In one authoritative volume, here are two landmark story collections
by one of America's most beloved authors, plus 27 stellar, speculative,
and strange tales from other collections, including 7 restored to
print
The author of over 400 short stories, Ray Bradbury was a master not only
in the science fiction genre, for which he is best known, but also in
speculative, horror, and dark fantasy. Here are two of Bradbury's most
beloved collections, along with twenty-seven other stories, that
together represent the best of Bradbury's stories of the 1940s, 50s, and
60s.
The Illustrated Man--the more Earthbound science fiction companion
to Bradbury's classic collection The Martian Chronicles--contains
eighteen short stories bound together by the unifying metaphor of a
strangely tattooed outcast. The stories explore both the dehumanizing
possibilities of space-age technology--in "The Veldt" and "The Rocket
Man"--and the pessimistic, dark side of humanity, as in "The Visitor."
The October Country collects nineteen short stories: macabre
carnival tales, speculative horror, and strange fantasy. "Uncle Einar"
and "Homecoming" concern the monstrous and immortal Elliott family. In
"The Next in Line," a woman becomes convinced that she'll never leave
the small, Mexican town she's traveled to on vacation. And in "Touched
with Fire," two old men have learned to predict future murders. This
edition restores the original artwork by Joe Mugnaini.
Rounding out the volume are twenty-seven other short stories from the
first half of Bradbury's career selected by Bradbury scholar Joanthan R,
Eller, including "Frost and Fire," in which humans on another planet
live only eight days; "The Pedestrian," about the only man in the world
who does not watch television, and "I Sing the Body Electric!," in which
a family purchases a robotic grandmother. Also includes such hard to
find stories as "R is for Rocket," "Asleep in Armageddon," and "The Lost
City of Mars."
