“I was in love, then, with monsters and skeletons and circuses and carnivals and dinosaurs and, at last, the red planet, Mars.”

If anyone knows how to effectively review a book containing 100 short stories, please hit me up. I’ve just been sitting with this caption open for about 5 minutes, blankly staring at it...

Where to begin! I will say that the range of genres covered by Bradbury is incredibly broad. You’ve got science fiction, fantasy, horror, and those stories that I just adore where Bradbury delivers little slices of American life. Those are my personal favourites.

But I’ll highlight a few that stood out for me:
- The October Game was an incredibly dark story centred on a game being played on Halloween night. I was almost taken aback at how dark it was...
- The Fog Horn. I had read this before but it is still one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. Just go into this one knowing nothing!
- The Black Ferris was clearly Bradbury’s inspiration for Something Wicked This Way Comes. A Ferris wheel capable of turning back the years, or moving them forward...
- The Emissary was another one that I was happy to revisit - a sweet little tale about a sick young boy and his dog that turns quite dark...
- There Will Come Soft Rains is considered to be one of the best sci-fi stories and I can see why. A house is completely controlled and managed by machines whilst it’s inhabitants have perished.

It was extremely difficult to even whittle down the 100 stories to pick out a few highlights. Ray Bradbury was a genius, his imagination blows my mind and I find his writing to be some of the most beautiful I’ve ever read.

This collection has solidified Bradbury as one of my top 3 favourite authors. I’d highly recommend this to ANY reader - the perfect collection to dip in and out of! 5 stars

Devastatingly good writing from old Ray. I always wondered where they got their cigarettes from when marooned on a desolate, dying planet, light years from earth.

goddamn, what a guy. somehow like the shorts better than the longs.

It seems almost blasphemy to make a bad comment about Bradbury's work, given how he is so highly rated, but I found most of these stories pointless. I find he reads like Dickens - why use two words, when twenty would do? And these stories felt very much like he had to hit a word count; repetition or unnecessary detail seem to be the norm.

While some of the stories in this collection are definitely five star stories - the famous 'Sound of Thunder' for example - but some are definitely not. Inevitably in a collection of so many stories some are not perfect, didn't suit my taste or were downright odd. The stories I liked best were 'Sound of Thunder' where future is changed by a time traveller standing on a butterfly, 'The Foghorn' where a lonely dinosaur mistakes the foghorn for its mate and 'The Veldt' where the virtual reality nursery is manipulated by some very savvy children. It was worth reading this collection for these alone. In fact, most of these stories were okay but I did get a bit bogged down in the middle.

So many stories - a mixture of good and indifferent.
But good if you want short sharp reads.

Incredibly intriguing and well written sci-fi short stories. Well worth a read.

I never doubt the quality and pleasure a short story of Bradbury will gives me. Though it is not deeply encapsulating as much as Philip K. Dick if you ask me, I never regretted any story of Bradbury. It is like a tranquil view you enjoy silently. Pleasent seconds passes with every step in these pages. Any Bradbury' story - I believe highly of - will make you glad that you read it. It is between 15-25 pages so I highly reccommend to give it an effortless try.

An intriguing collection, including many early works which show the development of his distinctive voice and vision.

I think I must be a bit odd. Ray Bradbury is best known as a writer of science fiction, but I much prefer him when he doesn't. I prefer him when he's being a bit gothic - straight or tongue in cheek, it doesn't matter - or comic, to when he's trying to be all philosophical and elegiac and Martian-strange. That means this gets a mean-minded three.

There are some wonderful little stories here: just not the science fiction.

In a collection of this size, there are bound to be a few repeats, but that wasn't a big deal when compared with the fact that I finally got a chance to read 'There Will Come Soft Rains' and 'Mars Is Heaven', two of the best short stories I have ever read. It is always a pleasure to read 'The Rocket Man' as well, and whenever Doug Spaulding shows up, something magical follows close behind. Another I will be re-reading in the future.

I loved it! Hundreds of short stories. I did not realize how long volume one was when I started it and it took me several months reading on and off to complete. It had some repeats from the illustrated man. I liked it because the stories encompassed so many themes and plots and I liked the element of surprise because I never knew what subject matter was coming next. RB is a unique master of the short story. Going to take a break from his works for now but will revisit more in the future.