book of his where I have had trouble reaching the end. "The Inspired Chicken Motel" is the one bright spot, I felt, where Bradbury manages to stumble into a father and son's shared sense of wonder, and their desire to believe in some kind cosmic meaning, revealed in an omen. Other than that, the stories are rote and uninspiring.

There is plenty of great Bradbury out there; I love Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. All those books are worth owning. But not everything Bradbury ever wrote is genius, and certainly not _I Sing the Body Electric!_

I have read many sci-fi short stories, and by far Bradbury's are often my favorites. This collection though, I consider sub par. It is jumbled and some of the stories aren't even sci-fi are seem out of place. The collection has many great stories, but I don't recommend it to people new to Bradbury; if you haven't read "The Illustrated Man", I suggest it over this collection.

I highly recommend this book to any fan of Ray Bradbury's work, or to anyone who wishes to introduce his classic works into their library. He is a passionate visionary that writes not only about sci-fi, but his colorful writing style encapsulates the sometimes ineffable feelings that each and every one of us have had about every possible situation in life, and dare I say, in death. I always feel like a kid again when I read his books, I am taken away to warm, sunny Saturdays when I was still in awe of the newness of life. I can hardly force myself to read the works of others as I am convinced that no one can do with words the magic that Ray Bradbury has done.