I hate to have my first post @ this forum be a question that has probably been asked-and-answered at this board several times before, but several different forum searches didn't produce any answers, so I hope you'll indulge me if this is a repeat.

With regards to the two collections, THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY and BRADBURY STORIES:

1). Is there much overlap between the two? If so, what is the fundamental difference(s) between the two?

2). Do the two combined collect virtually every story Bradbury published in his major (i.e. non-Gauntlet uncollected) collections?

Hi RonClinton, and welcome.

There is absolutely ZERO overlap between the two volumes! You can verify this by comparing the tables of contents here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...ries_of_Ray_Bradbury

and here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...ost_Celebrated_Tales

The two books were compiled about twenty years apart, and the stories of the later volume were deliberately selected (by Ray himself, I believe) to complement the earlier volume.

Given that Bradbury wrote about 600 short stories, and these volumes collect 200 stories, they are still only a minority of his total output. However, I think your second question is really about whether these compilation volumes collect all of his short story collections. I think you'd have to look at the contents list of each book in turn to figure that out.

If you go to my website at www.bradburymedia.co.uk you will find a fairly comprehensive list of Ray's books in chronological order. I have contents lists for most (but not all) of them. Wikipedia also has pretty good lists these days.

Thanks so much, Phil -- that's precisely what I needed to know. I have a number of Bradbury books, but I've always been curious about the issues I put forth in my question (but not enough, I suppose, to dig out all my books and start comparing TOCs)...nice to have that finally cleared up.

Welcome, RonClinton!

Apologies to any new users I may have missed welcoming!

Would anyone who is new please post in the following thread: https://raybradburyboard.com/ev...901/m/8841009901/p/1

The following major collections are completely unrepresented in the two super-collections Ron has enquired about:

Driving Blind, The Cat's Pajamas, and We'll Always Have Paris.

In addition, there is only one story from One More for the Road in the second big book.

While these two super-collections do collect nearly all of Bradbury's best stories, there are some of us for whom "nearly" isn't good enough!

For example, "R Is for Rocket", a famous story, isn't in either book.

A few other stories that should have been included, either because they're brilliant, or because they're worthy for some other reason:

"Perchance to Dream", "The Lost City of Mars", "The Hunt Wedding", "That Old Dog Lying in the Dust", "Tangerine", and of course "The Fireman".

Hopefully the new Collected Stories volumes will collect every story at long last.

quote:

Originally posted by pablo:
Hopefully the new Collected Stories volumes will collect every story at long last.

I've been giving this series a serious look. I wish the price tag was a bit more gentle, but the bang-for-the-buck in supplemental analysis looks terrific.

If price is a problem, keep an eye out for secondhand copies via Amazon, Abebooks or Alibris.

At some level, we have to pay for scholarship. These books are expensive because there is so much value in them!