How many movies have ripped off the "Sound of Thunder" time-travel idea? You'll never know until you read it.

Incidentally, Bradbury's intro "Drunk and in charge of a Bicycle" contains all of my email passwords for the last 15 years. Now that's dedication to an author.

Ray Bradbury is the greatest writer of all time. Favorites of mine in this collection include: the fog horn, powerhouse, the garbage collector, R is for rocket, the rocket, the rocket man, a sound of thunder, uncle einar, and the time machine.

I love Ray Bradbury. lots of favorites in here set on Venus and Mars and regular earth. Rereading Frost and Fire was pretty great. and the rocket man <3 <3 some of the stories were new ones or at least ones I hadn't remembered as clearly. they are so full of joy and hope.

One of my class reads.
It was the kind of dystopian & sci-fi fiction I like, so I enjoyed it more than any other short stories I've read so far in my classes.
Worth reading.

TL;DR: This book is a great place to start with Bradbury, or it's a great place to see his work anew.

By my count this is the fifth book that I’ve read by Ray Bradbury. By my estimation his work will never get old.

I’ve managed to sing his praises in other places already, so I won’t repeat them again here (look for my review of Dandelion Wine). I think that Bradbury was an immensely talented author, and since I’ve said as much elsewhere, I want to do something slightly different here. I want to assume that I’m speaking to someone who has never before read Bradbury and who is considering picking up this particular collection of short stories. After that I want to speak to people who have read his work, and who might want a little food for thought.

Let’s get the formality out of the way first: reading this collection would be a good idea.

With that established, what should a person expect from a Bradbury collection like A Sound of Thunder? Well, Bradbury created a particular ‘flavor’ in his work. He had a great deal of optimism; his work loves presenting the joie de vivre of American innocence. He loved writing about rockets, grassy fields, boys on the cusp of being men, brave men, good women, and the promise of new landscapes. He also seemed to believe the best about humankind…usually. His work has a particular kind of dark streak that is (to me) especially terrifying since it comes from the same place from which the innocent characters emerge. His work is, in short, worth reading.

His work is also sometimes hit-or-miss, though it always captures something of the human spirit. For instance, the best of humankind is captured in the longer story “Frost and Fire”; here a unique landscape challenges rapidly-aging human beings to adapt or die, thereby triggering a series of wars that are overcome by love. On the other hand, Bradbury has that aforementioned darkness in him that will keep you awake at night. When the three grand dames of “Embroidery” finally get what they’ve been waiting on, it will take your breath away while also making you wonder about your own actions in the same circumstances. The rest of the stories fall somewhere between these two poles. Some are filled with decent people trying to make a living. Others are filled with the horrors and madness that lurks just below the surface of each of us. All offer something of substance, though, which is more than some authors can say.

If you’ve read Bradbury’s work before, I want to offer a little tidbit that might help you to see his work anew. The copyright information in the front of the book shows that the majority of these stories were written not long after World War 2. While this might sound inconsequential, I hope you will really think about that fact as you read the stories.

For instance, you might think about how Albert Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus only a short time before these stories were published. That book infamously begins with “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide”; this is heavy stuff, the kind that shows just how badly the world’s psyche had been damaged by the atrocities of the war. For Bradbury to follow Camus, for him to precede Wiesel’s Night by only a handful of years, for him to be contemporaries with people who were deeply struggling to make sense of this brave new world…well, that is something quite amazing.

You see, Bradbury keeps his optimism in these stories. Again, he reveals the darkness of humankind in the face of this new technology—“The Flying Machine” is another dark story that could be informed by the history of the atomic bomb—but he does so with one eye on a better horizon. For Bradbury, Mars is a place of wonder where we can escape the fires of Earth. In his hands, the world is still a mysterious place where humans aren’t always the monsters. Just thinking there could be monsters out there that still haunt the depths of night is a kind of comfort. Bradbury was an eternal optimist, and it shows in this collection.

I’ll end with just one more tidbit: Since this is my fifth book by this author, I’ve noticed there are some repeats. If you’ve read widely from his repertoire, you’ll notice this collection has a number of stories from other places. You are still bound to find some gems, though. Don’t let it deter you too much.

And don’t forget we’ll all meet on the rocket to Mars sometime next week. Or the week after. Or the week after that.

Bradbury is one of the greatest names in science fiction, and I loved reading his stories as a kid and a teenager. I picked up this collection and I wasn't disappointed. What's interesting is reading science fiction written over 50 years ago, when we hadn't even landed on the moon yet -- how the world has changed from the time he wrote these stories that the ideas seem so antiquated, and yet resonate a bit. It's looking into a world that doesn't exist anymore.

But there are plenty of classics in here. I think my favourite Bradbury stories usually involve Venus (the ever amazing "All Summer in A Day" set on Venus is my favourite short story of all time).

My favourite short stories from this collection: The Garbage Collector, The Golden APples of the Sun, The Rocket Man, The Long Rain (my favourite from this book), and Uncle Einar.

○ The Fog Horn 1952
tt○ The April Witch 1951
tt○ The Wilderness 1952
tt○ The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl 1948
tt○ The Flying Machine 1953
tt○ The Murderer 1953
tt○ The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind 1953
tt○ I See You Never 1947
tt○ Embroidery 1951
tt○ The Big Black and White Game 1945
tt○ The Great Wide World Over There 1953
tt○ Powerhouse 1948
tt○ En La Noche 1952
tt○ Sun and Shadow 1953
tt○ The Meadow 1947
tt○ The Garbage Collector 1953
tt○ The Great Fire 1949
tt○ The Golden Apples of the Sun 1953
tt○ R is for Rocket 1943
tt○ The End of the Beginning 1956 aka Next Stop the Stars
tt○ The Rocket 1950
tt○ The Rocket Man 1953
tt○ A Sound of Thunder 1952
tt○ The Long Rain 1950
tt○ The Exiles 1950
tt○ Here There Be Tygers 1951
tt○ The Strawberry Window 1954
tt○ The Dragon 1955
tt○ Frost and Fire 1946
tt○ Uncle Einar 1947
tt○ The Time Machine 1957
○ The Sound of Summer Running 1957

Awesome collection. Never mind your sci-fi prejudices. This collection has something for everybody.

I loved the prose in this and some of these stories were really phenomenal. The standouts for me were “The Fog Horn,” “The April Witch,” “Embroidery,” “Frost and Fire,” and of course “A Sound of Thunder.” The rest I did not find very engaging, even though the language was compelling. I didn’t really enjoy any of the stories on earth where people lusted after rockets, they felt dated and there were so many of them that it got repetitive. I also did not like how the women characters only ever existed as lovesick puppies with no other dimensions.

Another fabulous collection. My favourite was by far The Murderer . Extremely timely in this age of non-stop, noisy tech obsessed age. The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl was funny, along with The Exiles . The Rocket and Uncle Einer are great stories of being a parent.

I either really loved the stories in this collection or I found them numbingly boring. "The Meadow" was by far my favorite though "The Exiles" was a pretty close second. As always Bradbury does an excellent job at critiquing Western society and the way so many individuals go through their life without questioning their existence. The stories that I did enjoy will likely stick with me forever and even if I didn't like them, they were still fraught with beautiful language and vivid imagery.

I must admit that I have read many of these stories in other Bradbury anthologies. That's not to say that I don't still love some of these stories. I sort of cherry picked through this collection to read stories I hadn't read before, or stories I wasn't as familiar with. I'd already read the entirety of Golden Apples of the Sun, so my selections really came from R is for Rocket.

I'd have to say my favorite, or really the most memorable for me, was "Frost and Fire." The world creation and elements of Science Fiction seem to be more "hard science" than Bradbury's usual trend toward the "soft." True, it is all about survival, struggle, and defiance by the species against the environmental norm; however, it feels grittier than much of the Bradbury that I have read. It feels more like Herbert or Asimov, if anyone gets me. I like the new flavor and the change of pace.

My favorites from this set include:

"R is for Rocket" ****
"The End of the Beginning" ****
"Frost and Fire" *****
"The Long Rain" *****