I have an old beat up collection of Ray Bradbury\u2019s short fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cThe Stories of Ray Bradbury.\u201d\u00a0 It was published in 1980 and contains about a hundred of his stories.\u00a0 These stories appeared earlier in a number of short story collections that came out over the years that Bradbury was writing.\u00a0 And he also wrote after this collection came out so there\u2019s nothing original or definitive about this collection but it contains most of the short stories that his reputation was based on.\u00a0 And because it is such a large selection (almost nine hundred pages in a 9.5 X 6.5 hardcover volume), there are great stories and poor ones.\u00a0 There is fantasy, horror, something like science fiction and even nondescript fiction.\u00a0 And because it was written over the course of about forty years it changes.\u00a0 The emphasis, the stylistic touches, the topics all change.\u00a0 But the voice is always recognizably Bradbury.\u00a0 For the most part he is interested in the people.\u00a0 The science is not the story.\u00a0 In fact, most of the time it\u2019s just the excuse for poking and prodding the people and watching them react.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pleasure to walk through this old volume and relive old stories and find out how I\u2019ve changed over the years.\u00a0 Have my preferences changed?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But my likes and dislikes have mostly remained the same.\u00a0 Possibly I\u2019m a little bit more sensitive to the quality of the prose rather than the surprise in the ending.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting to consider that science fiction short stories have been declared a dead field.\u00a0 No one buys the stories either in book collections or in magazines (paper or electronic).\u00a0 And that strikes me as a sad situation.\u00a0 So many of these short stories contain wonderful ideas and characters and images that stir the imagination.\u00a0 But somehow, they no longer have any value in the present world.\u00a0 Can that be the permanent state of literature?\u00a0 I guess it could be.\u00a0 Capitalism is ruled by the law of supply and demand.\u00a0 So, there\u2019s no demand for short stories.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s too bad.\u00a0 Maybe the future will include a manner for artists to exhibit their works for people similar to how musicians currently perform concerts.\u00a0 A live presentation where the audience listens to the story or watches a video presentation of it in a format that can\u2019t be pirated and therefore has value as a single use experience.\u00a0 All that\u2019s left is the memory of the story.\u00a0 Of course, that\u2019s what movies were but now they\u2019ve also lost their value.\u00a0 So maybe not.\u00a0 But I find a book of short stories to be a treasure trove.\u00a0 A hundred stories and maybe fifty are very good and ten are wonderful.\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty impressive collection.\u00a0 I think any prolific author would be satisfied with that track record.<\/p>\n
One thing that Bradbury liked to do was string together some of his short stories into a larger framework.\u00a0 He did this with turning his Green Town stories into \u201cDandelion Wine\u201d and his dark carnival stories into \u201cSomething Wicked This Way Comes.\u201d\u00a0 And what that shows me is these short stories can be the seeds for longer fiction.\u00a0 But if no one reads them and rates them how will these seeds ever sprout.\u00a0 Oh well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have an old beat up collection of Ray Bradbury\u2019s short fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cThe Stories of Ray Bradbury.\u201d\u00a0 It was published in 1980 and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2510,1263,4],"tags":[200,1392,265,1176,1402],"class_list":["post-35437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-fantasy","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-science-fiction","tag-science-fiction-and-fantasy","tag-short-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n