The Golden Apples of the Sun - Ray Bradbury

This collection of Bradbury short stories dates from the early Fifties, before he had committed himself wholeheartedly to science fiction. Thus most of the stories here are not sci fi. By and large they are fantasy, some tilting more towards allegory.


It might not be the usual Bradbury field but it is definitely the usual Bradbury standard of writing. That is to say, exceptional. These stories might have appeared in pulp magazines but Bradbury still polishes his phrases, looks out for and treasures the occasional quirk, and leaves nothing on the bone. My personal favourites are 'The Flying Machine' (set in a mythical ancient China and definitely allegorical), 'Hail and Farewell' about a boy "twelve years old with a birth certificate n his valise to show he had been born forty-three years ago', and the opener, 'The Fog Horn' in which a sea monster perhaps a million years old answers the call.


All in all, classy ephemera.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

I don't know that I've ever read Ray Bradbury before - certainly not a full length work.  So this fascinated me.  Of course the evil carnival coming to town is nowadays a standard, even hackneyed, trope of American fantasy fiction, but I suspect Bradbury was first in the field, albeit with just a nod to Tod Browning's movie Freaks.  The writing itself is startling, so textured, gnarled, yet impactful.  I liked very much the role of Dad, much older than the usual dad, maybe an echo of Clark Kent's foster father.  I liked that he thought it through, based his plan on research in the library where he works - then discovered the true answer by accident.  The boys themselves, Will and Jim, were wholly convincing and well differentiated.  Stephen King tends to distinguish his boys by contrasting types but Will and Jim are cut from the same cloth but subtly different, hence Jim's fascination with what might be called the Magic Roundabout, which Will shuns.  Something Wicked is, quite simply, a masterpiece in its field.