I Sing the Body Electric! And Other Stories
Ray Bradbury
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0380789620
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast seet of emotionsthat bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Linkoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrort may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and become the last link to the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificient creations has something to tell us about our own humanity--and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey--safe in the hands of the century's great men of imagination.
The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our humanity--and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey--safe in the hands of one the centurys great men of imagination.
We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths,
was taking Snell-Orkney & Co. back to see the stained glass at the church and the way the apse was put together by a master architect, and they liked his church so much and said so out loud again and again that he cut way down on their Hail Marys and the rigamaroles that went with. But the top of the entire day was when one of the young-old boy-men back at the pub asked what would it be? Should he sing “Mother Machree” or “My Buddy”? Arguments followed, and with polls taken and results
“Oh, that old man on the road. Oh, that poor old man.” I waited. “I just can’t get over that old man on the road,” he said, looking down now into his drink. I drank some more of my beer, not feeling well, feeling very old myself and tired. When the silence prolonged itself, I got out a local map and laid it on the wooden table. The bar was quiet. It was midmorning and we were completely alone there. “This is where you saw him most often?” I asked. The hunter touched the map three times. “I
she had really known. And he was fine to look upon. The sense of having lost something vanished. He was the same man, no more, no less. This was always the way when you didn’t see people for years and they came back to say howdy-do. For a spell you felt so very uneasy with them. But then, at last you relaxed. “Yes, that’s you,” she laughed. “I see you peeking out from behind all the strangeness. I see you all glinty and sly here and there and about.” She began to cry again. If only she could
night. “I-I’m a new man I said, and when I got off the train at the end of that long summer of disposal and sudden rebirth, I looked in a fly-specked, rain-freckled gum-machine mirror at a lost depot in Peachgum, Missouri, and my beard grown long in two months of travel and my hair gone wild with wind that combed it this way sane, that way mad, and I peered and stood back and exclaimed softly, ‘Why, Charlie Dickens, is that you?!’ The man in the bed laughed softly. “‘Why, Charlie,’ said I,