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In
the late 1960s and early 1970s it became fashionable in some quarters
to, as my sons would say, "dis" Ray Bradbury. This attitude had
a bit of a range, going from taking him for granted to concluding
that maybe this master, this craftsman, wasn't really as good as
we had thought he was. What was especially stinging here was that
some of the malcontents echoing this party line wouldn't have had
careers if it weren't for Bradbury not only opening the door but
also showing us all how it is done once we got inside.
If I were to look for the source of this attitude, I might reach
the conclusion that it is the result of Bradbury switching track,
veering away from horror a bit and going into pure fantasy, as well
as topics more firmly grounded in the mainstream. Different topics,
different venues, stories more often in Playboy, Life and McCall's
than in Fantasy & Science Fiction, but still poetic, still magical,
still able to leap tall buildings with a single keystroke.
The stories in I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC tend toward the more "mainstream"
end of Bradbury's work, but there are still nods toward fantasy
which mirror a reality uncomfortably like our own. "Downwind from
Gettysburg," for example, is about the assassination of a robotic
Abraham Lincoln. Actually, it is about the motives behind the robot's
creation, assassination, and display (this is a Bradbury story,
after all). You could easily see something like this happening in
our world. Or, the classic-the-minute-it-was-published, "I Sing
the Body Electric," which begins with the enigmatic words "Grandma! I
remember her birth" and which is by turns one of the most beautiful
and saddest stories ever written. And there is a Martian story which
is an absolute gem, and a story entitled "Henry the Ninth" which
Harlan Ellison wanted for his ingenious, groundbreaking never-to-be-equalled
Dangerous Visions project. And there is "The Kilimanjaro Device"
about the ghost of Ernest Hemingway that was published in Life.
Not as good as we thought? No --- better than we could
imagine. That is Bradbury in I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC. It is the
perfect collection, whether as an introduction to the man, or to
fill out his bibliography on your bookshelf.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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