R is for Rocket
Doubleday & Company, October 1962.

17 stories.

Summary: Two fifteen-year-old boys, Chris and Ralph, want more than anything to be astronauts. But you can't apply for rocket school--you must be selected. When Chris is chosen, he realizes he may be leaving his best friend behind for good.

Comments: Bradbury's teenagers always seem to behave like nine-year-olds. What fifteen-year-old says, "Last one to the monorail is a bug-eyed Martian!"? The EC Comics version, available in Tomorrow Midnight as "King of the Grey Spaces," makes the boys look like latent homosexuals, while Chris's mom is depicted as a blonde bombshell. Weird.

Summary: From their front lawn, a man and his wife watch as their son blasts off in a rocket to build the first space station. They ponder the meaning of it all.

Comments: Another story that’s hardly a story. No plot, just Bradbury telling us what it all means. But there are some interesting differences in the U.K. book The Day it Rained Forever.

U.S.: The men snug in the rocket by now, the hive, the control board flickering with light.
U.K.: ...the control board lit like Christmas.

Yes, it's a slight difference, but curious nonetheless. I've noticed some of the subtle changes in his stories have to do with religious references--Americans don't seem to like God getting into their science-fiction. This is a theory I'll look into when I read The Silver Locusts in the near future. That U.K. version of The Martian Chronicles contains "The Fire Balloons" which isn't in the U.S. book. The second U.S./U.K. difference in "The End of the Beginning" comes near the end of the story and is more significant:

U.S.: "But," said his wife, "I still don't know why."
U.K.: "Yes..." He could hardly hear his wife's voice. "Yes...I believe that's true."

The American wife is still arguing while the British wife agrees.

Summary: An ancient sea monster surfaces near a lighthouse, lured in by the lonely call of the fog horn.

Comments: One of Bradbury's best and most famous stories. "The Foghorn" is included in many school readers, though some have censored the references to God.

Movie: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms featured a stop-motion dinosaur by special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. The two Rays shared a love of dinosaurs and became lifelong friends. Both men discuss their friendship and working relationship in the AMC documentary "The Harryhausen Chronicles."

Dinosaur Tales, an illustrated collection of stories and poems, also includes comments by Bradbury and Harryhausen. "The Fog Horn" is illustrated by Steranko--the best artwork in that book.

"The Foghorn" also appears in The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel, this time with artwork by Wayne Barlowe.

Summary: Fiorello Bodoni, a junk man, has always dreamed of taking the rocket to Mars, but he can’t afford a trip for his whole family. Then a mockup rocket is delivered to his junk yard, and Fiorello gets an idea.

Comments: This is similar to "The Happiness Machine."

Summary: A rocket man’s wife and son struggle to make him happy and keep him home after one of his three-month trips. But after a few nights home, he is beginning to stare up at the night sky.

Comments: The story is narrated by the fourteen-year-old son, giving an objective point of view to the relationship between the parents. It’s not that Dad doesn’t enjoy being home or that he hates his wife--but space is so damn seductive that he can’t keep away from it.

I’ve never seen an official statement from Elton John and Bernie Taupin that their song "Rocket Man" was based on this story, but surely it is. There is a brief article about it on Cecil Adams’s Straight Dope web site, although it contains a few errors. For instance, Bradbury’s story first appeared in The Illustrated Man (1951), not R is for Rocket (1962).

Summary: The captain of rocketship Copa de Oro (aka Prometheus, aka Icarus) is leading his ice-packed crew "south" to borrow a cup of gold from the blazing sun itself.

Comments: I've never cared much for this one. The science of it seems impossible so it must be taken as fantasy, and even then it's a little too much. It's full of bits of borrowed poetry (the title is from Yeats) and some of Bradbury's own. And lots of exclamation points to make sure you know how exciting it all is!

In The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel, Bradbury explains that this is not a story but a myth. The artwork by P. Craig Russell makes things a little more fun. His rocket crew looks like a bunch of teenagers from 1955.

Summary: A man named Eckels takes a time travel safari into the past to hunt the ultimate big game--Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Comments: Another one of Bradbury's best. I'm surprised this wasn't included in The Vintage Bradbury. This tale is so well known that I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say that Eckels steps on a butterfly and changes all of history.

The version in Dinosaur Tales is illustrated by William Stout. Stout's work is more imaginative than Wiesner's, more creepy and comic-bookish in style. One of these illustrations appears in slightly altered form in The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel, but "A Sound of Thunder" is actually adapted by Richard Corben in that book.

Ray Bradbury Theater #24 is one of the best episodes.

Movie: It's always a bad sign when a "major" movie misses its projected release date(s), never arrives in theaters, and makes a perfect dive (no splash at all) into video stores. This much-delayed, much-maligned Peter Hyams' film went into heavy rotation on the Cinemax channels in October 2006. It's hard to say why Cinemax is so afraid of the letterbox format at this point, but it's safe to say nothing was lost when formatting A Sound of Thunder (2005) to fit your screen. By the time it reached your screen, it was too late to save this disaster.

It would be easy to rip this movie to shreds, but it's not as painful to watch as the All Movie Guide reviewer claims. The major drawbacks here are bad special effects and plot holes you could throw an allosaurus through. Once the past is altered by the safari hunters, the movie takes a unique view on how the future is affected by the change. Viewers will either find this "ripple effect" to be an original spin on an old idea, or they will be insulted by its lack of logic and its deviation from time-travel rules laid down by generations of writers. Either way, most viewers will want to slap Catherine McCormack's fast-talking, oh-so-very British computer scientist as she literally fills the air with a steady stream of theoretical time-warp bullshit.

The screenwriters may have taken a unique spin on time-alteration, but they lack originality elsewhere. The first victim of the newly-evolved dinosaurs is a black man, and audiences are expected to cheer when the next victim is the asshole government agent. Note to Mr. Hyams: When borrowing from Jurassic Park, don't borrow its stock characters and Spielbergian predictibilities. Stick to the suspense and high production values.

Dedicated Bradbury fans will want to see this anyway, but catch it quick before it becomes extinct.

Radio: Bradbury 13 has a great sound mix to it, but the acting leaves something to be desired. It takes talent to portray a convincing loser like Eckels, and what looks good on the printed page can sound very corny out loud. Rather than being whiny and ignorant Eckels should be careless and arrogant--a He-man Hemingway type.

Summary: After crashing on Venus, a lieutenant and his three surviving men struggle through the jungle, searching for the Sun-Dome--the only place where Earthmen can escape the Venusian rain.

Comments: Another story of the never-ending Venusian rain is "All Summer in a Day."

Ray Bradbury Theater #56 stars Marc "Beastmaster" Singer. It was also filmed as part of the 1969 movie The Illustrated Man.

Summary: Earth’s forgotten authors, their books banned and burned, have found new life on Mars. But as an Earth rocket approaches, the exiled authors prepare for battle. Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne, and other supernatural writers cannot exist in the same world as the unimaginative, antiseptic Earthmen.

Comments: The part about Santa is a little silly, but the stuff with Dickens is good. He refuses to help the others, claiming he was only lumped together with them by mistake, because of a few ghosts in one of his stories.

See also: More stories about censorship:

• "Bright Phoenix"
• "Usher II"
• "Pillar of Fire"
• Fahrenheit 451

Other stories about resurrected authors:

• "Forever and the Earth"
• "G.B.S.--Mark V"
• "The Parrot Who Met Papa"
• "The Kilimanjaro Device"
• "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine"

Summary: A remote planet puts on two different faces for a rocket expedition crew. The astronauts find a peaceful paradise, but the greedy mineralogist Chatterton finds it to be a nightmare.

Comments: This story could have been told in a much shorter span--it seems to go on too long after the climax, but I suppose when Ray was writing for the pulps he had to shoot for a certain word count.

Is the captain named Forester to show that he's in harmony with nature while Chatterton is at war with the planet? This may be a coincidence since the other crew members are named Driscoll, Williams, and Kessler. They could have been named Waters, Rivers, etc.

The version in The Day it Rained Forever has more swearing, but all versions have corny lines like: "That fool, that crazy guy."

Ray Bradbury Theater #42

Radio: The Bradbury 13 episode is well scripted, has great sound effects, and even though it's well acted I don't believe the voices were very well cast. With the exception of the evil Chatterton, all the other characters sound about the same. More variety was needed, perhaps an older man's voice, or a black man, or a woman. I seem to remember the Ray Bradbury Theater episode having a black man and a woman on board.

Summary: Bob and Carrie Prentiss are having a hard time adjusting to life on Mars. The kids don’t like it much either. Carrie’s ready to pack and go home to Earth. The quonset hut just isn’t the same as having a house. So Bob spends all their savings to have the old family home shipped to Mars, piece by piece.

Comments: That summary is a bit of a spoiler and I could have left out that last sentence, but "The Strawberry Window" is one of the reasons I started this story index project. After reading some of these stories two or three times, you’d think you’d remember what they’re about. But each time I’d see "The Strawberry Window" listed in the contents of a book, I would say, "Now what the hell was that one about?"

The major portion of this story is actually Bob (or Bradbury speaking through Bob) explaining why Man must explore space. It’s to perpetuate the race--our sun won’t burn forever. We need to spread out to millions of other worlds and be sure Man is never wiped from the universe. This same theme recurs in many Bradbury tales, but this is one of the preachiest.

"Fly Away Home" is a similar story without the preaching. In that story, whores and priests are all part of the same package.

Summary: On an eerie timeless moor, two knights encounter a terrifying (and surprisingly modern) dragon.

Comments: This makes me think of the Twilight Zone. I need to check for TV or radio shows.

Summary: Christmas 2052. A man gives his son the entire universe for Christmas.

Comments: This has nothing to do with chapter 23 of From the Dust Returned, also called "The Gift."

Summary: Sim's life-expectancy is eight days. His ancestors crashed on a planet which is too near the sun, and the radiation causes premature aging. People are born, grow up, grow old, and then die--all in eight days. One ship from the fleet is still lying undamaged at the top of a distant mountain. Can Sim make the long journey to reach it before the sun burns him alive?

Comments: Of course he can. Don't heroes always win in these types of stories? What is more interesting is how he does it. This is a long story and Sim uses all his wits and resources to overcome several obstacles along the way. Not too shabby for someone who was born yesterday.

Summary: Green-winged Uncle Einar hits a high tension wire while flying home from the Elliot family Homecoming. He loses his ability to fly at night, but consequently gains a wife, children, and a newfound trick for flying undetected by daylight.

Comments: Another story Bradbury has rewritten a few times. In Dark Carnival Einar and Brunilla are married by a Minister Elliot (a Christian!) with Mother, Father and Laura Elliot as witnesses. The October Country omits these specific characters, and the family's presence is depicted as a fluttering, rustling horde. "The Homecoming" is mentioned in these early versions, but Cecy Elliot is not.

The novel From the Dust Returned features "Uncle Einar" as chapter 15. Cecy figures into this version, which is rewritten to fit the themes of the novel. Bradbury has shortened the story by making Brunilla a widow with children when Einar meets her. These kids have names in the story but are generic in the novel. A few key phrases would indicate that Bradbury worked this up from the original Dark Carnival version.

See also: Elliot family stories.

• "Homecoming"
• "The April Witch"
• "The Traveler"
• "West of October"
• From the Dust Returned

"Seems like the town is full of machines," said Douglas, running.

Summary: Doug Spaulding, Charlie Woodman, and John Huff are paying a visit to old Colonel Freeleigh, Green Town's own living time machine (as long as you're only interested in the past).

Comments: This story and "Calling Mexico" both feature Colonel Freeleigh, and they're both in Dandelion Wine. I believe some of these characters were just slightly altered for the story "Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy."

Late that night, going home from the show with his mother and father and his brother Tom, Douglas saw the tennis shoes in the bright store window.

Summary: Douglas knows that every boy needs a new pair of sneakers at the beginning of summer, but his dad doesn't agree. So Doug pitches a deal to the shoe salesman to get his Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes.

Comments: Dandelion Wine is set in 1928 when kids wore hard-soled leather shoes to school. Nowadays, kids would get new sneakers at the end of summer when school starts.

This story's point-of-view shifts a bit between Doug and shoe store proprietor Mr. Sanderson. This is the first time POV shifts, albeit briefly, to one of the adult townspeople. Doug is still here as a main character, but this POV shift helps prepare us for later stories where Doug's presence is minimal if not absent altogether.