The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics

by Ray Bradbury

A collection of plays based on the author's experience while writing the screenplay for "Moby Dick" in Ireland.

159 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

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

[Sanjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh out loud funny.

[Katie Elmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still want to kiss Ray Bradbury on the lips. Absolute chef’s kiss.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bit of a departure for Bradbury. A series of one-act plays set in Ireland, the book is actually based on experiences Bradbury had while working in that country for a number of months while working on a screenplay. The plays themselves are fun, light, slice-of-Irish-blarney tales. Bradbury is neither a brilliant nor a terrible dramatist, but the best part of the book may be the afterword, in which Bradbury writes about the reasons we tell stories and the process of writing itself. Those eight pages are worth the price of admission.