The Stories of Ray Bradbury

“Thrilling and sometimes terrifying, these stories are a feast for the imagination. He’s very good at the short story. I’m surprised, looking back at them, how many of them are more mild horror than science fiction or fantasy because I’m not a horror fan at all and never have been. I don’t think I cared, really, because I just liked his vision so much at the time. There’s a fantastic one called The Foghorn where a lonely lighthouse on a fog-bound coast starts sounding its foghorn and a prehistoric monster, which has been sleeping at the bottom of the sea for centuries, wakes up hearing this and thinks that it’s another prehistoric monster calling to it. It’s so lonely, this poor creature. So it’s basically a 1950s monster movie, and I think it actually did end up getting turned into a rubbish, “brontosaurus-rampaging-through-New York” film. In the story your sympathy is with the monster completely and it’s just this sad story about the monster hearing the foghorn and thinking that there’s another like it somewhere and then learning that it’s all alone after all. People say, sometimes with justification, that science fiction isn’t interested in emotions and feelings and characters and things, but Ray Bradbury is. And he is brilliant for that reason.” Read more...

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Young Adults

Philip Reeve, Children's Author