Jesse’s Reviews > A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories > Status Update

“Icarus Montgolfier Wright”

This is nakedly a poetic parable about Man pushing the boundaries of science, in this case marching toward the invention of the space rocket that Bradbury dreamed so much about. Icarus and Daedalus, of course; Montgolfier I imagine was the inventor of the combustion engine; and the Wright brothers are notoriously American.

“The Trolley”

A short cute story about the last trolley in the city. It’s going to be retired so that buses can take over all the public transportation, schools and otherwise. So the operator takes the kids on a joy ride to a lake where there used to be a sort of wooden fairground, they have a nice reminiscing picnic, and then he takes them all back.

“Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed”

This is a Martian story that didn’t fall into The Martian Chronicles. The Bitterings, like the family from “Picnic”, come to earth to escape the war. Mr. Bittering is really attached to ol’ Gaea, and he clings hard to his earth man ways, but—just as with the family in “Picnic”—he becomes part of a new breed of Martians.

“The Smile”

This post-apocalyptic world is the flip side to Bradbury’s stories about the direction of civilization. Life without civilization, or at least a recognizable one as featured in here, is miserable. Really, Bradbury’s illustrated civilization as a scapegoat for the evils of mankind. Destroying art and artifice can’t hope to redeem humanity. It isn’t the source.

“The Screaming Woman”

Margaret Cleary is walking home with ice cream one day when she hears muffled screaming in an abandoned lot. She figures out that a woman has been buried alive and tries to free her but runs into pretty much every obstacle a child can reasonably meet in her quest in a very “adults patronizing children because they’re just kids” sort of FNAF energy.

“The Million-Year Picnic”

The last story of The Martian Chronicles. Dad, Mom, and three boys have gone to Mars in a rocket. As far as the boys are concerned, it’s a picnic, but the oldest knows that something’s up. This is one of the more deeply American Bradbury stories as it taps into the same psyche that Doomsday preppers and survivalists have grown out of, a denial of the virtues of civilization.

“Come Into My Cellar”

This is another “aliens are invading through unusual channels” except this time it’s through a fungus that’s ordered from the back of those magazines that young boys loved to send off from. You know: X-Ray Specs, voodoo dolls, fungi from yuggoth that control your brain after you eat it so that you can foster the invasion, the usual.

“Invisible Boy”

An old lady who wants to be a witch has her nephew-or-other Charlie visiting. To get him to stay around awhile longer, she plays a trick to get him to believe that she has turned invisible. What ensues is pretty much what happened in a Minecraft Milo and Chip video that my girls watched one day, except for the ending.

“Hail and Farewell”

Bradbury writes about the magic of childhood, but this story explores a shadow side to the spell of youth: what if you were 12 years old forever? Willie manages to cope with it in his own way—he figures being a surrogate son is his job—but his own personal growth is just as stifled as his biological. “Are you happy? Are you as fine as you /seem/?”

“The Pedestrian”

This is another prescient dystopian nightmare from Bradbury. A retired writer is arrested by what passes for the future police because he’s out walking at night instead of sitting down in the dark of a house with a television, just as the government intended for him. If you think that Bradbury is being sanctimonious then there’s just no helping you.