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Book Review: The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury

Several of the 22 stories in this collection had been previously published in such magazines as The New Yorker, Charm, American Mercury, Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, Epoch, and others. Although there were a handful of tales that I found to be lackluster and anticlimactic (“I See You Never,” “The Wilderness,” “Invisible Boy,” “The Garbage Collector” and a few others), the sheer variety and breadth of topics covered clearly demonstrates Bradbury’s prowess as a master storyteller (as if we didn’t know this already!)

My favorites include:

“The Fog Horn” – Attracted year after year by the sound of a fog horn installed near a lighthouse, a legendary and elusive sea creature finally decides to attack.

“The April Witch” – A young witch with the ability to inhabit other creatures desperately wants to know what it’s like to fall in love.

“The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl” – After murdering a man in his home, the killer becomes obsessed with removing all trace of his presence—over every nook and cranny of the house.

“The Murderer” – An average man in search of peace and quiet destroys all of his electronic devices in a society where constant chatter from watches, radios, computers, phones, and TV have pervaded—nay, INVADED!—everyday life.

“A Sound of Thunder” – A travel company offers safaris to any year in the past, but disobeying the rules even slightly could be a mistake that follows you back to the future!

“Powerhouse” – A married couple traveling into town on horseback takes refuge against a storm in a powerhouse. Though she does not believe in God, the wife has an electrifying out of body experience.

“The Meadow” – A construction crew is ordered to tear down the backlot structures of a movie studio, where sets from every corner of the world have provided a second home to Smith, the night watchman. Determined to restore it all, Smith picks up a hammer and begins to rebuild it all, to the consternation of the wealthy investor who ordered the demolition.

“The Great Fire” – Marianne is visiting her uncle and aunt for the summer, upsetting her uncle’s peaceful existence. Every evening, Marianne dashes out of the house when her boyfriend arrives, giving her uncle hope that marriage is in the air and Marianne will soon move out—but Grandma knows the joke’s on him!

“Hail and Farewell” – A 43-year-old man, who appears no more than twelve, moves from town to town every few years masquerading as an orphan or a runaway in order to be adopted by childless couples.

 

The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradury

Blog, Opinion

We Have Met the Borg and They are Us!

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I’m currently reading Ray Bradbury’s terrific anthology from 1953, The Golden Apples of the Sun.  Among the many engThe Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Braduryaging tales is a prescient story called “The Murderer,” about a man who, in search of simple peace and quiet, destroys all of his electronic devices in a society where constant chatter from watches, radios, computers, phones, and TV has pervaded—nay, INVADED!—everyday life.

It was stunning to note just how accurate Bradbury was about a future still five decades away. Although the story did not deal with such devices pilfering our privacy, the parallel to society’s current condition was remarkable.

Then this morning, I find this article, from which I quote: “On Black Friday in 2015, hackers broke into the servers of Chinese toymaker VTech and lifted personal information on nearly 5 million parents and more than 6 million children. The data haul included home addresses, names, birth dates, email addresses and passwords. Worse still, it included photographs and chat logs between parents and their children. VTech paid no fine and changed its terms of service to require that customers acknowledge their private data “may be intercepted or later acquired by unauthorized parties.””

Read the entire article here: The Greatest Privacy Threat of All: Our Connected Devices by Vivek Wadhwa

I’ve been employed in the IT support and infrastructure field across several major companies for nearly 25 years. I’m also a die-hard science fiction fan. It’s logical to assume then, that I might be the kind of person who owns every device that hits the market and who spends hours gaming or keeping up with the latest VR tech.

You’d be wrong. In my personal life, I have a MacBook Pro laptop and an iPhone. For my job, I have an additional Dell laptop, HTC Windows phone, and a Surface Pro. Ask me anything about video games and I couldn’t tell you a damn thing. Virtual reality? Couldn’t care less. I’m still grappling with the physical reality of the world in which we live and breathe and eat and pay bills and maintain our homes and—at least for now—interact with the people around us without the “aid” of dehumanizing devices.

I manage my schedule with a day planner. You know, the kind with paper pages on which I write…with a PEN. Same with my novels and short stories. I save reams of scrap paper, printed on one side, that otherwise would have ended up in the trash or recycle. I turn these into notepads and write on them, later to be transcribed into Word or Scrivener.

Smart TV? Not in my house. Same with Alexa and all of these “home management” devices. Fuck them. I can manage my home, my life, and be entertained by my favorite shows without some electronic ear eavesdropping on my every conversation. I see families and friendships fracturing more and more as a result of people unable to peel their gazes and fingers away from their phones and tablets as if these devices have become an extension of their bodies.

You have been assimilated. Resistance wouldn’t be so futile if you actually tried.

Hell, I don’t even own an eReader device of any kind. I have the Kindle app on my laptop, that’s about it. I can count on three fingers how many ebooks I’ve read on it. Of course, I read many Word and PDF files when writers send me their ARCs to read for review, or when I’m critiquing/proofreading stories for writer friends, or accepting submissions to anthologies I’m editing. However, at the risk of sounding like a borderline Luddite, I minimize the use of tech in my personal life for the sake of my own privacy and peace of mind.

Get me outside! To the water with rod and reel, to a nature trail, to the beach where I can sit beneath a canopy on a blazing summer day with a cold drink and a good—physical—book.

OK, enough. Thanks for reading. Now, I’ll jump off the proverbial soap box, or wooden crate, or picnic table, and return to The Golden Apples of the Sun…in paperback…from 1953.

Blog, Book Reviews

Book Review: Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing

Through all ten essays and a brief collection of poems, the elation of master craftsman Ray Bradbury is infectious. Zen in the Art of Writing is pure joy; a celebration of the craft and labor of storytelling. There is not much in the way of writing advice here, but I was inspired nevertheless.

In the essay “The Joy of Writing,” Bradbury encourages writers to execute their craft with zest and gusto, with a sense of love and fun. For if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, and without fun, you are only half a writer.

In “Run Fast, Stand Still,” he reveals one of his strategies for getting started as a writer—create a list of nouns. Specifically, things that interest you, exhilarate you, or scare you and then use them as story prompts. Some of Bradbury’s nouns included THE LAKE, THE NIGHT, THE CRICKETS, THE SCYTHE, THE CARNIVAL, THE SKELETON, THE MIRROR MAZE, and many more.

Bradbury relates how he reached back into his childhood memories from Illinois to create his famous novel, Dandelion Wine in the essay, “Just This Side of Byzantium: Dandelion Wine.”

In “The Secret Mind,” he reflects on his dreadful time in Ireland writing the screenplay for Moby Dick for director John Huston, only to later discover that his experiences in Ireland inspired several short stories and plays.

While writing a two-act drama based on his hit novel, Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury recalls when—unable to write at home due to the distraction of his children—he rented typewriters in the basement of the UCLA library at the rate of 10 cents for every 30 minutes in order to write the novel. All of this is told in the aptly titled essay, “Investing Dimes: Fahrenheit 451.”

No examination of Bradbury’s work would be complete without taking “The Long Road to Mars.” In June 1949, Bradbury was invited to New York City by writer Norman Corwin, who introduced him to Walter Bradbury (no relation) of Doubleday Books. During the conversation, the topic of Ray’s “Martian stories” came up and Walter suggested that he find a common theme among them to create a novel—and The Martian Chronicles was born.

These are but a few examples of the engaging essays that left me, a burgeoning speculative fiction writer, feeling renewed and reenergized toward my craft and possibilities that lay ahead.

Zen in the Art of Writing Cover

Blog, Book Reviews

Book Review: If I Can’t Sleep, You Can’t Sleep by Christopher D. Ochs

If I Can’t Sleep, You Can’t Sleep is divided into two sections. The first section is comprised of five original fairy tales and the second, five speculative fiction short stories. All are splendidly written and demonstrate Chris Ochs’s breadth and range as a storyteller.

My favorites include:

“The Woman in the Sand” – A Roman citizen, exiled to a remote island, discovers the broken stone statue of a beautiful woman buried in the sand. After finding her jaw, the man successfully reattaches it—and soon lives to regret it…

“The Tower of the Moon” – Following a radiant white doe through a forest under a full moon, Hunter discovers a majestic tower in a clearing. Upon entering, he finds a series of doors, each one leading to bizarre and different world, but will one of them finally lead Hunter to the white doe?

“The Troll of Helenbak” – A famished troll captures a fair maiden only to learn that she’s “not quite right in the head.” Both he, and the brave prince who vows to rescue her, get a bit more than they bargained for…

“The Christmas Monster” – Three miscreant students are visited by the Archbishop during The Feast of St. Nicholas. He gives each of them a small, curious gift that turns out be far more nefarious than the usual lump of coal…

“No Children Aloud” – In order to join a club, three junior high-school students must pass initiation by confronting a ghost in an abandoned sanatorium. Afterward, they find themselves with a slight communication problem…

 

If I Can't Sleep, You Can't Sleep Book Cover

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Book Review: LEONARD by William Shatner with David Fisher

I enjoyed this memoir from beginning to end, even though I’d already heard, seen, or read about 60% of it from other sources such as Leonard Nimoy’s own memoirs (I Am Not Spock, then later, I Am Spock), interviews with Nimoy over the years, and the recent documentary, For the Love of Spock, directed by Adam Nimoy. Much of Nimoy’s television and early film career is covered and often compared to Shatner’s own.

It was that other 40% that piqued my interest such as the depth of Nimoy’s love for the written word through his poetry and how he had come to love photography. These are parts of Nimoy’s creative career with which I was only superficially familiar. It pains me to admit that I’ve never read his poetry and have only seen a small subset of his photographs, but after reading Shatner’s memoir, I’m inspired to action and will make the time to delve more into these aspects of Nimoy’s art.

No memoir about Leonard Nimoy would be complete without mentioning his love for the stage and his brilliant performances in Fiddler on the Roof and his one man show, Vincent, about the life and work of Van Gogh. Shatner also touched on the enormous charitable donations made by Leonard and his wife Susan to theatres in New York as well as the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

To his credit, Shatner was honest about his conflicts with Nimoy and Roddenberry in the early months of Star Trek and the reasons behind that. He also expressed great disappointment and sadness that Nimoy had stopped speaking to him in the weeks before his passing. All of that, and Shatner’s brotherly love for Nimoy, shined through as truly genuine and heartfelt.

 

Leonard by William Shatner

Blog, Book Reviews

Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories My Mother Never Told Me

If my mother ever told me the stories included in this collection, half of them would have put me to sleep. After reading two excellent  Twilight Zone anthologies in December, I came to this Alfred Hitchcock collection expecting stories of similar quality. Regrettably, I was underwhelmed.

Oh, there were a few gems among the 13 tales, but some, such as “Smart Sucker” by Richard Wormser and  “Hostage” by Don Stanford, built up to anti-climactic endings. “Witch’s Money” by John Collier began with an interesting plot, but seemed to lose momentum and wander off.

My favorites from the collection include:

When a young woman commits suicide from a broken heart, her father decides to exact a long, slow revenge against the man responsible in “The Wall-to-Wall Grave” by Andrew Benedict.

American author Ambrose Bierce vanished in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1914. However, his final tale was found inside an unusual bottle found in the obscure village of Oxoxoco. Will “The Secret of the Bottle” by Gerald Kersch reveal the mystery of Ambrose Bierce’s final days?

Ellen Baker returned from a train ride a very different person— distant, cold, aloof. Worse, she found an unsavory new boyfriend who is prone to violence and seems to have Ellen mesmerized. Determined to protect his best friend, Eddie follows Ellen aboard another train, only discover the eerie truth about her boyfriend during “A Short Trip Home” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When Fred Perkins receives an invitation from wealthy socialites to join them on their next hunting expedition, his first impulse is to decline. However, his wife and friends convince him that it would be a step forward for him socially. When the big day arrives, however, Fred wishes he followed his instincts and ignored “An Invitation to the Hunt” by George Hitchcock.

Every morning before breakfast Caroline’s husband Pete is more than a bit surly, he’s literally murderous! As such, Caroline often finds herself making “Adjustments” by George Mandel.

When Robert and Janet Allison decide to remain at their country cottage during the first month of autumn instead of leaving at the end of summer as they typically do, the locals seem strangely taken aback. Worse, bizarre calamities begin to occur that make the Allisons wish they had continued to be “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson.

Traveling through Maine on what was supposed to be a sightseeing tour, Mr. Ketchum is pulled over for speeding in the seaside hamlet of Zachary, Maine. After being detained overnight, the police take Ketchum to the judge’s house where he expects to pay his fine and finally be released, until he learns a horrible truth at the hands of “The Children of Noah” by Richard Matheson.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me