Review of "Something Wicked This Way Comes"


Review of "A Sound of Thunder"
I gave this short story a rating of three stars.

I listened to Ray Bradbury’s short story, “A Sound of Thunder” in conjunction with his novel, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. I have enjoyed other Bradbury stories such as “Fahrenheit 451” and “Martian Chronicles”, and was hoping that I would enjoy this story. Of Bradbury’s books that I have read this is the shortest and my least favorite because it did not have much plot or character development and seemed to be a short story that should have been further developed into a better novel.

This tale tells of a time in the future when time travel is possible. A big game hunting company has used time travel to take hunters back to the age of the dinosaur to hunt the ultimate prey - Tyrannosaurus Rex. The story is about one excursion back in time where a hunter violated the company’s precautions not to alter any conditions in the past. The ending of the story shows the result of the hunter’s violation on the trip to the present world condition.

I felt that the story was rushed to maintain a short story format. I liked the element of time travel used to hunt extinct animals and the precautions used by the big game hunting company to assure that their excursions would have no impact on the ancient environment and consequentially no impact on the current environment. I think the book’s theme could have been further developed into a novel with the attempt of the hunting guide and the hunter to fix the damage that was done in the original hunting expedition.

I recommend this book to fans of Ray Bradbury; even his lesser works are better than most other writers. I also recommend this to those who enjoy a short science fiction story which causes one to contemplate the ethic question of man’s ability to alter the past and thus altering the present and future.

Love Bradbury's writing style.

Ok, this was pretty good & I liked the narrator but somewhere around 70% I completely lost interest. My attention span isn't what it used to be and I got tired of listening to the philosophy disguised as dialogue. Maybe I'll pick it up again some day (probably not).

My people, my book-loving people, doesn't each and every one of you have a coveted author whose prose you want to just roll in? You read those words and wish you could physically sink down into them, draw them around yourself like you cling to your nice warm blankets right before your alarm clock goes off?

I want to sink into Ray Bradbury's writing and roll in it.

It's certainly stylized, which I usually don't go for, but the language is so beautifully simple. He's not blinding you with SAT words, he just has this way of taking simple, everyday ones like "cat" and "leather" and "hero" and putting them together in a haunting, poetic, and very distinctive way. And I never feel like he's doing it just to hear himself compose beautiful sentences--every sentence is trying to convey a truth, the way he sees the world.

I was looking through the quotes section for an example, sort of a soundbite to illustrate how awesome this writing is, and I find it so revealing that most of the quotes people love from this book aren't sentences, they are literally paragraphs. You can't just pluck one sentence from Bradbury and plop it down there and say "that's what I like about his writing." It's all the sentences in all the paragraphs, it's the lifeblood of the writing. Caught between reading faster so that you can read more of those lovely words, and reading slower so you can properly savor the ones you've already seen.

I should not attempt to review authors I like this much.

Hey, did you know when you put a lot of words together, they make a book?

Something Wicked This Way Comes is downright creepy, though most of the creep factor comes from the descriptions rather than from the actual plot. In fact, the plot is why I just couldn't bring myself to tip Something Wicked... up to that fifth star. Gorgeous as the writing is throughout, the lingering descriptions give the action the tendency to drag too much even for me. I'm not a big fan of the rambling soliloquy, no matter how pretty the writing. I prefer descriptions that manage to say a lot in a few words. Bradbury has those aplenty. But he's also got some that say very little for a LONG time.

Charles Halloway is probably the prime offender here, with his penchant for waxing eloquent about stuff forEVER. I understand his world-weary agedness as a counterpoint to the more bare and naive material from the boys, but it was a little excessive due to Charles' subject matter being at best tangentially related to the plot.

Still, it's top-notch Bradbury among Bradburies, haunting and poetic, rich but simple, young and old.

As for A Sound of Thunder, it felt more like an episode of The Twilight Zone (which I also adore) than a piece to be read on paper. Clipped plot, descriptions of the "in a nuthshell" variety, last-minute twist with the whole story revolving on a very simple detail. It was fine, but I probably would have preferred it in a different format.

Book on CD - still like it a lot, however my lower score is due to the fact that it was presented as a play instead of a straight read.

Exceptionally spooky and filled with the ghouls and monsters of your deepest nightmares, Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of Ray Bradbury's masterpieces for a reason. The themes are epic: the innocence and potential of youth are forced into combat with spiritual and moral corruption. Freedom is brought up against indentured servitude. In the simplest terms, good is pitted against evil. The halls of this madhouse are decorated with Bradbury's eternally capable and magical prose, and instead of being forced to deal with the nightmares in an overly gory way, you are gently shepherded through it. Nothing is hidden, but nothing is forced. Despite the epic themes, the story is dispatched capably and efficiently without seeming overwrought.

No wonder this man has influenced so many.

Oh, and I would be remiss in neglecting a mention of the short story "Sound of Thunder" at the end of the book. :)

I have honostly read this book 5 times. Bradbury is at his finest.

Okay! So I read this book like Middle School. (He was my favorite, then! I learned it from my mother.)

I even taught it one time. When? I'm not sure. Not L.A., 2001. Then, Fahrenheit 451. But sometime. (Maybe just a long-term sub. job.)

Anyhow, I'm reading it as a book-on-tape right now!

I was thinking...I'm writing some book right now. But I realized some of it I must have got inspired subconsciously by So.g Wicked. Slightly similar.

So, on one hand, you want to stay as far away as possible fr/ something similar. On the other hand, I thought, "Maybe I'll listen to it on tape." Why not? To go the opposite route (b/c I am impervious).

So, on one hand, A. I think it's pretty genius. Great characters: Dark, etc.

On other hand, maybe a tad simplistic: His father is old. Will [and Jim:] is/are young. So there's a great gulf between them!--and the old theme of death, right?

C. I think he's one of the greatest writers b/c he tried like crazy...Every line he writes tries to be poetry. Hand-crafted. And some of them are pretty great.

(And I think of him in opposition to...IDK--Stephen King. People who don't care about the individual words, sentences, or paragraphs--but just the overall story / effect. Maybe there's a better example than Stephen King. I haven't read a ton lately. Think I should try that one series...Dark Tower.

But you know what I mean: Pulp Fiction. And I read a little bit of King's book about writing, where he professes--in the foreword: that he's all about the craft and language, careful phrasing of words.)

Anyhow!

So, D. On the other hand, maybe Bradbury tried too hard? To be poetic. That now doesn't seem totally modern. Or "precious"--as they would say in UMass Amherst poetry workshops.

Maybe the problem is the guy who's reading. If he doesn't do a great job...

E. Then, I had one thought just the other day...Bradbury uses so many allusions [you know, calling things, images from everwhere:],

but I had a thought: "I wonder if he actually believed in anything." Like, a fine way with words and a great imagination. But I thought, "Wow. Maybe not totally sincerely, actually believe in the occult."

Is that possible? or valid? I don't know.

But I still like him, and the book, a bunch.