The Monster Maker

Hathaway and Marnagan are Interplanetary Patrolmen on the hunt for a space pirate called Gunther. Their craft is hit by a meteor and they crash on an asteroid that happens to be Gunther's lair. The pirate uses telepathic images of ferocious monsters to scare the intruders off, but once Hathaway tumbles onto the trick, he turns it around by making his brawny Irish colleague look like an entire army. The story is weak and cliché-ridden. The characters talk incessantly and the dialogue is campy and pulpish. Bradbury allowed Forry Ackerman to anthologise it, but only under the pseudonym Leonard Spaulding.

King of the Gray Spaces [R Is for Rocket]

Sometimes regarded as Bradbury's first significant SF story, and not without reason. The hero is a 14 year old who dreams of being selected for space travel - it's a job you can't apply for; you are mysteriously chosen. He and his best friend are partners in this ambition - but one fateful day, when the doorbell rings, one of them must be left behind. This was the first Bradbury story I ever read (in its revised form), and it's still terrific. Sense of wonder, and the breathless excitement that boys have for rockets and space travel, burst forth from the page with irresistible exhuberance.

The Scythe

Tom Joerg and his almost destitute family happen to come across an old farm, hoping to find shelter and a meal. But the sole occupant has passed away, and has left a note bequeathing the entire farm to whoever finds the note. As the family settles in, he finds that there is a string attached: he must compulsively cut down the fields of wheat on the grounds, using a scythe. Joerg finds that he cannot abadon the task; he is constantly drawn back to it. He also discovers that there is a dark significance to his task: the stalks of wheat he cuts down represent souls, and since thousands, even millions of people must die every day in the natural order of things, he can never put the scythe aside. But things quickly come to a head when Joerg comes across the very stalks that represent his own family. This is not a typical Bradbury weird tale; it is a form of mannered high fantasy, rather than one of the quirky, psychology-inspired pieces he had begun to come up with. Still, it's quite well conceived, and satisfyingly rounded off.

I, Rocket

Bradbury's personification of a rocket that lies wrecked on an asteroid is a curiously effective storytelling device. From the rocket's point of view, the story of the war against Mars, and of the travails of its crew, is told. Captain Lamb is the first Bradbury character to speak in the sort of poetic effusion that the author will often use when space ship commanders are confronted with the majesty of the cosmos. It's a form of expression that that recurs, with different degrees of success, in later works such as "The Golden Apples of the Sun" and even "Leviathan '99". Despite criticisms, referred to in prof. Eller's textual notes, that the story lacked human interest, it is precisely because the rocket tells the story of its crew, some of whom don't survive the war, and because Captain Lamb returns to his old rocket at the end, that the story achieves some level of engaging sentimentality. It was apparently nearly included in the Long After Midnight collection, only to be pulled because too much rewriting was required to update the technology.

Undersea Guardians

They're zombies, really - a group of twenty victims of a German submarine attack whose ship went down in the North Atlantic. They continue to exist, neither fully alive, nor quite dead, in the shadowy realm beneath the surface. Their self-appointed task is to guard the shipping lanes, and especially to protect their loved ones who survived and are still up there somewhere. The most prominent character is Alita, who pines after her lover Richard, who is still alive on board a vessel somewhere. Then there is Conda, the leader, and the gleefully vengeful Helene, who doesn't have a surviving lover to watch out for, and is therefore more embittered and merciless in her attacks on the submarines. The story is notable for being the only one by Bradbury (that I can think of) that deals fairly directly with World War II, during which it was of course written. It also features a rare, and very early, foray by the author into erotic territory, as the naked Helene speaks of her lust for revenge on the German sailors as a kind of twisted lovemaking.

The Small Assassin

Bradbury's classic dark fantasy about a small baby that plots to kill its own parents seems as good now as when I first read it. The very fact that such a small child is usually cuddly and helpless, adds to the shivery suspense of scenes such as the one where David hears the bedroom door swinging open. In fact, this early version, which represents a prior level of revision to the one in The October Country, is almost flawless. According to Eller's textual notes, the only arguable problem with it is that it still bears traces of an unworkable plot element - that the baby is partly motivated by financial considerations. This aspect of the plot is crowded out into the background and it didn't bother me at all. In fact, the story struck me as less dated than when I first read it (it may be the smoking doctor that previously distracted me). The story is deservedly included in the SFWA's Fantasy Hall of Fame anthology.

Great work, douglasSP. This should be a great help to anyone wondering whether they need to read this volume.