Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow [Mass Market Paperback]

Ray Bradbury (Editor)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (Mm) (September 1952)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553102494
• ISBN-13: 978-0553102499
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,145,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great and haunting collection, May 29, 2004

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (Mass Market Paperback)

When Ray Bradbury edited this collection, he tried to select fantasy stories written by authors who didn't ordinarily write fantasy. (That's why you'll find e.g. John Steinbeck, John Cheever, and E.B. White represented in it.) He also favored stories that hadn't already been anthologized.

His primary criterion, though, was that each story be a certain sort of fantasy written to a high standard of quality. As he states in his introduction, he was looking specifically for stories that 'show[] us the unreality of reality' and 'entertain us with our precarious state of equilibrium'. The fantasies he therefore chose are some of the most _haunting_ tales that were available at that time.

The time was 1952, so quite a few more have been written since then. But Bradbury was right to call the stories 'timeless', and right also to regard them as stories for 'today _and tomorrow_'. For today, fifty-plus years on (and thus well past 'tomorrow' by the usual standards of the paperback publishing industry), I still have a copy of this marvellous collection and I am still haunted by the same stories that haunted me some thirty-odd years ago (when I first read it).

Robert M. Coates's opening story, 'The Hour after Westerly', is one of those. There's nothing overtly 'supernatural' or 'fantastical' about the tale at all; it's a simple and straightforward account of an odd memory lapse suffered by Davis Harwell as he drives from Providence RI to New Haven CT -- the sort of thing that happens to all of us all the time. And there isn't even really a 'resolution' in a traditional sense; as the story closes, the truth sits out there somewhere in the murkiness, tantalyzingly beyond grasp. And to this day I've still read very few short stories that have hovered around the edges of my mind for so long afterward. (Another is George R.R. Martin's '". . . for a single yesterday"' -- anthologized in _Epoch_, which you will probably also like if you like this collection.)

All the stories are of similar quality. Oh, not all are equally haunting; my other personal favorites in this respect include Sidney Carroll's _None Before Me_, John Keir Cross's _The Glass Eye_, and John B.L. Goodwin's _The Cocoon_, and your mileage may vary. But Bradbury exercised exquisite taste here -- even having the wit to include Franz Kafka's _In the Penal Colony_, which at that time had been available in English translation for only about three years.

This collection really is timeless. If it sounds interesting to you, scare up a used copy; you won't be disappointed.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The title says it all, May 13, 2000

By 

Joseph W. Smith III - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (Mass Market Paperback)

By now, most folks recognize that Bradbury is one of the great practitioners of the modern short story. Here is a selection of eerie tales not written but hand-picked by the sci-fi & fantasy master (tho' he did include one of his own stories too). The first tale alone, Robert M. Coates's "The Hour After Westerley," is worth the trouble it'll take to track this book down. Story fans, fantasy fans, horror fans, Bradbury fans -- this is a worthy collection from someone who knows.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprises in every story, August 27, 2009

By 

Troy Farah (Flagstaff, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (Mass Market Paperback)

Three years ago, I got this book because of the Kafka tale in it. I really enjoyed the other surprises in the book as well, thanks to Bradbury's excellent editing. I lost my copy in Mexico and I got a better condition (with better cover art) for a great price.
I recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of surreal fantasy fiction or short stories.