Twice 22: The Golden Apples of the Sun / A Medicine for Melancholy

by Ray Bradbury

CONTENTS:

THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN (1953)
The Fog Horn
The Pedestrian
The April Witch
The Wilderness
The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
Invisible Boy
The Flying Machine
The Murderer
The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind
I See You Never
Embroidery
The Big Black and White Game
A Sound of Thunder
The Great Wide World over There
Powerhouse
En la Noche
Sun and Shadow
The Meadow
The Garbage Collector
The Great Fire
Hail and Farewell
The Golden Apples of the Sun

A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY (1959)
In the Season of Calm Weather
The Dragon
A Medicine for Melancholy
The End of the Beginning
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
Fever Dream
The Marriage Mender
The Town Where No One Got Off
A Scent of Sarsaparilla
Icarus Montgolfier Wright
The Headpiece
Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed
The Smile
The First Night of Lent
The Time of Going Away
All Summer in a Day
The Gift
The Great Collision of Monday Last
The Little Mice
The Shoreline at Sunset
The Strawberry Window
The Day It Rained Forever

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Collections, Classics, Short Story Collection

406 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Brook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was prepared to be disappointed, because I'd never read Bradbury before, and highly regarded classic authors tend to disappoint me--I just have such eclectic and eccentric tastes that most "great literature" doesn't really align.

But boy howdy, did this book deliver. So many clever ideas, such fresh and innovative writing, such fantastic imagery and interesting worlds--I loved it from the first story. Sure, there were a few stories that fell a little flat, or I didn't quite get, but I enjoyed the whole ride. I think the brevity of the stories worked really well; just giving us glimpses into different worlds and character's lives. Definitely enjoyable, and memorable.

[Jasen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked the first one (five stars) better than the 2nd half (three stars).

From “The Golden Apples of the Sun”
From “The Fog Horn”
“One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, ‘We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; all make one. I’ll make a voice like all the time and all of the fog that ever was; I’ll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees and autumn with no leaves. I sound like the birds flying south, crying, and they sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. All make a sound that so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearts will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll call it a Fog Horn hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.
The Fog Horn blew.” P.9

“The Fog Horn blew.
The monster answered.
I saw it all, I knew it all – the million years of waiting alone, for someone to come back who never came back. The million years of isolation at the bottom of the sea, the insanity of time there, while the sky is cleared of reptile-birds, the swamp on the continental lands, the sloth in the saber-tooths had their day and sink in tarps, and the men ran like white ants upon the hills.” P.12

“That’s life for you,”said McDunn. “Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can’t hurt you no more.” P.13

From “The Wilderness”
“Now, with the closet door wide, with darkness like a velvet shroud hung before her to be stroked by a trembling hand, with the darkness like a black panther breathing there, looking at her with unlit eyes, the two memories rushed out. Space and a falling. Space and being locked away, screaming. She and Lenora working steadily, packing, being careful not to glance out the window at the frightening Milky Way and the fast emptiness. Only to have the long-familiar closet, with its private night, remind them at last of their destiny.” P.33

“I feel like I’m dead, thought Janice, and in the graveyard on a spring night and everything alive but me and everyone moving and ready to go on with life without me. It’s like I felt each spring when I was 16, passing the graveyard and weeping for them because they were dead and it didn’t seem fair, on nights as soft as that, that I was alive. I was guilty of living. And now, here, tonight, I feel they have taken me from the graveyard and let me go above the town just once more to see what it’s like to be living, to be a town and a people, but before they slam the black door on me again.” P.38

From “The Murderer”
“The psychiatrist was shocked by that smile. It very sunny, pleasant warm thing, a thing that shed bright light upon the room. Among the dark Hills. High noon at midnight, that smile. The blue eyes sparkles serenely above that display of self -assured destiny.
“I’m here to help you,” said the psychiatrist, frowning. Something was wrong with the room it hesitated the moment he entered. He glanced around. The prisoner laughed. “If you’re wondering why it’s so quiet in here, I just kicked the radio to death.”P.74

“It frightened me as a child. Uncle of mine called the Ghost Machine. Voices without bodies. Scared the living hell out of me. Later in life I was never comfortable. Seem to be a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn’t want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality. it’s easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you’ve made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the telephone it was the television, the radio, the photograph. When it wasn’t the television or the radio or the photograph it was motion pictures at the corner theater, motion pictures projected, with commercials on a low line cumulus clouds. It doesn’t rain anymore, it rains soapsuds.” P.75

“...I laid plans to murder my house.”
“Are you sure you want me to write it down?”
“That’s semantically accurate. Kill it dead. It’s one of those talking, singing, humming, weather-reporting, poetry-reading, novel-reciting, jingle-jangling, rockaby-crooning-when-you-go-to-bed houses. A house that screams opera to you in the shower and teaches you Spanish in your sleep. One of those blathering caves were all kinds of electronic Oracles make you feel a trifle larger than a thimble, with stoves that say, ‘I’m apricot pie, and I’m done,’ or ‘I’m prime roast beef, so baste me!’ And other nursery gibberish like that.” P.78

“It’ll take time, of course. It was also enchanting at first. The very idea of these things, the practical uses, was wonderful. They were almost toys, to be played with, but the people got too involved, went too far, and got wrapped up in a pattern of social behavior and couldn’t get out, couldn’t admit they were in, even. So they rationalized their nerves is something else. ‘Our modern age,’ they said. ‘Conditions,’ they said. ‘High-strung,’ they said. Mark my words, the seed has been sown.” P.80

From “Embroidery”
“ I believe,” said the first lady, “that our souls are in our hands. Poor we do everything to the world with our hands. Sometimes I think we don’t use our hands half enough; it’s certain we don’t use our heads.”
They all peered more intently at what their hands were doing. “Yes,” said the third lady, “when you look back on a whole lifetime, it seems you don’t remember faces so much as hands and what they did.” P.93

From “The Big Black and White Game”
“And they ran. There was no purpose to the running but acceleration and living.
The white man worked at the running as they worked at everything. You felt embarrassed for them because they were alive too much in the wrong way. Always looking from from the corners of their eyes to see if you were watching. The Negros didn’t care if you watched or not; they went on living, moving. They were so sure that they didn’t have to think about it any more.” P.100

From “A Sound of Thunder”
“By stepping on one single mouse. So the cave man starves. And the cave man, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, and entire history of life. It is comparable to slain some of Adam’s grandchildren. A stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destiny down through time, to the very foundations. with the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn or throttled in the womb.” P.114

“That’d be a paradox,” said the latter. “Time doesn’t permit that sort of mess – am man meeting himself. When such occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like an airplane hitting an air pocket. You felt the Machine jump just before we stopped? That was us passing ourselves on the way back to the Future. We saw nothing. There’s no way of telling if this expedition was a success, if we got our monster, or whether all of us – meaning you, Mr. Eckels – got out alive.” P.116

“They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began to curse too. The Monster lay, a hill of solid flesh. Within, you could hear the size and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running of final instant from pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever. it was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all valves been released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the tonnage of its own flesh, off-balance, deadweight, snapped the delicate forearms, cut underneath. The meat settled, quivering.” P.119

“It fell to the floor, and exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?” P.123

From “Powerhouse”
“I just never had a reason ever to sit in’s church.” She had told people. She wasn’t vehement about it. She just walked around and lived and moved her hands that were pebble-smooth and pebble-small. Work had polished the nails of those hands with a polish you could never buy an a bottle. The touching of children had made them soft, and the raising of children had made them temperamentally stern, and the loving of a husband had made them gentle.
And now, death had made them tremble.” P.138

“Even with Berty’s arms on her back it wasn’t enough. It was like the end of a good play in the beginning of an evil one. Someone she loved was actually going to die. This was impossible!
“I’ve got to stop,” she said, not trusting her voice at all, so she made it sound irritated to cover her fear.
Berty knew her as no irritated woman, so the irritation did not carry over and fill him up. He was a capped jug; the contents there for sure. Rain on the outside didn’t stir the brew.” P.139

“He was worried for her now, and for her mother‘s life or death, but he had a way of worrying that seemed indifferent and irresponsible. It was neither of the two. His concern was all in him, deep; but it lays side-by-side with some faith, some belief that accepted it, made it welcome, and did not fight it. something in him took hold of the sorrow first, got acquainted with it, knew each of its traceries before passing the message onto all of his waiting body. His body held a faith like a maze, and the sorrow that struck into him was lost and gone before it finally reached where it wanted to hurt him. Sometimes this faith drove her into a senseless anger, from which she recovered quickly, knowing how useless it was to criticize something as contained as a stone and a peach.” P.142-143

“The earth was suddenly more than many separate things, more than houses, rocks, concrete roads, a horse here or there, a human in a shallow, boulder-topped grave, a prickling of cactus, a town invested with its own light surrounded by night, one million things. Suddenly it all had one pattern encompass and held by the pulsing electric web....
Everything balanced. In one room she saw life with her; and another, a mile away, she saw wine glasses lifted to the newborn, cigars passed, smiles, handshakes, laughter. She saw the pale drawn faces of people at white deathbeds, heard how they understood and accepted death, saw their gestures, felt their feelings, and saw that they, too, were lonely in themselves, with no way to get to the world to see the balance, see it as she was seeing it now.” P.144

“ whenever a light blinked out, life through another switch; rooms were illuminated afresh.
She was with those named Clark and those named Gray and the Shaws and the Martins and the Hanfords, the Fentons, the Drakes, the Shattucks, the Hubbells, and the Smiths. Being alone was not alone, except in the mind. You had all sorts of peak holes in your head. A silly, strange way to put it, perhaps, but there were the holes; the ones to see through and to see that the world was there and people in it, as hard put two and uneasy as yourself; and there were a holes for hearing, and the ones for speaking out your grief and getting rid of it, and the holes for knowing the changes of season through the sense of summer grain or winter ice or autumn fires. They were there to be used so that one was not alone. Loneliness was a shutting of the eyes. Faith was a simple opening.” P.145

“And she could see the far mountains; there was no blur nor running-of-color to things. All was solid stone touching stone, and stone touching sand, and sand touching wild flower, and wild flower touching the sky and one continuous clear flow, everything definite and of a piece.” P.146

From “Sun and Shadow”
“Ricardo magnificently smoking a cigarette there in the noon sunlight under the blue sky, his pants where a man’s pants rarely are.” P.159

“There are naked people and naked people,” said the officer. “Good and bad. Sober and with drink in him. I judge this one to be a man with no drinking him, a good man by reputation; naked, yes, but doing nothing with this nakedness in any way to offend the community.” P.160

From “The Meadow”
“And so you come and rip it up and there’s no peace anymore, anywhere. You and your wreckers so proud of your wrecking. Pulling down towns and cities and whole lands!”
“A guy’s got to live,” says Kelly. “I got a wife and kids.”
“That’s what they all say. They’ve got wives and kids. And they go on, pulling apart, tearing down, killing. They had orders! Somebody told them! They had to do it!” P.166-167

“And somehow, after the extras in the men with the cameras and microphones and all the equipment walked away and the gates were shut and they drove off in big cars, somehow some of all those thousands of people remained. The things they had been, or pretended to be, stayed on. The foreign languages, the costumes, the things they did, the things they thought about, the religions and their music, all those little things and big things stayed on. the sites are fireplaces. The smells. The salt wind. The sea. It’s all here tonight – if you listen.” P.171

“As I said before, you came here years ago, clapped your hands, and three hundred cities jumped up! Then added a half thousand other nations and states and peoples and religions and politicals set up inside the barbed-wire fence. And there was trouble! Oh, nothing you could see. It was all in the wind in the spaces between. But it was the same kind of trouble the world out there beyond the fence house – squabbles and riots and invisible wars. But last of the trouble died out.” P.172

“This is the world, you said. I should have seen it years ago. Here it all is inside the fence, and me too blind to see what could be done with it. The World Federation in my own back yard and me kicking it over. So help me God, we need more crazy people and night watchman.” P.177

From “The Great Fire”
“One would never know a girl had an ounce of sense at a time like this. That’s what fools a man. He says, Oh, what a lovely brainless girl, she loves me, I think I’ll marry her. He marries her and wakes up one morning and all the dreaminess has gone out of her and her intellect has returned, unpacked, and is hanging up undies all about the house. The man begins running into ropes and lines. He finds himself on a little desert isle, a little living room alone in the midst of a universe, with a honeycomb that has turned into a bear trap, with a butterfly metamorphosed into a wasp. He then immediately takes up a hobby: stamp collecting, lodge meetings, or--“ P.187

From “Hail and Farewell”
“The boys were playing on the Greene Park diamond when he came by. He stood a little while among the oak-tree shadows, watching them all the white, snowy baseball into the warm summer air, saw the baseball shadow fly like a dark bird over the grass, saw their hands open and ball to catch the swift piece of summer that now seemed most especially important to hold onto. The boys’ voices yelled. The ball lit on the grass near Willie.” P.196

“That’s how I think of children, cruel as they sometimes are, mean as I know they can be, but not yet showing the meanness around their eyes or in their eyes, not yet full of tiredness. They’re so eager for everything! I guess that’s what I miss most and older folks, the eagerness gone nine times out of ten, the freshness gone, so much of the drive and life down the drain. I like to watch school let out each day. It’s like someone threw a bunch of flowers out of the school front doors. How does it feel, Willy? How does it feel to be Young Forever? Look like a silver dime new from the vent? Are you happy? Are you is fine as you seem?” P.199

From “The Dragon”
“No, no,” whispered the second man, eyes shut. “On this moor is no Time, is only Forever. I feel if I ran back on the road the town would be gone, the people yet unborn, things changed, the castles unquarried from the rocks, the timber still uncut from the forests; don’t ask how I know; the moor knows and tells me. And here we sit alone in the land of the fire dragon, God save us!” P.221

From “A Medicine for Melancholy”
“Hush! Did you imagine, family, so many people, two hundred, would pay to give us their opinion?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkes. “Wives, husbands, children children, are deaf to each other. So people gladly pay to have someone listen. Poor things, each today thought he and he alone new quinsy, dropsy, glanders, could tell the slaver from the hives. So tonight we are rich and two hundred people are happy, having unloaded their full medical kit at our door.” P.229

From “The Scent of Sarsaparilla”
“Consider an attic. Its very atmosphere is Time. It deals in other years, the cocoons and chrysalis is of another age. All the bureau drawers are little coffins where a thousand yesterday’s Lyon State. Oh, the attic dark, friendly place, full of Time, and if you stand in the very center of it, straight and tall, squinting your eyes, and thinking and thinking, and smelling the Past, putting out your hands to feel of Long Ago, why: it...” P.289-290

“Yes, here was all of Time compressed in a Japanese paper flower. At the touch of memory, everything would unfold into the clear water of the mind, and beautiful blooms, in spring breezes, larger than life. Each of the bureau drawers slid forth, might contain aunts and cousins and grandmamas, ermined in dust. Yes, Time was here. You could feel it breathing, and atmospheric instead of a mechanical clock.” P.293

“It was indeed a great machine of Time, this addict, he knew, he felt, he was sure, and if you touched prisms here, door knobs there, plucked tassels, chimed crystals, swirl dust, punched trunk hasps and gusted the vox humana of the old hearth bellows until it puffed the soot of a thousand ancient fires into your eyes, if, indeed, you played this instrument, this warm machine of parts, if you fondled all of its bits and pieces, it’s lovers and changers and movers, then, then, then!” P.293

“Wintry November light glowed up through the trap in the attic floor behind her. Bent to it, she saw the snow whispering against the cold clear panes down in that November world where she would spend the next thirty years.
She did not go near the window again. She sat alone in the black addict, smelling the one smell that did not seem to fade. It lingered like a sigh of satisfaction, on the air. She took a deep, long breath.
The old, the familiar, the unforgettable scent of drugstore Sarsaparilla.” P.295

From “Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed”
“Nonsense!” Mr. Buttering looked out the windows. “We’re clean decent people.” he looked at his children. “All dad cities have some kind of ghosts in them. Memories, I mean.” He stared at the hills. “You see a staircase and you wonder what Martians looked like climbing it. You see Martian paintings and you wonder what the painter was like. You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It’s quite natural. Imagination.” He stopped. “You haven’t been prowling up in those ruins, have you?” P.313

[Ellice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two volumes of stories by Ray Bradbury--The Golden Apples of the Sun and A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories--in one omnibus volume. I picked it up because I'd been pining to read "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl," one of my favorite Bradbury stories of all time, and still a brilliant read. There are certainly wonderful science fiction stories here--"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" and "A Sound of Thunder" are both two of the best-known and two of the best--but some of the stories have no fantastic element at all but are still wonderful, like "I See You Never" and "The Great Wild World Over There." Ray was a writer of many talents, and I think most readers will find something they really identify with here.

[Jessika Hoover · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's safe to say that Ray Bradbury has officially made it onto the list of my favorite authors. This man is just a brilliant writer, simply put. I am so very glad I stumbled upon this collection of short stories.

Bradbury is a master of his craft, and nowhere is this more evident than in his short stories. Usually with a collection of short stories, it ends up being pretty 50-50 for me--some I like, some I don't. With the exception of a few (and I'm talking 3-4 out of 44), I really loved these. There was a little bit of everything here; it wasn't just one genre or another. And his stories are short & sweet, if you will, which I liked. They weren't drawn out unnecessarily, and they got to the point. Bradbury has such a way with words that this brevity really worked. He describes things in a way that you've never thought of but that makes perfect sense. This makes his stories come vividly to life without the need of cumbersome back story. I truly have no other words--his stories are beautiful.

All in all, I enjoyed this collection immensely and it is not to be missed for Bradbury fans. I can definitely see myself revisiting this in the future. If you are a fan of the short story and are looking for some incisive, artful stories, look no further --Ray Bradbury's your man.

This review can also be found on my blog: https://tinyurl.com/y999jv6kyu

[Rgoldenberg]

I went back to revisit some of my favorite Bradbury stories from my youth and read a few ones I have never been acquainted with (I did not read the entire collection).
Unforgettable stories from this collection that I would highly recommend:
"The Foghorn"
"The Pedestrian"
"The Flying Machine"
"The Murderer"
"The Dragon"
"The Smile"
"Icarus Montgolfier Wright"

Bradbury infuses his stories with historical, mythological and literary allusions to give his stories a more timeless and universal quality ("Icarus..." "The Foghorn" and "The Dragon"). He is cynical about humanity's future, foreseeing decline of humanities ("The Smile", his masterwork, the novel, "Fahrenheit 451",), the role of technology ("The Flying Machine" and of course, "The Murderer"); the control of government on our private lives ("Fahrenheit 451" "The Flying Machine" "The Pedestrian" and "The Murderer'). But Bradbury's outlook isn't entirely bleak--he tends to conclude his stories with a ray of hope ("Fahrenheit 451", "The Smile," "The Murderer" and "The Meadow").

His science fiction often deals with imagining how daily life will adapt to the technological changes arising from space travel ("The Wilderness," "The Gift," "All Summer in a Day" and of course, "The Martian Chronicles").

[Anthony A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I love Ray Bradbury's stories. I have said this before (I think) in one of my reviews of his books, but I will say it again (or for the first time): Bradbury's stories cover different genres of storytelling - but mainly science fiction and horror. I reviewed The Golden Apples of the Sun when I finished that book prior to this one. My focus here is on A Medicine for Melancholy. Most of these stories are standard Ray Bradbury tales, but one of them I just loved and thought it was exceptional.

I have always been a fan of stories that take place on the high seas from long ago. One aspect of those seafaring stories is mermaids or sirens. In one of Bradbury's stories he takes us to a beach where a mermaid has washed up on the beach, stunned & unconscious. What is awesome about this story is how Bradbury describes the mermaid. She is beautiful, yet haunting. I won't say more, except to say that it is one of his best tales I have ever read. It is rare when I reread any story or book, but this was one of those times. After I had finished the book, I went back and reread this particular story: "The Short Line at Sunset."

[Paul (formerly known as Current) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ray Bradbury uses a very poetic language in most of these stories that, when it works, sets a psychological tone that is often the most important part of the story. There is a sense, to me, that these stories are more like watercolor sketches in which he tries to avoid making any hard lines and in which we as the readers must form what we see/hear/experience into something.

From a science fiction aspect, I would say that Bradbury was never really interested in the science part but rather in the full range of fiction and the imagination. He uses imagination to invent things that have their own alternative realities, that can amaze and frighten us, that are part and parcel of our psychology. A rocket and living on Mars is less important than understanding why we would want a rocket and another world, and also seeing how these things infect our minds and change us.

Bradbury wrote over a long period of time and some of the age of these stories shows through. In an odd way, Bradbury is writing these stories in his own real time (generally in the 50's for these stories) but they all seem to be looking back with a kind of nostalgia to a time before that. Race and economics exist in these stories, but they have a strange kind of existence as they sit as frames rather topics to be discussed.

[Nicole Karvelas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories were breathtaking and some were really underwhelming.
In general, reading this made me feel the same way you do when you look up at the sky and kind of acknowledge the stars and feel small. He paints the sense of a world that's familiar but "off" and you're not sure why. Enjoyable read!

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bradbury is just the best short story writer 'eva.

I really read the second half, "A Medicine for Melancholy" after having read "Golden Apples of the Sun" last year.

Includes a different take on "Million Year Picnic," a horror story akin to "The Thing" but with fewer explosions, and one of Bradbury's most famous stories about a very rainy Venus, "All Summer in a Day."

Best 'eva.

[Fred Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this since I was eleven years old, but I don't think I'd ever read it all the way through. Bradbury was probably my favorite author in those days; now I felt the writing was grandiloquent at times, and I got a little impatient.

[Red7paulbrennan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not like any of story.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several stories seemed dated. I remember reading some of them 50 or so years ago.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Fruit at the Bottom of the
Bowl
By Ray Bradbury

[Doodles McC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories from one of the best ideas writers of all time. Well written and really enjoyable.

[Anna Engel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't care much for this compilation. There was nothing that tied the stories together, so they were just a random assortment. I usually really enjoy Bradbury's short stories because he gives the reader just enough information and story. In other Bradbury compendia, he has tied the stories to a central theme. The stories in "Twice 22" don't seem to be joined in any way and, as a result, I found the book in its entirety rather boring.

I did, however, enjoy "The Pedestrian," which was a commentary on the isolation of modern life. These lives take place in our homes in front of television media, which makes the story a surprisingly accurate portrayal of our modern (i.e., 2010s) life, although it was published in the 1950s.

Similarly, in "The Murder," Bradbury comments on the stresses of an interconnected and constantly online society. He thus predicts the Facebook revolution, our dependence on our devices, and our increasing tendency to live our lives in public. He also predicts how some people become frustrated with this constant connectedness and end up canceling their Facebook accounts or are slow to adopt cell phones and smart phones.

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, Ray Bradbury is a literary master--his is descriptive writing at its finest. Nearly every single one of the 44 stories contained in this compendium is memorable and thought provoking. I particularly liked "A Medicine for Melancholy" and "In a Season of Calm Weather."

[Unsavvyscott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply beautiful writing.

[Sls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bradbury is a fantastic writer--- my favorite along with Rod Serling.

[Magdalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great anthology of short stories. Some romance, some virtue lessons. Good Ray Bradbury storytelling