Todoay is August 22, the birthday of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). Gauntlet press has publsihed a collection of Bradbury stories that are the original versions of some that were revised before publication. I had hoped to showcase that book today, but the tracking on it shows it is still in Colorado.
I’ll do a post on it when it gets here.
Bradbury was one of the first fantasists I read as I transitioned from the kid section of the library to the adult section. I was in fifth or sixth grade (I think sixtsh) when we had a guest come to our English class and read “The Screaming Woman” to us from S is for Space. Over the next half dozen or so years, I read every Bradbury book I could get my hands on. Many of those books, I’ve not read since. The non-fantasy stuff didn’t really appeal to me. I hadn’t had enough life experience yet to get where Bradbury was coming from.
One of those books I’ve not read since was the collection Long After Midnight. Not every story in the book was science fiction or fantasy.
The audiobook seller Chirp had a sale recently. One of the books I picked up was, you guessed it, Long After Midnight. I listened to the first two stories while I was preparing lunch earlier today.
“The Blue Bottle” is a Martian story that wasn’t included in The Martian Chronicles. It was included in the complete edition of The Martian Chronicles Subterranean press publishedin 2009.
I remembered this story somewhat, probably because it was set on Mars. It’s about a bottle made of blue Martian glass that contains some type of treasure. What, no one really knows. The bottle is legendary. It has been sought for and found many times.
Finding it isn’t always a good thing. In fact, it usually isn’t. As one man finds out.
The next story is “One Timeless Spring”. It could also have been titled “Ray Discovers Girls”. Bradbury inserted himself into a number of his stories, going so far as to name his characters “Douglas.” That’s the case here. Douglas was Ray’s middle name.
The Douglas in this story is reflecting back on his childhood as an adult. Twenty years have passed since the events of the story. It’s about a boy who doesn’t want to grow up and resists every effort made to force him to grow up. He envisions a greaat consipracy about him.
That is until he ends meeting up with a girl he knows. They end up walking home through the ravine, a location that appears in a number of Bradbury’s tale.
She kisses him, and it’s all over. He’s ready to grow up.
It’s a sweet coming of age story. I don’t remember reading it, but that was over [REDACTED] years ago. I don’t think I would have understood it then the way I do now.
I’ll listen to more of the stories, probably next week as I drive to work, although I might not listen to all of them at once. I’m looking forwards to rediscovering the stories and seeing them through new (old) eyes.