Monday, August 25, 2003

From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's short stories are often gems, and put to shame most of the unimaginative triple-decker tomes that litter the bookstores. In The Martian Chronicles he assembled a number of his short stories about Mars, added a little connective work, and let fly; not worrying that the various stories weren't very consistent with each other.

Unfortunately he worries about consistency here. I almost didn't finish the book, which would have been a shame, since there are a few fine moments in it. He built it around his Elliot family, with the lonely and oddly unempathetic mind-rider Cecy and the normal boy Timothy living among and longing to be one of the creatures of the night. Bradbury's strength lies in moods, and he undercuts this when he tries to explain too much, or gets preachy--as he does sometimes here. I wish he could have done the collaboration with Charles Adams he mentions in the afterwards--I think they would have fed each other's ideas and made a much better book.

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