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A review by blchandler9000
R Is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury
4.0
Ray Bradbury was my first "favorite author."
I'm sure that's true for lots of people.
There was a bookstore in Milwaukee, somewhere on the East Side, called Webster's Bookstore, the only bookstore during my childhood to have a special section just for dinosaur books. I pestered my father often to take me there, and sometimes he acquiesced, and I would slowly make my way through the shelf devoted to prehistoric things, trying to narrow down the collection to just one book I could ask my father to buy me. (And, if I was lucky, he would say, "Yes.")
One of those times the dinosaur book was "Dinosaur Tales" by Ray Bradbury. I remember debating between choosing that book or another, and later, on the way home in the car, I started to wonder if I'd made the wrong choice. (I no longer remember what the other book was I wanted, maybe one of the Greg Irons illustrated dinosaur coloring books.) That afternoon, back at home, my father took me on the deck in the shadow of our house, and read "A Sound of Thunder" to me. The William Stout illustrations were perfect, as was my father's reading, though I wished the Tyrannosaurus didn't have to die. The surprise ending did blow my mind, though, and I've probably reread that single story more times than I can remember. Some of it I have by heart. And when I write about dinosaurs today, "A Sound of Thunder" is always in my mind.
As influential as that story was, I hadn't read much Bradbury in the past twenty years. New "favorite authors' came and went, and when I'd return to Bradbury I wasn't always happy with what I found. I'd been burned a bit by some of his later works that felt hackneyed and saccharine. My recent revisit of "Something Wicked This Way Comes" was not as magical as I'd hoped. But still, something about Bradbury is attractive. I love the lyricism, the way he plays with words, the awe that he expresses—and inspires—so effortlessly.
So, I sat down with this book. It had some of the dinosaur stories in it—my precious "Sound of Thunder" and "The Fog Horn"—plus a number of scifi-ish things about rockets, and a couple tales about summer in Green Town.
When Bradbury is good, he's amazing. I still was caught up in "A Sound of Thunder." "The Fog Horn" and "The Golden Apples of the Sun" were both equally beautiful and evocative. One of the longer stories, "Frost and Fire," had a very Edgar Rice Burroughs feel to it, with savage people lost on another world, running around naked, fighting, surviving; I enjoyed it. I didn't love everything, though. Sometimes his stories teetered too deep into sentimentality. "The Rocket," "The Strawberry Window," and "The Exiles" especially did not move me. But those were just three stories out of seventeen.
One thing I'd never remembered noticing before about Bradbury's stories is how hopeful they are. There's hardly a drop of cynicism in them. He's very earnest. Of course we will fly rockets! Of course we will settle on Mars! Of course we will zip from world to world as surely as a kid zips in new summer sneakers. His spaceships are fueled by fantasy; his dinosaurs feed on magic. He makes no conceits that any of his stories could happen. They're just marvelous ideas. And I liked that. It makes it easier to dream that way.
I'm sure that's true for lots of people.
There was a bookstore in Milwaukee, somewhere on the East Side, called Webster's Bookstore, the only bookstore during my childhood to have a special section just for dinosaur books. I pestered my father often to take me there, and sometimes he acquiesced, and I would slowly make my way through the shelf devoted to prehistoric things, trying to narrow down the collection to just one book I could ask my father to buy me. (And, if I was lucky, he would say, "Yes.")
One of those times the dinosaur book was "Dinosaur Tales" by Ray Bradbury. I remember debating between choosing that book or another, and later, on the way home in the car, I started to wonder if I'd made the wrong choice. (I no longer remember what the other book was I wanted, maybe one of the Greg Irons illustrated dinosaur coloring books.) That afternoon, back at home, my father took me on the deck in the shadow of our house, and read "A Sound of Thunder" to me. The William Stout illustrations were perfect, as was my father's reading, though I wished the Tyrannosaurus didn't have to die. The surprise ending did blow my mind, though, and I've probably reread that single story more times than I can remember. Some of it I have by heart. And when I write about dinosaurs today, "A Sound of Thunder" is always in my mind.
As influential as that story was, I hadn't read much Bradbury in the past twenty years. New "favorite authors' came and went, and when I'd return to Bradbury I wasn't always happy with what I found. I'd been burned a bit by some of his later works that felt hackneyed and saccharine. My recent revisit of "Something Wicked This Way Comes" was not as magical as I'd hoped. But still, something about Bradbury is attractive. I love the lyricism, the way he plays with words, the awe that he expresses—and inspires—so effortlessly.
So, I sat down with this book. It had some of the dinosaur stories in it—my precious "Sound of Thunder" and "The Fog Horn"—plus a number of scifi-ish things about rockets, and a couple tales about summer in Green Town.
When Bradbury is good, he's amazing. I still was caught up in "A Sound of Thunder." "The Fog Horn" and "The Golden Apples of the Sun" were both equally beautiful and evocative. One of the longer stories, "Frost and Fire," had a very Edgar Rice Burroughs feel to it, with savage people lost on another world, running around naked, fighting, surviving; I enjoyed it. I didn't love everything, though. Sometimes his stories teetered too deep into sentimentality. "The Rocket," "The Strawberry Window," and "The Exiles" especially did not move me. But those were just three stories out of seventeen.
One thing I'd never remembered noticing before about Bradbury's stories is how hopeful they are. There's hardly a drop of cynicism in them. He's very earnest. Of course we will fly rockets! Of course we will settle on Mars! Of course we will zip from world to world as surely as a kid zips in new summer sneakers. His spaceships are fueled by fantasy; his dinosaurs feed on magic. He makes no conceits that any of his stories could happen. They're just marvelous ideas. And I liked that. It makes it easier to dream that way.