I just joined this board and this is my first post. first let me say that Ray Bradbury is my favorite author of any kind of fiction.

I have a book a book from the O. Henry award series. 'Prize Srories of 1948'. Mr. Bradbury has a story called 'Powerhouse' in the issue, in the back of the book there are short boigraphies of all the contributing authors.It says that his first novel is called 'The Wind of Time'. I was wonering if any one has heard of this book because I can't find any info about it. I had always though his first novel was Feranheit 451

I have that Prize Stories of 1948 book somewhere, but not at hand. The Wind of Time rings no bell. Ray's first book was Dark Carnival, around 1948. This was a collection of short stories. The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories knitted together to form a continuous story of sorts, came around 1950. This may be considered his first novel. Then came Fahrenheit 451, actually a short story originally appearing as The Fireman, and later expanded to Fahrenheit 451 as a short novel.

Four books in the Library of Congress catalog bear that title, http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg...212522&CNT=25&HIST=1 but none by Bradbury.

It is interesting to note the first of these books came out the very next year after the publication of your source. Perhaps Bradbury's publishers got wind (heh) of the forthcoming title and changed his book title so as to avoid two books with the same title appearing at the same time? "A Child's Garden of Terror" was another book title discussed but unused.

spacemanspiff,

according to Jonathan Eller and WIlliam Touponce's scholarly study Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, this was one of several working titles Ray used for his novel in progress which was better known as Farewell Summer. Other working titles for the same book include Summer Morning, Summer Night; The Blue Remembered Hills; and The Small Assassins (not to be confused with the short story, and short story collection, of a similar title).

This is the "other half" of the manuscript that developed into Dandelion Wine, and is the one that Ray announced to be ready for publication earlier this year. It's taken him nearly sixty years to finish it!

There are at least four books titled "Blue Remembered Hills," but none called "Summer Morning, Summer Night" that I can find. http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg...043141&CNT=25&HIST=1

Thanks guys for the responces. I thought I knew alot about Mr Bradbury until I came to this site, I have been most humbly abashed by my LACK of knowledge concerning many things Bradbury. It was also very disconcerting to think there might have been a Bradbury book around since the forties that I hadn't even heard of let alone read. I shall endever to make amends for my lack of proper attention.

spacemanspiff--I found references to two books by that name by authors Oliver Chad and Joseph Payne Brennan. Also, that happens to be a part of a line from Ray's poem called "Remembrance," my personal favorite of all his poems.

hello I need help to understand the following sentence from the Pedestrian:
"The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint, whirring click, as if information, somewhere was dropping car by punch-slotted card under electric eyes."
I dont understand it from "..as if informatoin..." till the end. How can you say this in a different way ?:S

QuTie,
Please note that there is a typo in your question. It should read “…card by punch-slotted card..."

OK. Excellent question you ask. In days of yore when Ray wrote this gem, 1951 I think, there were no microchips. Those were the days of vacuum tubes so big they put them in a separate room and you’d have to go in every once in a while and sweep up the dead bugs that would accumulate. The days of “Adventure” and XYZZY and…but I ramble. The short answer is that slotted IBM cards were used to store information in binary form. A light was passed through the slots to read the information. These cards were a method of storing and retrieving information in a computer or in Ray’s story, how the car would think.

I remember signing up for classes at college when computer punch cards were first being introduced. By the end of the day, after all of the available slots in hundreds of courses had been "programmed" into some main data base, there remained thousands of cards (apprx. 3"x7") lying discarded across the floor of the large registration hall.

The bank of computers were at least the size of refrigerators, and that was cutting edge stuff back then. I had to explain this exact scene to a class of Sr. Lit. students a few weeks ago. Now, with everything digital, they just have no concept of the SIZE of computers in the early years. (Now-Cell phones w/internet, camera functions, iPod,...).

Again, RB hit this one right on. The idea of a central info base, an unmanned vehicle, mobile cameras, mechanical voices, and the machine vs. man theme is timeless.

"Walking. Just walking!!" -Perfect!

"Occupation?"
"Writer."
"No occupation."
Also perfect!

Personally I love the old episodes of the 1967 version of "Dragnet" where the computer took up half the room and would print information on a stack of cards.

"Now it took the computer only an hour and a half to print these cards. If we each take half we should get through them in only three hours," or dialogue to that effect.

"Dragnet" is out on DVD now. Buy it. It's golden!

"Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts!"

fjp451,
Thought you might like to know, the catch phrase
"Just the facts..." was actually created by Stan Freberg in his Dragnet parody "St. George and the Dragon Net". Jack Webb liked it so much he actually began using it!
"Dum-deDum-dum!"

Nice! Thanks, Sundance, ...er, BrII!!