Rounding out the volume are a half-dozen shorter pieces-taken from rare pamphlets, fanzines, and other hard-to-find sources, some never-before reprinted-in which Bradbury reflects on his writing and on the sources of his creativity. Stine called “the scariest book I ever read,” Will and Jim must join an ultimate-stakes battle against evil, as Bradbury imagines supernatural terror with stunning inventiveness. When a traveling carnival arrives mysteriously one autumn night, the lives of the novel’s two young protagonists are altered forever. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) is set in pleasant Green Town too-but with a chilling difference. Full of gentle humor and a sense of wonder, this nostalgic novel pays homage to life’s ephemeral joys. Sneaking forbidden volumes home and meeting other clandestine readers, Montag becomes the unlikely hero of this now-classic novel, at once literary thriller and perennially relevant political fable.ĭandelion Wine (1957) is a fond, backward glance, recollecting the adventures of the summer of 1928 through the eyes of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding, a boy much like Bradbury himself, as he comes of age in Green Town, Illinois.
But one of these Firemen, Guy Montag, asks why. In the dystopian future of Fahrenheit 451 (1953), the Firemen have one job: to incinerate books and all they contain, while mindless, big-screen entertainments distract the masses. Bradbury’s saga of the discovery, exploitation, and abandonment of Mars is not at all triumphal, until a second wave of settlers-free at last from earthly oppression and saved from atomic annihilation-pose a fateful question: will human beings be able to make the best of their second chance, as Martians? Published at the hopeful dawn of the space age, and presented here in the complete, twenty-eight story-chapter form that Bradbury came to prefer, the linked tales of The Martian Chronicles (1950) envision an extraterrestrial future for humankind. This definitive Library of America edition gathers his novels and story cycles of the 1950s and 1960s for the first time.
In books that look forward to astonishing futures and backward to evanescent realms of memory, he elevated speculative fiction from the pages of the pulps to the vital center of American literary culture. “I can imagine all kinds of worlds and places,” Neil Gaiman has written, “but I cannot imagine a world without Bradbury.” A master storyteller and visionary champion of creative freedom, Ray Bradbury is one of the most beloved and influential writers of our time. Save $20 when you purchase both Bradbury volumes in a boxed set.
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