Book Preview Fifteen of the stories included in this collection were written before my twenty-sixth birthday and published in August Derleth’s Arkham House edition of my first book DARK CARNIVAL. This book has been out of print for some years and I welcomethe opportunity given me by the editors of Ballantine Books to select, edit, … Read more
Book Preview January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER .. 5 February 1999: YLLA .. 6 August 1999: THE SUMMER NIGHT . 14 August 1999: THE EARTH MEN .. 16 March 2000: THE TAXPAYER .. 25 April 2000: THE THIRD EXPEDITION .. 26 June 2001: –AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT . 36 August 2001: THE SETTLERS … Read more
Book Preview Prologue: The Illustrated Man IT was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was or the final leg of a two weeks’ walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was … Read more
Book Preview Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle an introduction by Ray Bradbury In 1953 I wrote an article for The Nation defending my work as a sciencefiction writer, even though that label only applied to perhaps one third of my output each year. A few weeks later, in late May, a letter arrived … Read more
Book Preview WITH GRATITUDE TO JENET JOHNSON who taught me how to write the short story AND TO SNOW LONGLEY HOUSH who taught me poetry at Los Angeles High School a long time ago AND TO JACKGUSS who helped with this novel not so long ago They sleep not, except they have done mischief; And … Read more
Book Preview When I was a boy in the Midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them. I guess every boy has done that. When I wasn’t looking at the stars, I was running in my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to … Read more
Book Preview UNTERDERSEABOAT DOKTOR The incredible event occurred during my third visit to Gustav Von Seyfertitz, my foreign psychoanalyst. I should have guessed at the strange explosion before it came. After all, my alienist, truly alien, had the coincidental name, Von Seyfertitz, of the tall, lean, aquiline, menacing, and therefore beautiful actor who played the high priest … Read more
Book Preview Some stories—be they short stories, novellas, or novels—you may realize, are written as a result of a single, immediate, clear impulse. Others ricochet off various events over a lifetime and come together much later to make a whole. When I was six years old my father, who had an urge to travel, took … Read more
Book Preview IT was a dark and stormy night. Is that one way to catch your reader? Well, then, it was a stormy night with dark rain pouring in drenches on Venice, California, the sky shattered by lightning at midnight. It had rained from sunset going headlong toward dawn. No creature stirred in that downfall. … Read more
Book Preview I arrived in the truck very early in the morning. I had been driving all night, for I hadn’t been able to sleep at the motel so I thought I might as well drive and I arrived among the mountains and hills near Ketchum and Sun Valley just as the sun carne up … Read more
Book Preview WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO KATHY HOURIGAN, WHO HELPED MAP DUBLIN AND BEYOND AND TO REGINA FERGUSON, WHO SHEPHERDED MY FAMILY THROUGH THAT COLD IRISH WINTER AND TO THE MEMORY OF HEEBER FINN, NICK (MIKE) MY TAXI DRIVER, AND ALL THE- BOYOS IN THE PUB, AND TO THE PROPRIETOR OF THE ROYAL HIBERNIAN … Read more
Book Preview In the attic where the rain touched the roof softly on spring days and where you could feel the mantle of snow outside, a few inches away, on December nights, A Thousand Times Great Grandmere existed. She did not live, nor was she eternally dead, she … existed. And now with the Great Event about … Read more
Book Preview There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end. So along the road those flowers spread that, when touched, give down a shower of autumn rust. By every path it looks as if a ruined circus had … Read more
Book Preview DEEL EEN – De haardstede en de salamander Het was verrukkelijk om te zien hoe dingen werden verteerd, om te zien hoe dingen werden zwartgeblakerd en veranderd. Met de koperen straalpijp in zijn vuisten, met die grote python die zijn giftige petroleum op de wereld spoot, terwijl het bloed bonsde in zijn hoofd, … Read more
Book Preview James Cruesoe was in the club car of a train plummeting out of Chicago, rocking and swaying as if it were drunk, when the conductor, lurching by, glanced at the bar, gave Cruesoe a wink, and lurched on. Cruesoe listened. Uproars, shouts and cries. That is the sound, he thought, of sheep in … Read more
Book Preview [18 oct 2001 – scanned for #bookz] [20 oct 2001 – proofed for #bookz – by bookleech, v 1.0] Venice, California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad. It had fog almost every night and along the shore the moaning of the oil well … Read more
Book Preview The Homecoming ‘HERE they come,’ said Cecy, lying there flat in her bed. ‘Where are they?’ cried Timothy from the doorway. ‘Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!’ said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, … Read more
Book Preview JUST THIS SIDE OF BYZANTIUM an introduction This book like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea … Read more