Most of the stories Ray published in periodicals has appeared in his short story anthologies. Many of these stories were "updated" or "refreshed" by Ray prior to releasing them in book format. Some escaped the editors' pen, while others seem to be quite different.

While researching "A Summer Day" vs. "Hopscotch" (the same story, but different in many ways) I had the idea of a new collection. Wouldn't it be cool to see stories back-to-back? This collection would include the originally published story followed by the re-edited collected version. It would be fun to compare the two and see how Bradbury changed the story to fit a theme, or update the content.

Has anyone else read the pulp Bradbury and the polished book Bradbury back-to-back? Any thoughts?

I've read a couple of stories this way - "The Crowd" springs to mind as one where the differences are obvious if you hold the two texts side by side. Sometimes the differences are really hard to see - even something like "Mars is Heaven!" which has a slightly different ending is still 99% the same text.

The stories from DARK CARNIVAL and THE OCTOBER COUNTRY are the best study: most of the stories were revised, which is why Bradbury was happy to let DARK CARNIVAL go out of print (except for one limited edition re-issue).

djmonolith, have you read/seen the first volume of the COLLECTED STORIES? The mission for these is to get the earliest settled text for the story. The textual apparatus in this volume discusses the variations in the text. RAY BRADBURY: THE LIFE OF FICTION also discusses revisions in some detail.