The Vintage Bradbury
Vintage, September 1965.

26 stories.

Summary: George Garvey is so amazingly boring and common that a group of avant-garde writers seek him out so that they can marvel at his dullness. When they begin to lose interest, Garvey turns the tables and becomes a bizarre eccentric, thus regaining his audience.

Comments: What is funny is how quickly they adapt to Garvey’s boring lifestyle, making excuses for indulging in such trivial, common things: "Beer’s intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it."

Summary: George and Lydia Hadley are beginning to regret ever buying their Happy-life Home. It cooks their meals, does their dishes, and practically tucks them in at night, but there is something sinister about the electronic nursery. The children have been spending too much time in there, conjuring the sights, sounds, and smells of Africa, lions, and death.

Comments: In 1950, Bradbury was probably thinking of television and how it dominated children’s lives, so that they rarely went outside to play. The nursery is able to conjure realistic impressions of anything the children can imagine--allowing them to "play outside" from inside the room. It is more like virtual reality than TV, and though there are many stories and movies about people addicted to such entertainment, this may be the first.

The children’s names--Peter and Wendy--are fitting, since they spend so much time immersed in their technological Neverland.

Ray Bradbury Theater #29

Radio: X Minus One did a very good episode of "The Veldt" which sticks close to the original story, using Bradbury's imagery word-for-word. This story seems made for radio since it's basically a criticism of TV. Also, since the special effects always limit any TV adaptation, the radio show works better by using the listener's imagination to conjure up those lions and vultures. In other words, this is a perfect example of why people still listen to old time radio shows.

Again, the Bradbury 13 episode has more modern sound effects, but the script and acting don't seem quite as good as the old time shows.

Summary: This is the one about the "boy" who never ages. He’s forty-three years old and stuck inside the body of a twelve-year-old. He travels from town to town being adopted by new parents every few years, because a few years is all it takes before people start to suspect.

Comments: This character would have felt right at home in Summerton, Arizona. See Somewhere a Band Is Playing.

Ray Bradbury Theater #28

Radio: This was part of a CBS Radio Workshop episode featuring two Bradbury stories. The other was "Season of Disbelief." The two stories make a nice pair since one is about a boy who has been denied adulthood, and the other is about a woman having her childhood stolen.

Originally published in A Medicine for Melancholy, 1959.
Appears in A Medicine for Melancholy; The Vintage Bradbury; The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Summary: London, 1762. Fed up with ineffectual doctors, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes set their daughter Camillia’s bed outside and let passing strangers offer their advice on what ails her and how to cure her. A friendly dustman recommends letting her sleep out under the moon all night.

Comments: The dustman claimed the same remedy cured his sister. Kind of makes you wonder about the dustman, doesn’t it?

Summary: Struggling writer William Acton commits murder and becomes obsessed with the fear of leaving behind fingerprints.

Comments: In 1965 this was included in The Vintage Bradbury as one of twenty-six stories selected by the author himself as being his best, but by 1980 it was not included among the 100 best in The Stories of Ray Bradbury. In fact, several of the "Vintage" stories failed to make the list fifteen years later.

The EC Comics version of this story, available in The Autumn People as "Touch and Go," omits some of the back-story and all of the motivation behind the murder. This is the only serious alteration made in that collection of comic adaptations.

Ray Bradbury Theater #7 was the first episode produced for the USA network.

Summary: When a Martian woman has a dream of handsome Earthmen arriving in a ship, her husband becomes jealous.

Comments: I’m not sure how well this story stands on its own outside The Martian Chronicles, but there it is in The Vintage Bradbury. There are better stories in The Martian Chronicles that could have been chosen for this "best of" collection: "The Earth Men," "Mars is Heaven," aka "The Third Expedition," and "Usher II."

Radio: This was well-represented in the Dimension X episode called "The Martian Chronicles."

Summary: A married couple rent out the addition to their house to a Mexican couple. After a few years they realize they’ve never heard one sound through the wall. Not a peep. So what do they do in there anyway?

Comments: None.

Summary: Is it possible for a newborn baby to hate its mother? Does a baby resent being forced from its peaceful womb into the chaotic outside world? Does it want revenge? Alice Leiber thinks so. She thinks her baby is trying to kill her.

Comments: Bradbury repeatedly claims to remember his own birth and circumcision a few days later. (See "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle.") In the Gauntlet edition of Dark Carnival he says this is because he was a ten-month baby. No one believes this story except for Bradbury, but he's made the most of it with "The Small Assassin."

What is interesting about this story is wondering what happens afterward. If Dr. Jeffers kills the evil baby, how will he convince anyone that the baby murdered the parents? The doctor would be especially suspicious in Ray Bradbury Theater #12 where he finds both parents dead at the same time. In the story, the mother dies the day before the father. Jeffers may draw additional suspicion because he's played by Cyril Cusack, who had previously portrayed the antagonistic fire chief in Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.

Summary: Irish men make a sport of fleeing the cinema after the end of each movie, before the dreaded national anthem is played.

Comments: When I first read this I thought the men were fleeing from their own national anthem. As an American teenager I knew little of the United Kingdom and Ireland's troubles with England. It's "God Save the Queen" that they don't like, a point made clear by the story's original title "The Queen's Own Evaders." Alas, I had no access to the Playboy magazine that would have no doubt enlightened me.

There are several versions of this tale, including a play and the chapter of Green Shadows, White Whale, but even the short story has more than one version. The version in The Vintage Bradbury is quite different from what's been printed in other collections. I'm sure this is the original "Queen's Own Evaders." Later versions remove all references to sprinter teams, making this title obsolete. There are many other subtle changes, but they add up to this: Bradbury tried to make the language more clear and lost a lot of the Irish slang and speech patterns along the way. The best thing would be a sort of combined version, which is precisely what Ray Bradbury Theater #54 is.

To further the confusion, GSWW adds the Snell-Orkney character and his chums from "The Cold Wind and the Warm."

Summary: Americans John and Leonora Webb are vacationing in South America when a war wipes out the United States and Europe. Now they must cope with the fact that they are minorities, not only here, but in the whole world.

Comments: The date of the fateful war varies in some editions. It was changed to keep the story in the near future. The old man named Garcia describes an invention he once dreamed up. It is strikingly similar to Leo Auffmann's "Happiness Machine."

Bradbury's essay "Science Fiction: Before Christ and After 2001" explains how he had trouble publishing this tale during the McCarthy era. It could have been construed as anti-American and therefore communist.

In The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, Sam Weller points out that the screenplay for this story is one of Bradbury's best, but it was never produced. See the "afterword" to the similarly titled The Bradbury Chronicles: Stories In Honor of Ray Bradbury for Ray's own account of writing for director Sir Carol Reed.

Summary: A lonely hag named Old Lady uses "magic" to make a boy named Charlie "invisible." Then she explains all the problems and dangers of invisibility so that he is afraid to go home. In this way she plans to keep him with her and end her loneliness, but things don’t quite work according to plan.

Comments: There’s a technical error in the "magic" used here. Old Lady tells Charlie he must keep the dead bat bundle in his pocket to be invisible. Later, when Charlie is running around naked, Old Lady is shocked and doesn’t know what to say without giving away the fact that he’s not really invisible. She could have shrieked and said, "Charlie, why did you take the bat from your pocket? I can see you now!" It would have been funny, and it would have kept him in his clothes.

Film: The Learning Corporation of America produced a short film of "Invisible Boy" in 1982. It's faithful to the original story, but still not very interesting. Kate Reid and a young Christian Slater are sufficient in their roles, but the overall production is rather dull. Although the ending is the same as in the short story, I never understood why she makes a sticks-and-rags effigy of Charlie. Isn't the whole point that she's pretending he's still there, still invisible?

For another fumbled metaphor see "Green Wine for Dreaming."

Summary: On an ancient Martian highway an Earth man and a Martian pass time with each other.

Comments: This serves as the August 2002 chapter of The Martian Chronicles, yet Tomás Gomez, the Earth man, claims it is 2001. I’m writing this entry in August 2002, and I have to wonder if Bradbury really thought we’d have colonies on Mars by now. In the 1950s there were probably plenty of people who believed we’d be on Mars by now. Nowadays people don’t believe we’ll ever do it.

Janet Burroway used this story in her book Writing Fiction as an example of how setting plays a part in plot.

The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel includes a version of "Night Meeting" adapted by artist Daniel Torres.

Summary: A couple from the war-torn year of 2155 take a time travel vacation back to 1938 New York. Once there, they change their names and flee to Mexico where they try to blend in and hide from the future and the time travel agents who are searching for them.

Comments: Bradbury's other American-couples-in-Mexico stories are "The Next in Line," and "Interval in Sunlight."

Radio: X Minus One did this story as "To the Future." They changed the setting to 1955 (the year it was broadcast), making for a nice neat 200-year time jump. The Bradbury 13 episode has better sound effects and music, but I'm not sure the script or acting is really any better.

Summary: Mr. Harris is a hypochondriac who thinks there is something wrong with his bones. After a prolonged battle of wills with his own skeleton, Harris calls in a bizarre specialist named M. Munigant.

Comments: Bradbury’s tales often start with a very simple idea (skeletons are a frightening symbol of horror), and then push it to the edge (therefore we should be terrified to have one inside us.) No, not really. Mr. Harris is a bonehead to worry about it, and we don't feel one bit sorry for him.

This idea first appeared in a much shorter version that was mostly dialog.

Ray Bradbury Theater #8 stars Eugene Levy.

Crossing the lawn that morning, Douglas Spaulding broke a spider web with his face.

Summary: Twelve-year-old Doug Spaulding makes an incredible discovery while picking grapes in the woods with his dad and brother Tom.

Comments: This appears early in Dandelion Wine and Doug’s discovery is that he is alive. As the novel progresses through summer and on toward autumn Doug makes the second discovery that someday he must die.

See: "Farewell Summer" in The Stories of Ray Bradbury.

The town, later in the day.
And yet another harvest.

Summary: Doug and Tom help their grandfather make dandelion wine--summer in a bottle to be saved up for winter when it’s needed most.

Comments: This is a short story/excerpt from the novel, not a summary of the entire book. Interesting how the rain barrel is both the source of the pure water used for the wine and the larva-infested breeding ground for mosquitos mentioned in "Season of Sitting."

The facts about John Huff, aged twelve, are simple and soon stated.

Summary: Doug’s best friend, John Huff, announces that he is moving away. Doug wishes life was more like a game of Statues where he can stop time and control who gets to move and who doesn’t.

Comments: Among Bradbury’s best. Alternate title: "A Weather of Statues."

Faintly, the voice chanted under the fiery green trees at noon.

Summary: Douglas gets a fever during the dog days of summer and is helped by Mr. Jonas the junk man.

Comments: This comes toward the end of Dandelion Wine and refers back to several earlier episodes. Mr. Tridden is from "The Trolley." John Huff is from "Statues." Mr. Auffmann is from "The Happiness Machine." And Doug's great-grandma nailing shingles is from "The Leave-Taking." Miss Fern and Miss Roberta are from "The Green Machine." And Colonel Freeleigh is from "Calling Mexico" and "The Time Machine."

I think the first part where Tom is counting cicadas is actually a connecting passage added for the novel and the real story starts with: From noontime to sundown, from midnight to sunrise, one man, one horse... But the version in The Vintage Bradbury starts with Tom, and a later reference to cicadas may contradict my theory.

If Doug is suffering under the "great weight of summer", then shouldn't the dandelion wine be the cure? Doug has been suffering losses all summer, but the bottles in the cellar are supposed to be bottled time, everything saved up and not lost. It seems odd that it's bottles of air and not the wine that revives Doug. Why does Bradbury abandon his metaphor at the crisis moment of the story?

We're told the population of Green Town in 1928 is 26,349. The 2000 Census shows Waukegan, Illinois at 87,901.

Summary: A rocket is ripped open by a meteor, sending its crew spiraling through space. As they drift, they talk by radio-phone, saying their goodbyes and facing their far-flung deaths.

Comments: You'd have to include this among any listing of his best.

Radio: Because this story is mostly limited to radio chatter, it is ideal for radio shows. Dimension X did a nice version in 1951. Even Suspense, which rarely featured Sci-fi stories, did this one in 1955. The Bradbury 13 show didn't impress me much. The voice-actors just weren't very good. There are several other versions out there. For more info, try visiting The Old-Time Radio Logs of Frank Passage.

Summary: A Mexican named Ricardo is insulted when fashion photographers try to use his home as a backdrop.

Comments: Ricardo doesn’t want his paint-peeled, crumbling house or his poverty to be exploited by the rich fashion industry. He says, "Do I look like a cardboard cutout?" Most of Bradbury’s Mexicans do, but Ricardo stands out as an original.

In Steven Aggelis's compilation of interviews, Conversations with Ray Bradbury, the author repeatedly bashes Harper's Bazaar, saying that the magazine inspired this story. Bradbury implies that it should be called Harper's Bizarre, but whoever transcribed the interview failed to appreciate the pun and printed it Bazaar throughout.

See also: "Sixty-Six" is a story with similar origins.
"Where All Is Emptiness There Is Room to Move" has a similar situation.

Ray Bradbury Theater #58 stars Gregory Sierra as the pants-dropping Mexican. The same actor would later take a turn wearing "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit."

Summary: Things aren't going well for William Philippus Phelps. His marriage has gone bad, driving him to over-eating and obesity. Now he is too fat to keep up at his job of setting up and tearing down carnival tents. When he hears of an especially talented tattoo artist, he goes to her and becomes the carnival's new tattooed man. But the old witch gives him two terrible tattoos that predict the fate of the Illustrated Man.

Comments: Oddly enough, this tale is not in the collection called The Illustrated Man. That book has a prologue called The Illustrated Man, but it is different. There are similarities, but in the collection the tattooed man is used to tie the stories together, each one representing a tattoo on his body.

Also, the 1969 movie The Illustrated Man is not based on this story, but on three stories from the collection: "The Long Rain," "The Veldt," and "The Last Night of the World."

Did you know there is also an "Illustrated Woman"?

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: Mr. Bigelow, a dwarf, comes to the carnival pier each night to see his reflection stretched tall in the house of mirrors. Aimee, a ticket seller, is moved by his desire to be normal. But Aimee's boss, Ralph, gets jealous and vindictive.

Comments:

Ray Bradbury Theater #19 (One of three episodes I haven't seen.)

Summary: 13-year-old Charles is sick in bed. He feels his body is being taken over by something evil. The doctor says it’s only scarlet fever and a slight cold. Charles knows better.

Comments: Are doctors always incompetent in Bradbury stories? Or is it just this book? See "A Medicine for Melancholy."

Summary: The lives of six Mexican-American men are changed when they pool their money to buy one sharp white suit which they take turns wearing.

Comments:

Movie: "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" was made into a movie in 1998 with a screenplay by Bradbury himself. It's not a great movie but is at least as good as the comical Ray Bradbury Theater episodes. It stars Edward James Olmos, Joe Mantegna, Esai Morales, and Gregory Sierra (who was also in Ray Bradbury Theater #58 "Sun and Shadow"). The cast is good and there's a very stylish opening credits sequence that was nominated for an Annie (animation award). The movie is certainly not to all tastes, but Bradbury has repeatedly stated his opinion that this is the best movie ever made from his work.

Summary: War has wiped out the Earth’s population, but one high-tech house is still going through the automated motions of daily life--setting off alarm clocks, cooking breakfasts, washing dishes, etc.

Comments: The title is from a poem by Sara Teasdale.

Radio: This story was paired with "Zero Hour" to make an episode of Dimension X. It doesn't exactly work though--the story doesn't have any characters except the house and a dog, so there's no real acting to it, just a narrator and some sound effects. The script lacks the poetry and rhythm of Bradbury's style and contains some obvious errors. They would have done better to simply read the original story word-for-word and add some sound effects to that.

Dimension X later mixed this with "The Million-Year Picnic" for their "Martian Chronicles" episode. It worked better that way.