Since it is now August 2002, I feel compelled to quote from the Martian Chronicles:
"The night was dark. The moons had gone down. Starlight twinkled on the empty highway where now there was not a sound, no car, no person, nothing. And it remained that way all the rest of the cool dark night."
"There was smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people."
I gave away my last new edition of Martian Chronicles but I remember the years (that is to say, the Chronicles ) beginning around 2018-2020 or thereabouts, vs. 1999 in older editions. Whose got a new editon and an old edition out there, at the same time, to compare?
Posts: 2280 | Location: Laguna Woods, California | Registered: 28 June 2002
"And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain."
"And, going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing."
Besides a segment in the mini-series The Martian Chronicles, did Night Meeting ever appear in any of the episodes of Ray Bradbury Theater? If not, somebody out their in film-land should do a project on this one chapter.
Posts: 624 | Location: San Francisco | Registered: 27 October 2006
Nard, I do, both in front of me. When I discovered this fact, it really irked me for some reason. I guess because some editor felt it was "dated". I couldn't disagree more, the original times and dates for this story are the pertinent and correct dates for the universe occupying the dimension of Ray's mind just as its still a relevent and proper time for the characters who roam there! Okay here are the differences starting at the first chapter; New, January 2030. Formerly was January 1999. Both run basically the same time span in years ending in The Million Year Picnic, new; October 2057, formerly The Million Year Picnic 2026.
She stood silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and moist...
rocketsummer@insightbb.com
Posts: 1397 | Location: Louisville, KY | Registered: 08 February 2006
rocket, I had the same response, but I believe that it was Bradbury's idea to change the dates. It is detailed in The Life Of Fiction (and possibly in Sam Weller's biography as well).
It is a bit like re-naming Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
