Here's how it works:

For some time now, I've been thinking of re-reading all my Ray Bradbury stories. But instead of starting with the oldest books, and reading them through to the latest ones, I thought it would be fun to read them in a completely scrambled, unpredictable order.

So I made a list of all the collected stories I have and numbered them all from top to bottom. Then I eliminated the duplicates (variants of the same story) and all items which, it seemed to me, shouldn't count as stories (e. g. most of the Martian Chronicles bridge chapters and the Illustrated Man framing story).

The total comes to a princely 407 stories. To find a genuinely random story, I will punch the numbers into my computer and ask it to think up a random number of its choosing. Yes, Ray, you can actually do that. Yes, it's clever.

I'll post the story title and read it when I feel like it - perhaps some time afterwards. In the meantime, it would be great if others chipped in - the more the merrier. If there are different versions of the story, that's all good. Just tell us where you found it.

There's no timeline for the project. Weeks may pass between stories, depending on energy levels, other stuff to do and what's on TV. But in any case there will be a minimum of a week between stories.

The list of stories is based on the contents of the following books:
Dark Carnival, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Day It Rained Forever, R Is for Rocket, The Machineries of Joy, The Vintage Bradbury, S Is for Space, I Sing the Body Electric!, Long After Midnight, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Dinosaur Tales, A Memory of Murder, The Toynbee Convector, Quicker than the Eye, Driving Blind, One More for the Road, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, The Cat's Pajamas, Match to Flame, Summer Morning, Summer Night, We'll Always Have Paris, A Pleasure to Burn, and The Collected Stories, Volume 1, edited by William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller.

I added the only uncollected story that, as far as I know, is freely and legitimately available online ("Juggernaut").

That's the game - and now, the first random story!

Deep breath ...

The first random story (no 186 on my list) is "The Wish".

"The Wish" can be found in Long After Midnight and Bradbury Stories. I hope to get to it soon, and post my impressions soon! (Must admit, I don't remember the story offhand.)

dSP: Interesting idea! It would keep the topics bubbling!

I figured once that I had presented approximately 200 RB's titles in class over the years, (ss, novels, movies, essays, episodes). However, I have never reconnoitered with my own RB read count. When time allows, I'll jump in with the random read...and some current impressions that were inspired.

Alphabetical is good.

Will chip in. Great idea!

Well, I've finally re-read "The Wish". It was first published in Woman's Day in December, 1973, and turned up three years later in Long After Midnight.

You could certainly pass fifteen minutes on a train with the story, but I thought it was too whimsical and insubstantial to be one of the author's best. The story is very similar to many others which have turned up in RB's late collections, where two friends sit around drinking (always the drinking, tsk, tsk) and suddenly start declaiming passionately about ... not much.

In this case, it's Christmas Eve, and Tom imagines that he can hear the gentle snowfall prompting him to make a wish. His wish is for his late father to be returned to life for just one hour.

I've just read Sam Weller's biography at last, and by Weller's account Ray's father was not a very demonstrative man, so you can see where this came from. A middle of the road Bradbury story, perhaps lucky to get into one of the two super-collections.

While we're on the subject, one day I would really love to see a book with about 50 of Bradbury's very best stories. The two fat books are wonderful to have, but the selection is sometimes puzzling. Two hundred stories, and still no room for "R Is for Rocket"? Sheesh.

quote:

Originally posted by douglasSP:
...still no room for "R Is for Rocket"? Sheesh.

Perhaps he's saving that for the NEXT collection of 100 best stories!

quote:

Originally posted by douglasSP:
...In this case, it's Christmas Eve, and Tom imagines that he can hear the gentle snowfall prompting him to make a wish. His wish is for his late father to be returned to life for just one hour...

Ah, that's The Wish. (I was thinking of another story.) I quite like it, actually. It's one of his very few pieces of writing that acknowledges the existence of Christmas, and one of the few set in winter conditions, so it has some value for that alone. I also think of it as a companion piece to A Scent of Sarsaparilla.

The rich imagery of time and snow in this story reminds me of "Night Meeting" in TMC. Its also a perfect example of how so much of Bradbury's writing offers consolation. I don't think its something he necessarily intends of course, but he makes it happen.

Random Story #2 is "Death and the Maiden", which can be found in The Machineries of Joy and Bradbury Stories.

The story was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March, 1960.

I'll read it as soon as I can.

By the way, the story collection was slightly retitled for some editions, omitting the definite article.

I've finally managed to read "Death and the Maiden."

By coincidence, it has some similarity to last week's story, in that it also deals with a turning back of the clock and the fulfillment of a wish.

Old Mam is a legendary recluse who lives all alone in the woods. Ninety-one years old, she has barricaded herself inside her house to prevent the intrusion of Death. But of course, one day Death comes knocking, in the guise of a twenty-one year old suitor of seven decades earlier.

He makes her an offer: in return for being restored to the age of eighteen for one day and being taken out to paint the town red, she must consent to sleep with him ... forever.

There are no surprises in this story. It is sentimental and fairly predictable. But no one can possibly complain if it is rendered in prose that glides across the page as beautifully as this. It's a lovely story, and I think I appreciated it more when I read it out of the blue and out of the context of a book.

By the way, when I typed "fulfilment" in this post, the Board software told me my spelling was un-American. Interesting. I didn't know that.

I blogged about this story recently!

It's also the story that George Clayton Johnson, er, took inspiration from when he wrote a TWILIGHT ZONE episode called "Nothing in the Dark".

Phil, I actually read your blog post recently! And yet, in reading the story and posting my comment, I'd completely forgotten about it. I do remember "There Was an Old Woman", which has some points of similarity. But Bradbury didn't repeat himself at all. The one story is humorous, the other wistful.

If you've published around 500 stories, there are obviously going to be thematic threads connecting many of them. For example, there's a story called "I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here", which is almost a re-telling of "The Wish".

Those thematic threads are perhaps the most fascinating thing about Bradbury. You read one story, and it reminds you of another (that you then have to go and read), which then reminds you of another, and so on.

Just yesterday I read "The Rocket Man", which reminded me of "King of the Grey Spaces" and "The End of the Beginning".

Now there's a fascinating idea!

Someone should start a thread suggesting a story, and then we go on to another story that reminds us of the first one, and so on forever.

I recently received my copy of Summer Morning, Summer Night, and riffling through the contents, it seems that I may have to disqualify some of the entries from the story list. A number of the items in the table of contents are just fragments or vignettes which can't really be considered stories. If a story is really short, that isn't a problem, as long as it's complete. But many of the items in SMSN aren't.

Any thoughts?