The good Ray Bradbury stories

[Extollager]

Comment #109 at October's Obdurate thread, on Bradbury's "The Emissary," from The October Country.

Connavar, is this story more "good" or more "great" in your view?

 

[Extollager]

#110 at October Obdurate,

on "Touched by Fire," a favorite from The October Country.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would put Something Wicked This Way Comes in any "essential" collection, Bradbury or otherwise.

I agree that there is a great deal of disparity from one end of Bradbury to the other, with things to love, things to hate, and things that inspire total indifference.

And I have to ring in on the other side for Fahrenheit 451. I read it again last year and was greatly disappointed to discover it wasn't anything like as good as I remembered it. No longer a classic in my world, sorry. And I have it in leather, too.

 

[Connavar]

Comment #109 at October's Obdurate thread, on Bradbury's "The Emissary," from The October Country.

Connavar, is this story more "good" or more "great" in your view?

I would say The Emissary is good but not great in my view.

I remember the only other stories i have read of Bradbury that is the first 4 stories of The Illustrated Man


"The Veldt" - great
"Kaleidoscope" - good
"The Other Foot" - okay
"The Highway" - good

 

[Extollager]

A dismissive remark on the next October Country story, "The Small Assassin," is #124 at October's Obdurate, which includes a link to a better story on a related topic -- Chekhov's "Sleepy."

 

[Extollager]

I rate "The Crowd" as a Bradbury keeper, unlike "Small Assassin," at #125 at October's Obdurate. See if you agree with me about the Leiber connection.

 

[j d worthington]

While I think "The Small Assassin" still works as a nightmarish shocker (that is, one with a feeling of nightmare-logic to it), and I know that it is still highly regarded, I, too, would be much less likely to include it in an essential Bradbury. I'm not quite sure I'd include "The Crowd", either, though some portions of it are especially haunting. (I used to have a casette of Bradbury reading various of his stories; this was one, and his reading of it was quite effective... but again, I'm not sure it would be quite enough even there....)

Oh, on "The Lake" -- I meant to post an additional thought the other day, and didn't get a chance: To me, it isn't the sense of loss, but the horror of his indifference to all loss except Tally, once that bit of the past begins to emerge. His alienation from his wife, his entire life, except for that one point, strikes me as a particularly horrific sort of haunting, and calls into question the very nature of the haunting force. The things implied here, to me, are what makes this story so haunting, poignant, and terrifying all at once...

 

[Extollager]

JD, I think your reading of "The Lake" is a creative response to the story. It is an interesting handling of the idea. I don't think it is what Bradbury intended. It's better. Incidentally, it reminds me a very little of Richard Adams's The Girl in a Swing. (Who would have expected the author of Watership Down -- itself an impressive fantasy -- to write an authentic classic of dark fantasy?)

 

[Extollager]

"Jack in the Box" reminds me of five classic sf/fantasy items, at #126 at October's Obdurate thread. "The Guests" from the original Outer Limits is one of them.

 

[j d worthington]

JD, I think your reading of "The Lake" is a creative response to the story. It is an interesting handling of the idea. I don't think it is what Bradbury intended. It's better. Incidentally, it reminds me a very little of Richard Adams's The Girl in a Swing. (Who would have expected the author of Watership Down -- itself an impressive fantasy -- to write an authentic classic of dark fantasy?)

Hadn't made the connection (it has been... oh, 25 years or so, since I read that novel) but, yes, I can see it. (A fine novel it is, too!)

On your response to my reading... perhaps; I'm just giving the impressions I recall having (in somewhat inchoate form) when originally reading the story, and which have coalesced into firmer shape with later readings. I have no idea, really, what Bradbury had in mind with the story, as I've never come across anything specifying that....

I will say, though, that it ties in with a similar theme addressed in "The Next in Line"....

 

[Extollager]

#136 at "October's Obdurate" on a fine story from The October Country, "The Scythe."

 

[Extollager]

At #148 at October's Obdurate, I associate "Uncle Einar" with Kurosawa's movie Dreams. You can tell me if it is too long a reach!

 

[Connavar]

"The Scythe" is wonderful weird story, one of the best i have read. I rate it among my fav stories in the field of any horror,SFF author.

 

[Extollager]

#153 at October's Obdurate comments very briefly on a good story from The October Country, "The Wind."

By now, it doesn't matter to me if the remaining stories are no better than so-so: I'd have to say The October Country as a whole is, for me, a Bradbury "keeper." I'm figuring that I will go on, next month, to comment on another collection, The Golden Apples of the Sun. And Connavar is going to be commenting somewhere on The Machineries of Joy.

But it would be interesting -- I am not the person to do this -- if someone wanted to start from the most recent Bradbury books, or even just most recent collections of stories, and work backwards chronologically. There seems to be consensus about the earlier Bradbury collections as being good. But those contain stories that are, what?, more than fifty years old? What if one started with We'll Always Have Paris (2009), then read Summer Morning, Summer Night (2008), then perhaps The Cat's Pajamas (2004)? I wonder which stories in those books are good.

 

[j d worthington]

Of those you mention, I only have The Cat's Pajamas, though I've not yet read it....

 

[Nesacat]

Two from me:

The Fog Horn which was written in 1951 and is in The Golden Apples of the Sun. This was my very first Bradbury story and I read it in the Readers Digest.

The Homecoming which was written in 1946. It's a part of The Dust Returned and was recently published in hardback with illustrations by Dave McKean.

And if Halloween Tree may be considered a short story then I would like to add that here as well.

 

[Extollager]

"The Man Upstairs" in The October Country is another good 'un. #159 at October's fast-expiring Obdurate thread.

 

[Extollager]

#167 at October's Obdurate thread, on "There Was an Old Woman" and "The Cistern." Just a couple of brief remarks. I don't see these as essential stories. I don't have the impression that anyone else thinks that they are.

 

[Extollager]

#174 at October's Obdurate: I dismiss "Homecoming."

 

[Extollager]

#175: the last story in The October Country, "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone," makes a nice finale.

There were a few dispensable stories in it, but in my mind this collection has earned a place with The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451 -- the books I personally will think of as the good Bradbury stuff. I mean to continue reading, to see what else might belong there.

By the way, I liked most of the pictures by Joe Mugnaini. Perhaps my favorite is the bird'-eye view for "The Crowd."

This isn't it -- couldn't find it online.