Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

This book contains 100 stories, but for now I am only listing those stories that I cannot find in Bradbury's other collections. This page may shrink as the site (and my book collection) expands. For more about this book, including a complete list of contents, click here.

Summary: A charlatan named Thirkell convinces a group of elderly women that he will take them to God with his rocket. When the fraud is exposed, the women, led by Mrs. Bellowes, demand satisfaction.

Comments: Some might call this tale ironic, but it's not. Irony is when the results of a situation are the reverse of what's expected, making a mockery of one's original intentions. But these women get just what they bargained for. Mr. Thirkell doesn't get the ending he wanted, but his falling into the sun and burning like hell isn't irony so much as poetic justice. Real irony and humor is what this story needs. It's hard to be serious about a bunch of white-haired ladies suffocating in their space-helmets. Try reading "Kaleidoscope" and substituting your grandmother for every single character.

Summary: Johnny Choir, the boyish American G.I. who believes he can duck bullets, continues his WWII service in Italy. Here he runs afoul of a fellow soldier named Melter who demands a private demonstration of Johnny's eerie talent.

Comments: "Bang! You're Dead" is essentially the same story as "The Ducker," but it could be argued that "Bang" is a sequel. Both stories include Johnny's concerned friend Eddie Smith, and both are written in third person, but the viewpoint differs. "The Ducker" lets us look inside Johnny's own childish mind, and "Bang" shows us things from Private Smith's frightened vantage point.

Bradbury was 4-F due to his poor eyesight, but one wonders if Johnny is Bradbury's overseas stand-in -- boyish, baby faced, and innocent, but most of all immortal. Bradbury's "live forever" theme is at work here, as recommended to him by Mr. Electrico. Electrico also believed that Ray was the reincarnation of a soldier who died in WWI. All of these things could have influenced the Johnny Choir stories.

The problem with "The Ducker" is that even weird tales need a kernel of truth, and the idea that the innocent are protected by their own ignorance and naivety is a phony sort of fiction. Plenty of innocent young men, barely more than boys, died in that war. "Bang" is the better story because it introduces a dark element of "friendly fire" not found in the earlier story. Private Melter is jealous of Johnny's bullet-dodging heroics and becomes an enemy worse than the Nazi army. Melter uses Johnny's ignorance against him, taking the boy's belief in his own immortality as an invitation to take pot shots at him when no one is looking.

There is an Alfred Hitchcock television episode called "Bang! You're Dead," but it is not based on Bradbury's story.

See also: For another Bradbury WWII story, see "Undersea Guardians."

Summary: An ill-tempered prospector named Malone learns a valuable lesson: Never threaten the barber who shaves your face.

Comments: I was just wondering the other day if Ray had written any Westerns. This is it, I guess.

Summary: Bill Tinsley has made it his life's work to rid the entire world of insects. He's vastly outnumbered, but he has the advantage as long as They don't know what he's up to.

Comments: Maybe the only Bradbury story that has ever reminded me of Stephen King. If you took Ray's name off of this I'm not sure his fans would recognize his work. It is also similar to Philip K. Dick's story "Expendable."

The Martian Chronicles also has a segment called "The Watchers," but that is different.

Summary: Far in the future an all robot society condemns one of their own for daring to recreate a man of flesh and blood.

Comments: They call themselves Obots. Bradbury has never been a stickler for factual stories and plausibility, but this is still fun to read. I was picturing the funny robots from the Futurama cartoon series. One reviewer of Futurama said the show was stupid because why would there be a robot devil, a robot hell? Someone forgot to tell this person what parody is. Futurama was spoofing these types of stories where robots have free will and other human attributes. Why does C3PO have feelings that can be hurt? How can he be insulted or afraid? Sadly, the Terminator is a more likely scenario, but that doesn't make these other stories any less enjoyable.

Summary: Two lonely astronauts, Drew and Smith, get excited when they find the footprints of a woman leading off into the Martian hills.

Comments: Like "Perchance to Dream" this one has a lot of inconsistencies about helmets and breathable air.

There is a Ray Bradbury Theater episode called "The Lonely One," but that is from the story "The Whole Town's Sleeping."

Summary: For some time now Martha has suspected that her lover has been replaced by a robot replica, and tonight she means to find out.

Comments: Of all the convenient uses for a mechanical double that are mentioned in the story Bradbury has only really written about men who use Marionettes to fix (avoid) difficult relationships with women. I bet Bill Clinton wishes he had a few of these puppets.

See also: "Marionettes, Inc." and "Punishment Without Crime" are also about mechanical doubles.

Summary: Bedridden Johnny Bishop finds escape in a sea shell.

Comments: This seems like a classic. Hard to believe it took almost sixty years to find its way into one of Ray's collections. I'd rather read this than "The Smile" any day. And that was collected how many times?

Summary: Lisabeth thinks she is Catherine the Great, so her brother and two sisters are taking her to an asteroid that caters to the special whims of the insane.

Comments: There's an asteroid for every type of madness it seems. If you think you're a doomed Moor there's an Othello planetoid where you can live out your doom happily, no one to tell you that Iago is just an accountant from Cleveland. This story has one of the silliest scenes in Bradbury: a woman uses the radio on a rocket to call back to Earth and make an appointment with her hairdresser. But the point is that Lisabeth's siblings are just as crazy as she is, each in their own way. Insanity is all dependent on your point of view as in "The Earth Men."

Summary: Army veteran Jonathan Barnes is Chief Censor of Green Town, Illinois. When he arrives at the library to burn books he is confused by the passivity of the librarian and the book-loving public.

Comments: The futility of book-burning was more famously featured in Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury's "book people" memorize books, making themselves into living literature, but Barnes says, "How can you be sure I won't burn people, as well as books?"

Summary: David is the greatest poet in the world. Each poem he writes captures the essence of a rapidly vanishing world.

Comments: None.