Category Archives: Ray Bradbury

Retro Hugos: Final Thoughts on the Short Stories

So just to recap, here is the shortlist in the short story category for the Retro Hugos:

“The Wedge”, Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction 10/44)
“I, Rocket”, Ray Bradbury (Amazing Stories 5/44)
“And the Gods Laughed”, Fredric Brown (Planet Stories Spring ’44)
“Desertion”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 11/44)
“Huddling Place”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 7/44)
“Far Centaurus”, A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction 1/44)

Links are to the posts of the individual stories. While I enjoyed all of these stories and will probably reread them at some future date, I didn’t find them all equally good. This is simply my not so humble opinion; your mileage may vary.

“The Wedge” was the weakest of the stories here. In part, I think, that’s because it’s part of a bigger story arc. I suspect it’s on the final ballot in part due to the reputation of the Foundation series and the author. Ditto for the Bradbury minus the series angle. I could say the same about the two Simak stories as the Asimov except that these are in my mind the two strongest tales on the list.

As for the Brown and Van Vogt entries, they are both examples of their author’s best work at this length. I tend to favor the Brown a bit over the Van Vogt, but that might be because it was one of only two stories (the other being “I, Rocket”) that I hadn’t read before and was therefore fresher.

As for which which of the Simak I think was the strongest, that’s a tough call. I would probably go with “Huddling Place”, although I can easily convince myself that “Desertion” is the better of the two. Some I’m going to compromise and declare a tie.

And just a sidenote of possible interest. DAW books began publishing a series of anthologies in somewhere around 1980 (I’m too lazy to look it up) entitled Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories. Each volume collected what Asimov , with the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, considered the best stories of the year. The first volume covered 1939, and the series ran for 24 volumes, with a 25th published by NESFA Press and edited by Robert Silverberg after Asimov’s death. The sixth volume covers 1944, the year of the current Retro Hugos.

That volume contains 13 stories, Eight of them are on the Retro Hugo ballot. One which isn’t is Leigh Brackett’s “The Veil of Astellar”, which should be on the novelette ballot. Don’t get me started. After the Retro Hugos have been awarded, I will probably reread the rest of the stories. I read this book in high school, and I don’t remember some of the stories.

I’ll start on the novellas I haven’t already covered in the next post. The story will be “Killdozer!” by Theodore Sturgeon. That story was revised for book publication, so I’m reading it in, you guessed it, The Great SF Stories 6,

Retro Hugos: “I, Rocket” by Ray Bradbury

Christmas Ghosts: “The Wish” by Ray Bradbury

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This Christmas ghosts post is going to be a little different. I’ve been traveling most of the day and don’t feel like writing much. Fortunately, I don’t have to.

Sue Granquist, AKA Goth Chick at Black Gate, has done the heavy lifting for me. You need to read her post. It contains a link to a PDF of this story. Ms. Granquist has written a powerful and moving account of what this story means to her. I can’t top it. I read this story back in high school when I read Bradbury’s collection Long After Midnight. In the years since, I had forgotten the story entirely. It simply didn’t have a huge impact on me when I was fourteen (give or take a year). Now that my impending geezerdom is on the horizon, I can relate to it much better. Fortunately not yet as much as I probably will some day.

Go read it. You can thank me later.

A New Series of Posts in Honor of Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury was born on this date, August 22, in 1920. We lost him in 2012. Bradbury was one of the first science fiction and fantasy writers I read. A friend of our reading teacher came to class one day and read “The Screaming Woman” to us from the collection S is for Space. I was hooked.

The public library in Wichita Falls had a number of Bradbury paperbacks in the children’s section, mostly the editions that had a drawing of Bradbury on the cover. I’d seen them but didn’t really know what they were about. After the man read the story, I checked out every one of them. And when I read all of those, I tracked down the rest over the next few years. I was fortunate because not only were they all in print at the time, but new editions were being published. Those were the days.

A few weeks ago, something came across my twitter feed about the influence Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett had on Bradbury. They both mentored him, and Bradbury had written about his friendship with the two writers.

So I decided I could do a series of posts on those. They’ll start sometime in the next month. I’ve already got the first one planned. I just need to reread the stories I’ll discuss in it and then write the post. That will be after classes start next week.

Remembering Ray and an Update

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We lost Ray Bradbury seven years ago today (June 5, 2012). It’s hard to believe he’s been gone that long. If you get a chance, read something of his today and raise a glass in his memory.

I’ve been busy and burned out the last couple of months, but things should start picking up around here starting this weekend or early next week.

Howard Days is this weekend. I’m going down a day or so early for some of the informal stuff that may go on. Also, just to get the heck outta Dodge for a few days. Things should settle into a routine next week, meaning I’ll be getting some writing done.

Ray Bradbury at 98

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On this date in 1920, August 22, Ray Bradbury was born. He was one of the greatest writers of the fantastic of the last 100 years.

I came to Bradbury early. He was one of the first adult writers I read. When I was in 5th grade, we had a guest in my reading class one day. The man was there to read us a Bradbury story. He described Bradbury as a science fiction writer but then went on to tell us that what he was going to read wasn’t science fiction. He read “The Screaming Woman” to us. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury

Brackett and Bradbury: “Lorelei of the Red Mist”

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This is a unique item. The only collaboration between two great science fiction authors, Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury. Here’s how it came about:

Both authors were living in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s, and both had been working hard to develop their craft as writers. Both were regulars in Planet Stories at the time. They were friends who had both been mentored by Henry Kuttner. They used to meet once a week to read and critique each other’s work.

Brackett had sold some detective short stories as well as one novel, No Good From a Corpse. The novel caught the attention of movie producer Howard Hawks, who decided he wanted Brackett to work on the screenplay for his next project. She was approximately halfway through a novellette she was writing for Planet Stories that was set on Venus (More about Brackett’s Venus in a bit.) when she got a call from Hawks, or more probably his secretary. Which is how Brackett launched her screenwriting career by coauthoring with William Faulkner the script for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. How freakin’ cool is that? Continue reading →

In the Deep and Dark December

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[cue Simon and Garfunkle]

I’m not a huge Simon and Grafunkle fan, but I couldn’t help but steal the title of this post from “I am a Rock”. Here are my reading/writing/blogging plans for the last month of the year.

Leigh Brackett

The big thing is that Leigh Brackett’s birthday is next Monday, December 7. It’s her centennial, and I’ll be focusing a lot on her work this month. I’m not the only one. Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward will be discussing “The Moon the Vanished”, one of her novellas set on a swampy Venus next Monday on Howard’s blog. Click here for details and join the discussion. I’m not going to be discussing that particular story here, but I will take some detailed looks at some others. I’m probably going to start with “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, which she began and Ray Bradbury finished when Howard Hawks offered her a job writing the screenplay to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with William Faulkner. You can get electronic copies of both stories in Swamps of Venus from Baen ($4), or get the Solar System bundle for $20. Continue reading →

A Journey Through The October Country

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The October Country
Ray Bradbury
Illustrations by Joe Mugnaini
mass market paperback 307 p., $7.99
ebook Kindle $7.21 Nook $10.99

I first read this collection in the early ’80s, around 1980 or 1981, I think. Some of the stories have stayed with me (“The Small Assassin”, “The Scythe”), while some I’d completely forgotten (“Touched with Fire”, “The Cistern”).

Most of the stories were recycled from Dark Carnival, with a few being left out and a few being added. I’d hoped to have time to read the ones left out and discuss the differences in the two collections, but that will have to wait for a later post. For those unaware, Dark Carnival, from Arkham House, was Bradbury’s first collection. Original copies are hard to come by and will cost you a pretty penny. The author’s definitive edition from a decade or so ago isn’t cheap either.

Fortunately there isn’t that much difference in the contents, and the casual reader can enjoy the stories as they appear in this volume. There will be spoilers on some of them. Continue reading →

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