One of the great things about Bradbury's talent is his ability to take various stories and piece them together into workable novels:

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Mars)
DANDELION WINE (Green Town)
FROM THE DUST RETURNED (The Family)
GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE (Ireland)

Every now and then I long to see other such "series" collected together. Two in particular:

THE SECOND MARTIAN CHRONICLES collecting all the other stories left out of TMC or written since then--spread out in "chronological" order. Surely "The Lost City of Mars" would be a centerpiece and "Forever and the Earth" a nice epilogue.

THE DOUG SPAULDING STORIES. Doug Spaulding is to Bradbury what Nick Adams is to Hemingway--his literary alter ego. Surely his adventures--from childhood in Green Town to adulthood elsewhere--would fit nicely together. "One Timeless Spring," "The Utterly Perfect Murder," "The Burning Man," et al. Perhaps Doug was even the man who drove the Kilimanjaro Device!

I'm curious whether anyone else has ever fantasized dream books by Mr. Bradbury and--if so--what they might be.

-- Doc

Doug Spaulding, hmmm. Would this solve the age-old argument as to whether the Douglas of "Dandelion Wine" is the same as the one in "The Man Upstairs"? I argue that the MU Doug exists in an AU (alternate universe) in which there are similarities, but notable differences as well. Also, could the unnamed narrator in the "Death is a Lonely Business" series be, in reality, Doug Spaulding? Don't forget "All on a Summer's Night" and "Farewell Summer"--other "lost" Doug stories.

I've always suspected Doug is the narrator in DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS, as well as GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS and LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE.

If he's not the boy in "The Man Upstairs," then it would have to be his relative "Pip" ("Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby")

When I read LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT, I was surprised to read stories of Doug as a boy and as an old man and immediately thought about Nick Adams, several of whose stories appear in IN OUR TIME. After Hemingway's death, all of his adventures were collected together with unpublished fragments.

I hope if the same idea occurs to any publisher, Mr. Bradbury is still alive to do such a project justice. I can't imagine him as a writer with unpublished fragments--the cool part would be his choices of other stories with unnamed narrators.

I have no problem putting all occurrences in the "same" universe--it's like Green Town, Illinois, where both fantastic and realistic things occur.

Real life should be more like that!

-- Doc

And how about the narrator who birdnaps the talking last novel of Hemingway in The Parrot who Met Papa? DS?

[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 03-31-2004).]

Possibly not--he idenitifies himself as "Ray" during the story.

However it might be a nickname--Raymond Douglas Bradbury could also be Douglas Raymond Spaulding after all.

-- Doc

isnt there a priest named Perrigrin or something (like Pippin the hobbit) in both illustrated man and martian chronicles? just wondering. and is Mr. Dark the same illustrated man as the one in "Illustrated Man?" there are tons of those in Bradburys works.

Father Peregrine. Different books, same story. And I never got the impression that Mr. Dark was illustrated to the extent that the illustrated man was. If he was, he would use it to his own advantage--not be bothered by it.

I agree that Mr. Dark and the tattooed man seem to be different individuals, one hating his condition and the other reveling in it.

One of the worst disappointments was picking up THE ILLUSTRATED MAN after reading SWTWC and thinking it would be a prequel because both characters share the same nickname.

-- Doc