SCIENCE FICTION · FICTION
Ray Bradbury
Also known as: 'Hollerbochen', 'Oz' Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works -- short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse -- exemplify the American imagination at its most creative. Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, are masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime. His timeless, constant appeal to audiences young and old has proven him to be one of the truly classic authors of the 20th Century -- and the 21st. In recognition of his stature in the world of literature and the impact he has had on so many for so many years, Bradbury was awarded the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an the National Medal of Arts in 2004.
It was a pleasure to burn.
— from Fahrenheit 451
Most acclaimed
The Martian Chronicles
This is a collection of science fiction short stories, cleverly cobbled together to form a coherent and very readable novel about a future colonization of Mars. As the stories progress chronologically the author tells how the first humans colonized Mars, initially sharing the planet with a handful of Martians. When Earth is devastated by nuclear war the colony is left to fend for itself and the colonists determine to build a new Earth on Mars.
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The book's tagline explains the title as "'the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns": the autoignition temperature of paper. The lead character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings. The novel has been the subject of interpretations focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas for change. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It later won the Prometheus "Hall of Fame" Award in 1984 and a "Retro" Hugo Award, one of a limited number of Best Novel Retro Hugos ever given, in 2004. Bradbury was honored with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.
The Story and Its Writer -- Compact Eighth Edition
Collection contains: Stories: Civil peace / Chinua Achebe -- Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven / Sherman Alexie -- Act of vengeance / Isabel Allende -- Hands / Sherwood Anderson -- Happy endings / Margaret Atwood -- Sonny's blues / James Baldwin -- Lesson / Toni Cade Bambara -- Black man and white woman in dark green boat / Russell Banks -- Snow / Ann Beattie -- From Fun Home: Old father, old artificer / Alison Bechdel -- The rememberer / Aimee Bender -- [Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]( / Ambrose Bierce -- Circular ruins / Jorge Luis Borges -- August 2026: There will come soft rains / Ray Bradbury -- Cathedral; A small, good thing ; What we talk about when we talk about love / Raymond Carver -- Paul's case / Willa Carter -- Water names / Lan Samantha Chang -- Swimmer / John Cheever -- Darling / Anton Chekhov -- [Désiré́e's baby]( [Story of an hour]( / Kate Chopin -- Barbie-Q / Sandra Cisneros -- Heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad -- Open boat / Stephen Crane -- How to date a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie / Junot Diaz -- Battle royal / Ralph Ellison -- The red convertible / Louise Erdrich -- [Rose for Emily]( [That evening sun]( / William Faulkner -- Very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- Yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Homage / Nadine Gordimer -- [Young Goodman Brown]( / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Hills like white elephants / Ernest Hemingway -- Church cancels cow / Amy Hempel -- Things you should know / A. M. Homes -- Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston -- Lottery / Shirley Jackson -- Who's Irish? / Gish Jen -- White heron / Sarah Orne Jewett -- Bad neighbors / Edward P. Jones -- [Araby]( [Dead]( / James Joyce -- Hunger Artist; Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- Interpreter of maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri -- Rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence -- Miss Brill / Katherine Mansfield -- Shiloh / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- [Bartleby, the scrivener]( / Herman Melville -- Nawabdin electrician / Daniyal Mueenuddin -- Management of grief / Bharati Mukherjee -- Dance of the happy shades / Alice Munro -- Where are you going, where you have been? / Joyce Carol Oates -- Things they carried / Tim O'Brien -- Everything that rises must converge; Good country people; Good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor -- I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen -- The shawl / Cynthia Ozick -- Brownies / ZZ Packer -- Conversation with my father / Grace Paley -- [Cask of Amontillado]( [Tell-tale Heart]( Edgar Allan Poe -- The jilting of Granny Weatherall / Katherine Anne Porter -- Job history / Annie Proulx -- From Palestine: Refugeeland / Joe Sacco -- From Persepolis : The veil / Marjane Satrapi -- Yellow woman / Leslie Marmon Silko -- Homework / Helen Simpson -- Prisoner on the hell planet: a case history / Art Spiegelman -- Two kinds / Amy Tan -- Death of Ivan Ilych / Leo Tolstoy -- A&P / John Updike -- The moths / Helena Maria Viramontes -- Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- Good people / David Foster Wallace -- Worn path / Eudora Welty -- Say yes / Tobias Wolf -- Man who was almost a man / Richard Wright -- Commentaries: Image of Africa: Conrad's ''Heart of darkness'' / Chinua Achebe -- Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- Form, not plot, in the short story / Sherwood Anderson -- Reading blind / Margaret Atwood -- Autobiographical notes / James Baldwin -- Writing "Poes" / Russell Banks -- Borges and I / Jorge Luis Borges -- Translating Kafka / Ann Charters -- Why I write short stories / John Cheever -- Technique in writing the short story / Anton Chekhov -- How I stumbled upon Maupassant / Kate Chopin -- Sinking of the commodore / Stephen Crane -- A huger artist / R. Crumb; David Zane Mairowitz -- Influence of folklore on ''Battle royal'' / Ralph Ellison -- Meaning of ''Rose for Emily'' / William Faulkner -- Feminist reading of Gilman's ''Yellow wallpaper'' / Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar -- Why I wrote ''Yellow wallpaper''; Undergoing the cure for nervous prostration / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- How it feels to be colored me / Zora Neale Hurston -- Morning of June 28,1948 and ''Lottery'' / Shirley Jackson -- On ''Girl'' / Jamaica Kincaid -- Finding your voice / Anne Lamott -- On Tim O'Brien's ''Things they carried'' / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Writer's goal / Guy de Maupassant -- Blackness in Hawthorne's ''Young Goodman Brown'' / Herman Melville -- How I write short stories / Alice Munro -- Stories that define me: Making of a writer; Smooth talk: Short story into film / Joyce Carol Oates -- Alpha company / Tim O'Brien -- Conversation with Ann Charters / Grace Paley -- Importance of the single effect in a prose tale / Edgar Allan Poe -- Language and literature from a Pueblo Indian perspective / Leslie Marmon Silko -- In the canon, for all the wrong reasons / Amy Tan -- Chekhov's intent in ''Darling'' / Leo Tolstoy -- Zora Neale Hurston: Cautionary tale and a partisan view / Alice Walker -- Some remarks on Kafka's funnieness from which probably not enough has been removed / David Foster Wallace -- Is Phoenix Jackson's grandson really dead? / Eudora Welty -- Reading fiction / Richard Wright -- Casebooks: Casebook one: Raymond Carver: One writing; Creative writing 101; The bath / Raymond Carver -- Origin of ''Cathedral'' / Tom Jenks -- Reading of ''What we talk about when we talk about love'' / Arthur M. Saltzman -- Looking for Raymond Carver / A.O. Scott -- Casebook two: Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies": My two lives / Jhumpa Lahiri -- Jhumpa Lahiri / Sean Flynn -- Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" / Simon Lewis -- Casebook three: Flannery O'Connor: From ''Letters 1954-55''; Writing short stories; Reasonable use of the unreasonable / Flannery O'Connor -- Rhetorical reading of O'Connor's ''Everything that rises must converge'' / Wayne C. Booth -- On ''Good country people'' / Dorothy Tuck McFarland -- Casebook four: Graphic storytelling: What the little old ladies feel / Alison Bechdel -- From "Alternative comics: toward the habit of questioning" / Charles Hatfield -- Are comics serious literature / Michael Kupperman -- From understanding comics: Invisible art / Scott McCloud -- Reading "The Veil" by Marjane Satrapi / Sydney Plum -- Some reflections on Palestine / Joe Sacco / Homage to Joe Sacco / Edward W. Said. Appendices: Reading short stories (Includes Grace Paley, ''Samuel'') -- Elements of fiction -- Brief history of the short story -- Writing about short stories -- Literary theory and critical perspectives -- Glossary of literary terms -- Chronological listing of authors' stories -- Chronological listing of authors and stories -- Index of authors and titles