This short story collection by Ray Bradbury is a very mixed bag.

First published in 1969, this collection is an eclectic mix of stories in science fiction, fantasy and other styles, characters portraits and poetry. Some of them work better than others, but all in all it was worth the ride…..I’ll talk you through my thoughts on the book…..

This collection has some recurring themes, and some good and some bad stories. I try to be a positive person, so Ill start with the very best stories in this book, and work my way down the list of misdemeanors later…..so here first is a description of some of the good stuff.

Where you would expect it: Great Bradbury Science Fiction

This collection contains a number of excellent short science fiction pieces. The theme of machine emotion connects many of them

”I Sing the Body Electric” is the story of a family who adopt a surrogate android grandmother after the death of the mother in the family unit. This tale, emotive, intelligent and tasteful debates the nature of love, in its most importantly practical application…..can a machine love? What is love, and can a machine provide it? The esoteric schools teach that in the final analysis, love and emotion are not the same thing. As a nurse, I can vouch for this daily. An excellent tale.

”Tomorrows Child” is the tale of a child who is born into the wrong dimension. To his human parents, he manifests as nothing but a geometric shape, as do they to him. Despite these differences, love is shown conquering all. Imprinting is a powerful and malleable force. Transdimensional exchange of selfhood. This story is out there, but it works!

”Downwind from Gettysburg” tells the tale of a copycat killing. A fully functional automaton copy of Lincoln is shot ‘dead’ by a Mr. Booth. This tale again explores how machines and emotions are connected when the machine even remotely resembles a person. One has to wonder if this tale was inspired by a visit to the Disney Lincoln exhibit?! As an aside, the end of this story, with the investigator composing the punishment of the criminal is a little too reminiscent of many Sherlock Holmes stories.

”Night Call, Collect” is an eerie tale of a man marooned on another world. Anticipating a long wait for help, he programs machines to sample his voice and compose original conversation for him, to be phoned to him many years in the future. Alas, by that time he has forgotten the dark content of the calls. This story simply makes up a new technology from scratch. Such originality is my prime reason for enjoying science fiction.

More greats, outside the Science Fiction genre

I confess I was unaware that Ray Bradbury wrote anything except sci-fi….this is the first book of shorts by him I have read. Clearly he writes in a lot of different styles and fields. This book contains a couple of wonderful stories that stand in their own write, and don’t fall neatly into any category I personally know the name of…..well, perhaps fortean would be the right term. These two excellent stories might be said to be linked by there illustration of the need to be who we are, no matter how unconventional.

”Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby is a friend of mine “is the story of an unsuccessful writer who decides to spend the remainder of his life imitating the life and copying the writings of Charles Dickens. This story sees our hero arriving in a small town, and tells the tale of the reactions of the inhabitants. This is a peaceful, gently humorous tale, with a warm message about self-fulfillment and individuality.

Imitation is another recurring theme in this book…..the android in the title story says she is in part created as an image of perfect love in the hopes she will be imitated. The hero in “Any Friend” finds he is happier living to be like someone he admired than he was without such an image to emulate. Of course, this concept should be fairly familiar to most Christians, and Buddhists and others.

“Any Friend” visits a theme Bradbury expands in his most successful novel, Fahrenheit 451. In “Any Friend” the hero is able to re-write the entire works of Charles Dickens from memory, and more than once he reels off the names of great works of literature and great writers down through time who he has be driven by. I know the feeling. If you read reviews in Epinions book section, you probably do too.

”The Man in the Rorschach Shirt” tells the story of a successful analyst, who quits when he realizes the cures he effects were not bought about through the means he originally thought. Taking to the streets, he uses his many tie-dyed shirts to bring about just as miraculous results for people. This touching story again strongly relates the message that pursuing ones passions and talents does not require licensure of any kind other than breath in your body.

Brief Character Sketches….the cheap padding of the short story collection world



There are two pieces in this book which barely qualify as anything, in my humble opinion, beyond cheap filling…..they are both nothing but character sketches that the author presumably penned out of a morning daydream’s highlights. Whilst there is nothing wrong with them as character sketches, ”Heavy Set”and ”Henry the Ninth”wasted moments of my life I could have put to better use frankly.

Bitter Misogyny is Better Off Dead

The short story “Women” is amazing to me. It is a very short piece depicting an ocean as a sentient thing, trying to steal a man away from his female companion. This turns out to be the delivery vehicle for a rant of bitter adolescent misogyny. I am astonished that Bradbury’s own self-censorship did not tell him this story was in bad taste, and, well, crap basically. A displeasure to read.

”What I Did on My Holidays” or, Good Travelogues Gone Bad

Now, a great psychic I am not, but I’m going to make some predictions here, maybe I am going out on a limb…..I bet you that Ray Bradbury, sometime before the publication of this book had already become a successful writer and made some money off it. He went traveling around the United States bumming around in an artsy kind of a way, just enjoying himself. He also went to Europe, Ireland to be precise, where he spent time with an acquaintance of his who was landed gentry, or close to it, but certainly living on a large estate.

How do I come to know these things?

I know this to be so because half of this book is a not very cleverly disguised travelogue, and a not particularly fascinating one at that. One finds the signs of such travelogues in the details of the writing…..watch for these revealing signs of a travelogue turned into a story…..

1) Driving directions of Mapquest-like detail weaved into the story.
2) Characters who use a suspicious number of motels
3) Populations described in the painfully stereotypical fashion typical of facile tourists
4) A compulsive obsession with describing roads.

Six of the stories in this book are in this category, which has nothing wrong with it, per se, but which is not here done well. Tiresome as these stories were, I choose not to reveal their titles to you, so that if you read this book for the good stories you can at least entertain yourselves through the crap ones by deciphering for yourselves which ones Bradbury wrote about his big vay-kay!

So there we have it, this book is a game of two halves…some of the stories are truly excellent and well worth the time and effort of reading the book, and some of them are so cruddy that you will really have to work at it to get through them.

Do I recommend this book? I recommend getting it out of the library and reading the stories which I have just described in a good light.


Some of my other science fiction book reviews:

Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Recommended: Yes