Bradbury Stories

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

Ray Bradbury

Have you ever reached the pinnacle of your vice?

Have you found that perfect chocolate, or scotch, or cigar, or vintage - the one that makes you slow your pace.  The exceptional example of the form that would be obscene to scarf, gulp, or wolf down?

I started reading Bradbury Stories yesterday.

I started reading Bradbury in the fifth grade.  I was in what was called the AIM program, alternately, the gifted program or honors program.  Whatever, it was where we got sent for English and Math.  I was accepted to the prgram because I loved and excelled at the former even though I was  barely able to comprehend the latter.  The other students all seemed to be light years ahead of me.  The complicated introductions to algeabraic equations made them bored, sleepy, and prone to picking on me because of my limited comprehension.  I took my revenge by reading faster and at a higher level than they; I took comfort in always having my nose so far into a book that I never even noticed them most of the time.

Most of the time.

My teacher was a lovely woman.  She knew what was going on and knew that there was very little she could do about it; these things tend to work themselves out over the course of the years passing.  She did what she could though, and the main thing she could do was feed me books.  The classics at first, "Treasure Island" and "Call of the Wild", then followed by some of Heinlein's juvenille books, then, finally, "The Martian Chronicles".

"The Martian Chronicles" impacted me in a way that very few other stories ever would.  I read and re-read the book until the cover fell off and I went back to Mrs. Tucker and apologized and offered to buy a new copy.  She told me not to worry about it and sent me off with "The Illustrated Man".

From there I began slipping out of the Children's section of the county library, with its Black Stallion and Hardy Boys, its Bobbsey Twins and Illustrated Classics, and into the main rooms of the library.  The towering stacks of the fiction room were set A - E along the walls with F - Z in long rows in the middle of the room.  Walking slowly up and down the aisles I would pause and read passages from Farmer and Heinlein and Robinson and Zelazny, all masters in their own, but only pauses on the long path to the back corner, where B began.

Bradbury had his own shelf, towards the bottom, perfectly positioned for my eye height when seated on the floor.  I read "R is for Rocket" and "Golden Apples of the Sun" right there on the floor, waiting for my mother to come find me.  I checked out "Death is a Lonely Business" and never had the courage to read past the first chapter, there alone in my bedroom.  I borrowed collection after collection of his stories and treasured each one.

"The Toynbee Convector" opened my mind to the idea that reality is only what we can believe; the sheer poetry of "The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair" made me cry.

And now, twenty-two years later, this collection, purchased on the spur of the moment for no other reason that I wanted to visit old friends, this collection sits on the edge of my desk refusing to be rushed through.

Instead, I read a single story and then set the book back down, taking the time to think and remember and savor the sheer quality of each one, like one does with the best chocolates, and scotches, and cigars, and wines and "The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair" still makes me cry.