Per dieci anni ho bruciato il cervello del mondo, l'ho innaffiato di cherosene. Perdio, Millie, un libro è una mente: non si tratta solo della donna che abbiamo ucciso ieri o degli altri che l'hanno preceduta in tutti questi anni, ma dei pensieri cui ho dato fuoco con sconsiderato piacere.

The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection.The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them – and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.Rocket SummerYllaThe Summer NightThe Earth MenThe TaxpayerThe Third Expedition-And the Moon Be Still As BrightThe SettlersThe Green MorningThe LocustsNight MeetingThe ShoreInterimThe MusiciansWay in the Middle of the AirThe Naming of NamesUsher IIThe Old OnesThe MartianThe Luggage StoreThe Off SeasonThe WatchersThe Silent TownsThe Long YearsThere Will Come Soft RainsThe Million Year Picnic

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

This story begins with a conversation between an old man and a young traveler, Tomás Gomez. The older man explains that he came to Mars because he appreciates the new and novel. Even everyday things have become amazing to him once again. He has returned full circle to his childhood. Later, Tomás encounters a Martian named Muhe Ca.

This story describes the rippling outward of colonization, the first wave being loner, pioneer types, and the second, also Americans, being from the "cabbage tenements and subways" of New York.

First appeared as "…In This Sign" in Imagination, April 1951.

A missionary expedition of Episcopal priests from the United States anticipates sins unknown to them on Mars. Instead, they meet ethereal creatures glowing as blue flames in crystal spheres.

This story appeared only in The Silver Locusts, the British edition of The Martian Chronicles, the 1974 edition from The Heritage Press, the September 1979 illustrated trade edition from Bantam Books, the "40th Anniversary Edition" from Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and in the 2001 Book-of-the-Month Club edition. It otherwise appeared in The Illustrated Man.

First appeared in Weird Tales, July 1947.

This story describes the building of a Martian town by colonists and how much it was made to resemble an average Midwestern American town. The town was said to have appeared to have been swept up by a tornado on Earth, and brought to Mars.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

Several boys venture into the ruins of Martian cities. They enter houses and play with the debris, imagining that they are on earth playing with the autumn leaves. They have fun playing "white xylophones"—Martian ribcages. They play with a sense of urgency because the firemen, men whose job is to clean up the ruins of Martian cities, will presently come and clean everything up, eliminating this source of fun.

First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1952.

Two women, Janice Smith and Leonora Holmes, prepare to depart on a rocket to Mars, to find husbands or lovers waiting for them there. Janice muses on the terrors of space, drinks in last memories of the Earth she will soon be leaving, and compares her situation to that of the pioneer women of the 19th-century American frontier.

This story only appears in the 1974 edition of The Martian Chronicles by The Heritage Press, the 1979 Bantam Books illustrated trade edition, and the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles. In its original form, the story was dated 2003, and this date is consistent with the other stories. As it appears in the 1997 edition, the date (together with all the other dates) has been shifted ahead 31 years, to May 2034.

Margot is a nine-year-old girl whose family moved from Earth to Venus when she was four. She remembers the sun shining on Earth, something it rarely does on Venus. "All Summer in a Day" takes place on the one day when Venus's rain will stop, and the sun will shine for a couple of hours only.

Ray Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss. This edition features a new introduction by Bradbury, an invaluable essay on writing, wherein the author tells of his "Theater of Morning Voices," and, by inference, encourages you to listen to the same murmurings in yourself. And has any writer anywhere ever made such good use of exclamation marks!? (Illustrated by Joe Mugnaini.)

Contents:

·
The Dwarf
· ss Fantastic Jan/Feb ’54
·
The Next in Line
· nv Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947
·
The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
· ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar ’54
· Skeleton · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45
·
The Jar
· ss Weird Tales Nov ’44
·
The Lake
· ss Weird Tales May ’44
·
The Emissary
· ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947
· Touched with Fire [“Shopping for Death”] · ss Maclean’s Jun 1 ’54
·
The Small Assassin
· ss Dime Mystery Magazine Nov ’46
·
The Crowd
· ss Weird Tales May ’43
·
Jack-in-the-Box
· ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947
·
The Scythe
· ss Weird Tales Jul ’43
·
Uncle Einar
· ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947
·
The Wind
· ss Weird Tales Mar ’43
·
The Man Upstairs
· ss Harper’s Mar ’47
·
There Was an Old Woman
· ss Weird Tales Jul ’44
·
The Cistern
· ss Mademoiselle May ’47
· Homecoming · ss Mademoiselle Oct ’46
·
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
· ss Charm Jul ’54

Imagine uma época em que os livros configurem uma ameaça ao sistema, uma sociedade onde eles são proibidos. Para exterminá-los, basta chamar os bombeiros - profissionais que outrora se dedicavam à extinção de incêndios, mas que agora são os responsáveis pela manutenção da ordem, queimando publicações e impedindo que o conhecimento se dissemine como praga. Para coroar a alienação em que vive essa nova sociedade, as casa são dotadas de televisores que ocupam paredes inteiras de cômodos, e exibem "famílias" com as quais se pode dialogar, como se estas fossem de fatos reais.

Este é o cenário em que vive Guy Montag, bombeiro que atravessa série crise ideológica. Sua esposa passa o dia entretida com seus "parentes televisivos", enquanto ele trabalha arduamente. Sua vida vazia é transformada quando ele conhece a vizinha Clarisse, uma adolescente que reflete sobre o mundo à sua volta e que o instiga a fazer o mesmo. O sumiço misterioso de Clarisse leva Montag a se rebelar contra a política estabelecida, e ele passa a esconder livros em sua própria casa. Denunciado por sua ousadia, é obrigado a mudar de tática e a buscar aliados na luta pela preservação do pensamento e da memória.

Um clássico de Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 é não só uma crítica à repressão política mas também à superficialidade da era da imagem, sintomático do século XX e que ainda parece não esmorecer.

Introdução por: Manuel da Costa Pinto, escritor do prefácio desta edição de Fahrenheit 451.

آنچه بر دوش می‌کشیدند ضیافتی از داستان‌های کوتاه را ترتیب داده است. هر ‫داستان، کلاسیک یا مدرن، طعم و بوی خاص خود را دارد و مخاطب را در فضایی میان گذشته و حال شناور می‌سازد. دست‌چینی از آثار کوتاه و اندیشه‌ساز نویسندگان انگلیسی زبان، چه آن‌ها که از نژاد آنگلوساکسون بودند و در انگلستان یا ایرلند به دنیا آمدند و چه آن‌ها که در قارهٔ نو‌، پا به عرصهٔ وجود گذاشتند، پیش روی شیفتگان داستان قرار گرفته است. شخصیت‌هایی متفاوت خلق می‌شوند و برخی‌شان خواننده را در جهانی از چلش‌ها، انگیزه‌ها، کنش‌ها و تأمّلات درونی و فلسفی خویش، درگیر می‌سازند. هر شخصیت، از کودک آرمان‌خواه فاتح اسپانیایی و پدربزرگش گرفته تا ستوانی دل‌باخته به نام جیمی کراس، در آنچه بر دوش می‌کشیدند، که دل در گرو عشق مارتا دارد، جلوه‌ای آشنا از طبیعت بشر و ایده‌آل‌هایش را باز می‌آفریند و این‌گونه، احساس هم‌ذات پنداری مخاطب را برمی‌انگیزد. ولی علیرغم تفاوت‌هایی بی‌شمار که در جهان‌بینی شخصیت‌ها و نحوهٔ نگرش آن‌ها به آدم‌های پیرامونشان به چشم می‌خورد، تمامشان از وجهی مشترک برخوردارند و آن، بار تحمّل‌ناپذیر تنها بودن است که هریک به شکلی، بر دوش می‌کشند.


The present book is a selection of short and thought-provoking short stories by English-speaking authors. Each story, classic or modern, has its own taste and smell and makes the audience float between the past and the present. The theme is presented to the reader from the dark atmosphere of the stories and the pessimistic look that is housed in the lower layers, and flips over to the raw fantasy of the simple-minded who strongly believe that life is a sweet and pleasant phenomenon. In the story of "Hand", we read: A man finds an artificial hand that has fallen on the floor of the street and takes it home with him, washes it, and constantly thinks about what the owner of this hand looks like. She goes to the market to find men without hands

برگزیدهٔ داستان‌های کوتاه ری برادبری

The Golden Apples of the Sun is a collection of thirty-two of Ray Bradbury's most famous tales. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising manifestations of the future but also to the wonders of a present we could never have imagined on our own.

More than sixty years after its originally publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
--back cover

کشوری که همیشه آخر سال است. کشوری که تپه‌هایش خود مه و رودخانه‌هایش خود ابرآلودگی است؛ آن‌جا که ظهرش تند گذر است و شفق و شبش پا سفت‌کنان؛ و نیم شبش نمی‌گذرد. این کشوری است برآمده از سرداب‌ها، زیر سرداب‌ها، خاکه زغال، کمدها، زیر شیروانی‌ها و پستوها. این کشوری که مردمش خزان‌وارند تنها افکار سرد از ضمیرشان می‌گذرد. مردمش می‌گذرند با راه‌پیمایی‌های میان تهی، با صدایی که انگاری رگبار می‌زند.

‫در شب هالووین، هشت پسر برای گرفتن شکلات بیرون می‌روند ولی متوجه می‌شوند یکی از دوستان‌شان گم شده است. آنها به کمک شخصیتی مرموز در زمان و مکان سفر می‌کنند تا دوست گمشده‌شان را پیدا کنند.

That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival , later reworked into The October Country ), it is a marvelous, if mostly dark, quilt of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In an ingenious framework to open and close the book, Bradbury presents himself as a nameless narrator who meets the Illustrated Man--a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's even more remarkable, and increasingly disturbing, is that the illustrations are themselves magically alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to reenter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Even though most were written in the 1940s and 1950s, these 18 classic stories will be just as chillingly effective 50 years from now. --Stanley Wiater

Contents:

· Prologue: The Illustrated Man · ss *
· The Veldt [“The World the Children Made”] · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 23 ’50
· Kaleidoscope · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct ’49
· The Other Foot · ss New Story Magazine Mar ’51
· The Highway [as by Leonard Spalding] · ss Copy Spr ’50
· The Man · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’49
· The Long Rain [“Death-by-Rain”] · ss Planet Stories Sum ’50
· The Rocket Man · ss Maclean’s Mar 1 ’51
· The Fire Balloons [“‘In This Sign...’”] · ss Imagination Apr ’51
· The Last Night of the World · ss Esquire Feb ’51
· The Exiles [“The Mad Wizards of Mars”] · ss Maclean’s Sep 15 ’49; F&SF Win ’50
· No Particular Night or Morning · ss *
· The Fox and the Forest [“To the Future”] · ss Colliers May 13 ’50
· The Visitor · ss Startling Stories Nov ’48
· The Concrete Mixer · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr ’49
· Marionettes, Inc. [Marionettes, Inc.] · ss Startling Stories Mar ’49
· The City [“Purpose”] · ss Startling Stories Jul ’50
· Zero Hour · ss Planet Stories Fll ’47
· The Rocket [“Outcast of the Stars”] · ss Super Science Stories Mar ’50
· Epilogue · aw *

One of twelve short stories the late science-fiction legend wrote for Esquire. And, weirdly, perhaps the most lasting.

ساحره‌ی سرگردان شامل 10 داستان کوتاه ساده و سرراست است؛ داستان‌هایی که به‌ناگاه شکل می‌گیرند و اثری همچون یک تلنگر به‌جا می‌گذارند. در قصه‎‌های برادبری اشیا و محیط پیرامون به اندازه‌ی آدمها در پیشبرد قصه سهمیند؛ داستان‌ها از دل روابط بیرون می‌آیند و از اشیای پیرامون تاثیر می‌پذیرند و جهانی ملموس خلق می‌کنند.