The Vintage Bradbury

Once upon a time people described Ray Bradbury as a particularly gifted writer of science fiction. Today he seems more like a magical realist, a small-town American cousin to Borges and Garcia Marquez. A writer whose vision of the world is so intense that the objects in it sometimes levitate or glow with otherworldly auras.

Who but Bradbury could imagine the playroom in which children's fantasies become real enough to kill? The beautiful white suit that turns six down-and-out Chicanos into their ideal selves? Only Bradbury could make us identify with a man who lives in terror of his own skeleton. And if a generic science fiction writer might describe a spaceship landing on Mars, only Bradbury can tell us how the Martians see it-and the and dreamlike visitors from Planet Earth.

“Ray Bradbury is one of the most original living American authors.... A curious mixture of poetry and colloquialism, [his style] is so brisk and economical...so full of unexpected quirks that it never becomes boring.... Most of Ray’s stories are impossible-so far-but they are certainly convincing.... His work will last.” —Gilbert Highet, from the Introduction