Customer Reviews

I Sing the Body Electric

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In my view, among Ray Bradbury's writings, only The Illustrated Man outshines this collection of short fiction, and that isn't by much. The tales here represent what some might term a "maturing" author, based on the inclusion of straightforward non-genre fiction, most of it set in a masterfully-observed Ireland, but to that limiting evaluation I say nonsense. Bradbury's range in I Sing The Body Electric is as fully unlimited as it's always been, and his science fiction tales, such delightfully untethered musings, are as good as any he's ever done. My absolute favorite piece here is "Night Call, Collect" which like so many of his mind-altering offerings is set in the future on the planet Mars. I urge anyone with half a grain of imagination to seek that story out and invest a quarter-hour of his or her life reading it. But also fine are "Downwind From Gettysburg" "The Kilimanjaro Device" and of course the title tale, named in reference to Walt Whitman's chaotically beautiful nineteenth-century poem. What I love about Bradbury's fiction is he doesn't waste time explaining why and how something is possible, he simply asserts that "it is." Such glorious confidence! May everyone's lifelong pleasure reading bring an acquaintance with books this cherished!