THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES: Stories in Honor of Ray Bradbury

by William F. & Martin H. Greenberg--Eds. Nolan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1991

A sheaf of 23 original stories in tribute to Ray Bradbury's 50 years in fantasy and science fiction. Among the more celebrated authors that were gathered to honor Bradbury's 350 editions in 30 countries around the world are Isaac Asimov (with a tribute), Orson Scott Card, Gregory Benford, Charles L. Grant, Richard Matheson, F. Paul Wilson, Norman Corwin, Robert Sheckley, the late Charles Beaumont and his son Christopher Beaumont (his debut short story)--and Bradbury himself, who offers ""The Troll,"" a lost story (but one of his best!) from 1950 that Bradbury repolished for Nolan. He also contributes a moving if muzzy, modestly voiced memoir about his early writing (""...I was advancing from terrible into awful, on my way to mediocre""). This is a gleeful crew, each writer linking his story in some way to Bradbury tales or characters. Nolan's wife Cameron Nolan offers ""The Awakening,"" a solid work about the sexual awakening of Douglas Spaulding of Dandelion Wine, while Nolan himself offers a wildly entertaining parody, ""The Dandelion Chronicles"" (""The Waukegan crowd sighed, gasped, choked, cried out, the look of the great dream-colored climbing strawberry rocket in their round Illinois eyes...""). The longest work of devotion here, and perhaps the most powerful, is Orson Scott Card's ""Feed the Baby of Love,"" tying Dandelion Wine's 1928 time period to the present. Robert Sheckley's ""The Other Mars"" is a witty updating of what spacemen might find on a Bradburyized Mars today, oddly still a place of mythic fantasy. Christopher Beaumont's ""The Man with the Power Tie"" tells of the son of the psychiatrist in Bradbury's ""The Man in the Rorschach Shirt,"" who finds himself wearing a horrible tie that soaks up luck and energy. First-rate in every way, stories, editing, and as an act of love.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 320

Publisher: ROC/Penguin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991

Categories: FICTION