The first time I read the super short story I was like "What?!?". I had to read it again, lol. I found The Tombstone interesting, but I didn't knock my socks off.
The Tombstone story sounds like something from Tales from the Crypt... the idea of a woman just having fun and accidentally scaring her neighbor to death with all of the paternalistic moralizing undertones sounds very familiar. Or maybe I heard it as a kid. We had a record (long since lost to time) of Ray Bradbury horror stories, which I believe were read by Bradbury himself. I remember that one of them was about a ghost town that was literally inhabited by ghosts.
A lot of Bradbury's early stories are horror & fantasy - his later stories tended to be SF & mainstream. Bradbury seemed to give his stories in those fields a little bit extra than most, probably because of his balanced & poetic prose. Nobody could write quite like him.
Not long after Bradbury passed, I read a very loving biography (bordering on hagiography) called The Bradbury Chronicles, in which he reveals some of his kinda-but-not-really sordid episodes in his life (in his failings, there's this Midwestern wholesomeness about him). I think b/c Ray Bradbury, though not particularly religious at all, was still imbued those once-traditional moral values, when does go into the dark places, it has a surprising, unnerving power, one of my favorite characters being the operator of the carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury is both disturbing and delicious. I'm very happy you guys are covering him. As has been noted, for some reason, he's not much talked about, and the guy (at least for me) is a god in the field.
@@daruekeller If I remember, in the framing story of The Illustrated Man, the Illustrated Man only says he work/ed in carnivals, not that he ran one. However, the tattoo motif is such a delicious one, the operator, at least in the film version (which R.B. wrote) does have tattoos; I might be mistaken (it's been years since I read it) but I think the same scene (when Dark makes the boys see images on his arm) appears in the book; but, again, I could be wrong. In Bradbury's work, you'll see a bunch of motifs constantly cropping up, especially when it comes to carnivals, funhouse (mirrors), rides. There is always something sinister behind the veneer of the carnival--sinister, seedy. I mean, carnivals in general. Hope that helps. God bless.
I haven't read the stories in question, though they sound interesting, particularly the Tombstone one. I'm not really sure why, as a huge fan of short stories, I haven't got all of Bradbury's stuff that I can. On that note, I wanted to address something you mentioned here -- and please know that I'm not angry or wanting to start any kind of row when I bring this up. I'm sure each of us has our own experience with relationships, abuse, power, humiliation, etc, that we could all share if we wanted to -- but I want to be more general here and say that, yes, I agree things have gotten better, in the sense that society (at least in this part of the world) won't judge a person so for ending a marriage or simply having the guts to walk away from a toxic situation involving family or partners. But as someone who has seen first-hand, and talked to a number of people in bad domestic situations, I want to say that for many, it's still not that easy at all. You can get impatient, exasperated, or feel sad for a person stuck in a bad domestic situation, but I don't think we should judge them either for their apparent reluctance to leave. There could be all sorts of reasons for that. For some people, a relationship, even a dangerous one, can lead to feelings of validation and even security that it can be next to impossible to just throw aside. I'm usually the guy on the other side of this, having been through a few breakups of course, and a divorce, and seeing situations where I felt the best thing for all parties involved was, indeed, to break up and get out of each other's lives. In particular, it can affect us deeply when our friends are in these sorts of troubling partnerships, and we hear about every day, understand the obvious solution, but know that the people involved just won't take it. This happens now, and the laws around divorce etc being more liberal in 2024 doesn't really change the reality of abuse and painful cycles of denial, fear, insecrutiy and so on. SO yes, divorce is good, definitely (my parents needed it when I was a kid, too), but we can't expect everyone we care about to just do the right thing and avoid tragedy. As mentioned I haven't read the Tombstone so maybe after that I'll be able to comment more readily on this one. But Bradbury taking the woman's perspective does seem like it was maybe an important thing to do, especially at the time. maybe you are right and nowadays wewould maybe want to see more justification of her actions, but as you also said, these are really short stories, and there's certainly a lot of fiction (even going back a lot further than this one) that goes a lot more in depth about what this kind of stuff can actually do to people on an emotional and psychological level. The way you describe this really reminds me of something you might see in E.C. comics just a few years later, or the filmed versions of some of the stories done by Amicus in the 1970s.
hey... I got an idea for you guys... An occasional feature where people describe a science fiction story they can't remember the name/author, and you or Comments section, answer the question. sorta a 'name that tune' thing. Sometimes you can find such things via google/search but often not too.
The first time I read the super short story I was like "What?!?". I had to read it again, lol. I found The Tombstone interesting, but I didn't knock my socks off.
I agree. That first one was crazy!
Man falls in love with a guillotine, still a better story than Twilight. Hey bud, you sound a little under the weather, you good?
Thanks for asking, I'm just fine. I agree about Twilight; it's kind of a mess.
it is not for nothing that they call her ... madame Guillotine.
The Tombstone story sounds like something from Tales from the Crypt... the idea of a woman just having fun and accidentally scaring her neighbor to death with all of the paternalistic moralizing undertones sounds very familiar.
Or maybe I heard it as a kid. We had a record (long since lost to time) of Ray Bradbury horror stories, which I believe were read by Bradbury himself. I remember that one of them was about a ghost town that was literally inhabited by ghosts.
That sounds super cool!
Image an alternate reality in which Ray Bradbury continued on into the Dark Side.
That would be crazy!
A lot of Bradbury's early stories are horror & fantasy - his later stories tended to be SF & mainstream.
Bradbury seemed to give his stories in those fields a little bit extra than most, probably because of his balanced & poetic prose.
Nobody could write quite like him.
I agree. He was a true genius.
Not long after Bradbury passed, I read a very loving biography (bordering on hagiography) called The Bradbury Chronicles, in which he reveals some of his kinda-but-not-really sordid episodes in his life (in his failings, there's this Midwestern wholesomeness about him). I think b/c Ray Bradbury, though not particularly religious at all, was still imbued those once-traditional moral values, when does go into the dark places, it has a surprising, unnerving power, one of my favorite characters being the operator of the carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury is both disturbing and delicious. I'm very happy you guys are covering him. As has been noted, for some reason, he's not much talked about, and the guy (at least for me) is a god in the field.
Very true. Well said.
question, is carnival operator in SWtWC is called "the illustrated man" IIRC, is it meant to be related to the _other_ illustrated man?
@@daruekeller If I remember, in the framing story of The Illustrated Man, the Illustrated Man only says he work/ed in carnivals, not that he ran one. However, the tattoo motif is such a delicious one, the operator, at least in the film version (which R.B. wrote) does have tattoos; I might be mistaken (it's been years since I read it) but I think the same scene (when Dark makes the boys see images on his arm) appears in the book; but, again, I could be wrong. In Bradbury's work, you'll see a bunch of motifs constantly cropping up, especially when it comes to carnivals, funhouse (mirrors), rides. There is always something sinister behind the veneer of the carnival--sinister, seedy. I mean, carnivals in general. Hope that helps. God bless.
I haven't read the stories in question, though they sound interesting, particularly the Tombstone one. I'm not really sure why, as a huge fan of short stories, I haven't got all of Bradbury's stuff that I can. On that note, I wanted to address something you mentioned here -- and please know that I'm not angry or wanting to start any kind of row when I bring this up. I'm sure each of us has our own experience with relationships, abuse, power, humiliation, etc, that we could all share if we wanted to -- but I want to be more general here and say that, yes, I agree things have gotten better, in the sense that society (at least in this part of the world) won't judge a person so for ending a marriage or simply having the guts to walk away from a toxic situation involving family or partners. But as someone who has seen first-hand, and talked to a number of people in bad domestic situations, I want to say that for many, it's still not that easy at all. You can get impatient, exasperated, or feel sad for a person stuck in a bad domestic situation, but I don't think we should judge them either for their apparent reluctance to leave. There could be all sorts of reasons for that. For some people, a relationship, even a dangerous one, can lead to feelings of validation and even security that it can be next to impossible to just throw aside. I'm usually the guy on the other side of this, having been through a few breakups of course, and a divorce, and seeing situations where I felt the best thing for all parties involved was, indeed, to break up and get out of each other's lives. In particular, it can affect us deeply when our friends are in these sorts of troubling partnerships, and we hear about every day, understand the obvious solution, but know that the people involved just won't take it. This happens now, and the laws around divorce etc being more liberal in 2024 doesn't really change the reality of abuse and painful cycles of denial, fear, insecrutiy and so on. SO yes, divorce is good, definitely (my parents needed it when I was a kid, too), but we can't expect everyone we care about to just do the right thing and avoid tragedy.
As mentioned I haven't read the Tombstone so maybe after that I'll be able to comment more readily on this one. But Bradbury taking the woman's perspective does seem like it was maybe an important thing to do, especially at the time. maybe you are right and nowadays wewould maybe want to see more justification of her actions, but as you also said, these are really short stories, and there's certainly a lot of fiction (even going back a lot further than this one) that goes a lot more in depth about what this kind of stuff can actually do to people on an emotional and psychological level. The way you describe this really reminds me of something you might see in E.C. comics just a few years later, or the filmed versions of some of the stories done by Amicus in the 1970s.
These are some very good points. Thanks for the great comment.
hey... I got an idea for you guys... An occasional feature where people describe a science fiction story they can't remember the name/author, and you or Comments section, answer the question. sorta a 'name that tune' thing. Sometimes you can find such things via google/search but often not too.
This is a great idea, we could post it on the community tab!