“I dedicate these stories to all the boys who wonder about the Past, run swiftly in the Present, and have high hopes for our Future. The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.” -Ray Bradbury

Such a great writer. My all time favorite. He even had a story in this book about Chaos Theory which I just loved.

Author Ray Bradbury was a treasure and a prolific writer. Much of his work, including this book of short stories, leaves me with the impression that there was still much of the boy in the man. The joy, wonderment, and imagination in his writing is youthful and invigorating. While not every story is 5 star-rated, they are all good and many are superlative. Highly recommended!

This dual collection showcases everything I love and everything I hate about Bradbury. I'm one of the few people it seems who gets really critical of Bradbury and doesn't hold him up to god status, and this collection reinforced one of the reasons I sometimes hate his stories and his style. But first, let's talk about what this collection is. I bought it on an audiobook app called Chirp. It was on sale for like $3. It just says "The Golden Apples of the Sun", however it's actually "Classic Stories 1: Golden Apples of the Sun/R is for Rocket" (swipe to see a screen-shotted cover from Goodreads), which is a kind of mash-up compilation thing.
-
Okay, now that that is out of the way, let's talk. The collection starts off with an absolutely astounding story called, "The Foghorn", which is one of his most famous ones. I keep a notepad on my phone of all the stories I read, and I assign them 1-10 ratings. 10s are pretty rare, and I easily gave "The Foghorn" a 10. So I was thinking that this collection was gonna be a mind-blowing affair (much like his incredible "The Illustrated Man" collection). But then I got to the next two stories, and now here's where I'll talk about why I was ultimately disappointed. When Bradbury does sci-fi and horror, he basically is untouchable (as I've mentioned ad nauseum). When he writes anything else (with a few exceptions), I find it obnoxious, over-the-top, and just cringey to read (or in this case, listen to). Too many of these stories are so full of whimsical delight and disgustingly saccharine nostalgia of being a young boy in the 40s and 50s. Coming-of-age is one of my least favorite subgenres, and I especially dislike it when Bradbury does it. Because he'll take his description of a boy running barefoot through the grass on a warm summer day and stretch it into a paragraph. I relate to that negative 100 percent, so I just don't want to read it. I might be rambling and nonsensical now, because I feel like I can never fully articulate my displeasure at these types of stories. And I also know this is a major draw for a lot of people. I guess we all like different things.
-
I'm going to end this long post shortly. There were many stories I liked (plus another I gave a fabled "10/10", one of his other famous story "A Sound of Thunder"), but so many that bored me, almost put me to sleep, or I just out-and-out skipped. Listed below are my five favorites. Finally, I would suggest this collection for the Bradbury fans that maybe don't like his sci-fi as much.
-
"The Foghorn"
"A Sound of Thunder"
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl"
"The Garbage Collector"
"Frost and Fire"

Verschiedene Geschichten von Ray Bradbury gesammelt. Normalerweise mag ich keine Kurzgeschichten, aber Bradbury hat selbst in den kürzeste Texten so viel Tiefe und Inhalt, dass ich kaum sagen kann, welcher Text mich am meisten beeindruckt hat.

Dabei steht vor allem der Mensch im Vordergrund, der Mensch und die Umgebung, in der er lebt. Die Geschichten sind ein Mix aus Realität, Magischem Realismus, Fantasy und Science Fiction. Manchmal schlägt sich ein gewisser Zusammenhang durch, z.B. der Donner bzw. das Gewitter oder gewisse Namen, die immer wieder auftauchen.

Bradbury sollte man also keinesfalls auf Fahrenheit reduzieren, sondern auch seinen anderen Büchern eine Chance geben.

It's always difficult to review a collection, and my relationship with Bradbury is a bit weird - he always feels more like someone whose stories I should enjoy, rather than one whose stories I do enjoy.

That said, there were more "good" stories than poor ones in this collection, and it becomes apparent just how diverse Mr. Bradbury's oeuvre is. An unparalleled imagination.

Honestly, the book is a fairly simple read; however, it captures Ray Bradbury's complex imagination. The book contains a collection of his short stories including my personal favorite " A Sound Of Thunder." The story takes place in 2055 when a hunter named Eckels travels back in time with a hunting party to the late Cretaceous period. the hunting party was on the search for a T-rex. When the party comes across their target Eckels loses his cool and fires his gun and kills the T-rex without following the plan. Eckels retrieves the bullets from the T-rex so that there would be no evidence in the future. After returning tho their time everything has changed: everything from the language to how won the election changed. Eckels then looked at his boots, and there he saw a butterfly stuck to the sole of his boot. This story makes me question if something like that could actually occur 1f the slightest little mistake could cause a whole domino effect of changes.

An excellent collection. I prefer the R is for Rocket segment but both halves are magnificent. It is nice to half both books in one collection.

A Sound of Thunder The fiction is written by American science fiction master-Ray Bradbury. He is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. The article shows in that era, humans invented machines that could travel through time and space. One company used these machines to help hunting citizens travel through time and space and search for extinct creatures as prey. I don't know why these are so boring to go and spend a lot of money to travel through time and space to kill an animal and then come back, and it may affect some of the butterfly effects in the future. That's right, the butterfly effect, if a small mistake, hunters can change the world. This will feel very messy... the hero hurriedly decided to fight the dinosaurs. To be honest, I don't agree with the arbitrary killing of animals, even if it is not harmful to nature. People and animals are equal. Every life is worthy of respect. We should protect animals and plants, as well as our environment. In this way, people can continue to thrive, and life will become wonderful. Man has no power to control everything. After all, man's power is limited. Nature is the mother of human beings. Human beings should not destroy beautiful nature with their smart minds.

I have to say I really liked it, and it really entertained me, all the ideas, as expected from Bradbury. The prose, they were elegant and suave and full of melodies that you might be taken to imaginations.

However, some of them just doesn't ring right for me. At least, for some stories, they just fell flat. I wasted too much time trying to understand the settings, trying to keep up with his prose and imaginations. It was really different with Fahrenheit 451, where the prose is and setting is clearer and you keep up just as easily as canoeing on the river.

All of them are interesting ideas and are all new. Bradbury never stopped believing that ideas should be thrown away, but should be nurtured and told the way it should.

In his hands, stories come alive.

3.5 stars.

Some of the stories I recognized from other books such as the Illustrated Man, and those were good.
However, I would say that most of the stories at the beginning of the book didn’t make much sense at all. They felt like writing exercises gone wrong, or an unfinished tale. They started out promising but by the end I was asking “okay what’s the point?”
What disappointed me the most was that I LOVE Ray Bradbury! But a lot of these stories are sub par, three star reads.
Golden Apples of the Sun was good, and after that story, the rest are interesting and I really enjoyed them. Bradbury did his best when he wrote about space and Halloween, but I found that when he tried to write fantasy or philosophical it didn’t work out so well.
I would still recommend this book, but be warned that a lot of the stories are skim worthy, and a lot of the others can be found in his other books.

I'm sorry everyone...this collection of short stories did absolutely nothing for me. I was hoping for SO much more. I picked this up mainly to read A Sound Of Thunder. It was such a simple story with no cohesive tension at all. The ending was "meh". Then I started reading the other stories, and I have to say, my seismic reading needle was not moved at all by any stories collected here. I have not read Bradbury before and this book did zero to entice me to try anything in the near future.

Като при повечето сборници с разкази, особено тези, които включват различни жанрове, по-скоро съм със смесена емоция след цялостния прочит. Някои разкази много ми харесаха, други не особено, а към трети останах безразличен.

Все пак, надделява положителната емоция и оставям 4/5. Бредбъри е сладкодумен разказвач, всички знаем колко добре може да въздейства. При произведенията, които не успяха да ми кликнат, по-скоро тематиката не беше "моя" тип.