"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury

I have vague memories of an '80's movie adaptation of "Something Wicked This Way Comes".  Mostly I remember the greem mist and creepy carousel.  The movie came out when I was two, so that's about as far as my memory goes on that one.  It was enough, though, to give me an extra sense of anticipation when reading Ray Bradbury's original "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" is classic Ray Bradbury.  It has a story and interesting characters, but even more than that it has a mood, a vision of the world, that is fascinating.  He takes a seemingly simple story with children for main characters and makes it both child-like and utterly adult.  If you're only going to read one Ray Bradbury book (and if you read one I don't know why you wouldn't read more), then this wouldn't be the first one I'd recommend.  But if you're going to read several Ray Bradbury books, this is an enjoyable novella.

In other news, it seems that my list of Bradbury's 59 books, taken from his own official website, is lacking.  I think the list includes his original novels and collections, but there are more.  My sister is reading "A Pleasure to Burn", a collection of Bradbury's stories and writings that culminated in "Fahrenheit 451".  On Amazon I also found these books that aren't on my Ray Bradbury list:

• "Where Everything Ends" (reprints of previous novellas, plus a new short story not in other collections)
• "I Live by the Invisible" (poetry new and old)
• "Summer Morning, Summer Night" (combination of his small town stories, some are reprinted from other collections and some were previously unpublished)
• "We'll Always Have Paris: Stories" (short story collection reprinted just last year)
• "Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews" (Sam Weller's interviews of Bradbury)

Maybe I'll never get to the end of Bradbury's writings...and just maybe I'm ok with that.

"The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury

"The Illustrated Man" is a collection of short stories masquerading as a novel.  Ray Bradbury is a master of short fiction, and "The Illustrated Man" plays to this strength.

There is a loose framework to the book.  The unnamed narrator meets an unusual man, the illustrated man, whose body is covered in tattoos.  These, however, are not ordinary tattoos.  These intricately detailed and vibrant tattoos change, come to life, and show the future.  Parts of his body might show you your own future, or you may see a story of the distant future.  As the illustrated man sleeps, the narrator watches his tattoos and the book is a collection of the sixteen stories that are shown during the night.

These short stories have little to connect them other than the future setting, and the sense of menace that permeates the book.  Whether it is diseased men banished to another planet, a city wreaking revenge on people, or children plotting the death of their parents, there is a deep and disturbing sense of dread throughout most of the book.  It is a representation of the future, and shows snippets of possibilities.  (Most stories seek some type of future plausibility and loosely fall in the genre of science fiction, although "The Playground" is a noticeable exception that relies on fantasy and a less logically explainable event.) 

These snippets of the future are clearly part of Bradbury's vision, and are closely related to his futuristic books like "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451".  In fact, "The Other Foot" seems to carry on from a plot line introduced in "The Martian Chronicles."  These are related stories that all fit into Bradbury's unique vision of the future. 

Although it is fantastic to read, Bradbury's depiction of the future is also deeply troubling.  Although there are moments of redemption, it is a generally pessimistic view showing the atrocities (big and small) that people are capable of.

Ray Bradbury: The List

Here's the list of Ray Bradbury's books:

"Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines"
"The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics"
"Bradbury Speaks"
"Bradbury Stories"
"The Cat's Pajamas"
"A Chap-book for Burnt Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers"
"The Climate of Palettes"
"The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury"
"Dandelion Wine"
"Dark Carnival"
"Death Has Lost Its Charm For Me"
"Death is a Lonely Business"
"Dinosaur Tales"
"Dogs Think That Every Day is Christmas"
"Driving Blind"
"Fahrenheit 451"
"Farewell Summer"
"Fever Dream"
"From the Dust Returned"
"The Ghosts of Forever"
"The Golden Apples of the Sun"
"A Graveyard for Lunatics"
"Green Shadows, White Whale"
"The Halloween Tree"
"The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope"
"The Homecoming"
"The Illustrated Man"
"I Sing the Body Electric!"
"The Last Circus and the Electrocution"
"Let's All Kill Constance"
"Long After Midnight"
"The Love Affair"
"The Machineries of Joy"
"The Martian Chronicles"
"A Medicine for Melancholy" (also published as "The Day It Rained Forever")
"A Memory of Murder"
"The Mummies of Guanajuato"
"Now and Forever"
"The October Country"
"One More For the Road"
"Pillar of Fire and Other Plays"
"Quicker Than the Eye"
"R is for Rocket"
"Ray Bradbury"
"Ray Bradbury on Stage"
"S is for Space"
"Something Wicked This Way Comes"
"A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories"
"The Stories of Ray Bradbury"
"Switch on the Night"
"This Attic Where the Meadow Greens"
"The Toynbee Convector"
"Twice 22"
"The Vintage Bradbury"
"When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"
"Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Around in Robot Towns"
"With Cat for Comforter"
"The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays"
"Yestermorrow"
"Zen in the Art of Writing"

If I'm not mistaken, that's 59 books.  The man really knows how to crank them out.
2 down; 57 to go.

List compiled from information on Ray Bradbury's website.