In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.
"These stories, all of which resonate with irony, measure up to his best work."-- "Austin American-Statesman"Ray Bradburry is an old-fashioned romantic who's capable of imaginig a dystopic future. He can evoke nostalgia for a mythic, golden past or raise goosebumps with tales of horror... Quicker than the eye is a ride worth taking."-- "Chicago Tribune
From the sentimental to the spooky, this grab bag of 21 recent tales from the seemingly ageless imagination of Bradbury whimsically explores themes of love, nostalgia, magic, literature and mortality. In his first collection since The Toynbee Connector (1988), Bradbury, who's 76, displays a particular fascination with evading the strictures of time through science, history, literature, the supernatural or simple reminiscence. The realistic "The Other Highway" describes a family's drive down an old, unused highway to an almost forgotten world. "At the End of the Ninth Year" develops the idea that the human body fully remakes itself at the molecular level every nine years. In "Last Rites," an inventor uses his time machine to reassure his literary heroes‘Melville, Poe, Wilde‘on their deathbeds that they will be cherished by future generations. Ghost stories like "That Woman on the Lawn," "Another Fine Mess" and "The Witch Door" transport characters across lifetimes or centuries, while "Dorian in Excelsus," a creepy homage to Wilde, blends the supernatural with the fitness craze. Some of these pieces wax maudlin, but Bradbury stirs in a healthy measure of wit with his wide-eyed wonder. Fans won't be disappointed with this hopeful, introspective, addition to his oeuvre. (Nov.)
"These stories, all of which resonate with irony, measure up to his best work."-- "Austin American-Statesman"Ray Bradburry is an old-fashioned romantic who's capable of imaginig a dystopic future. He can evoke nostalgia for a mythic, golden past or raise goosebumps with tales of horror... Quicker than the eye is a ride worth taking."-- "Chicago Tribune
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