R is for Rocket

This is another book of short stories from the master writer Ray Bardbury. The shortest in the collection is three pages and the longest is forty-seven, but most are around ten pages. As the title suggests most of these stories are science fiction, but some are fantasy and some are about the magic of every-day life. In many stories there is an atmosphere of small-town-America, an America which seems to have been lost since the 1950's. Not surprisingly most of the tales have a copyright date somewhere in that decade, but this did not spoil the book for me at all. The text is much too well drafted to suffer from minor points like that. This book is ideal if you only occasionally have an hour, or half an hour, to spare in a busy life. This book will dazzle you for that short time and leave you feeling like you have had a short holiday in another world.

I'll start with mentioning a couple forms of reading I sometimes do NOT like. I sometimes don't like short story collections that are written in a fashion requiring excessive reader "work" in constructing the environment. You figure out what's going on . . . and it's over and time to start the next story (I know this sounds lazy, but I do often read for RELAXATION). And, I sometimes do not enjoy science-fiction that is overly technical, or overwhelms me with bizarre foreign names, terms and political structures. This book is none of the above. This is a wonderful collection of easy reading and imaginative sci-fi short stories. Fit for readers of any age, it is the kind of stuff that makes one hunger for more science fiction (or more Ray Bradbury, anyway). I found myself looking forward to the world to be found in each successive story, and certainly was saddened to reach the end of the short book. There is a sister work, "S is for Space", which is more of the same good stuff. I promise you'll enjoy it.

I remember reading this when I was a kid. Frost and Fire ignited my imagination dreaming of spaceships and what it would be like to travel the galaxy. Highly recommended read.

Too many books, so little time...I finally picked up this collection of Bradbury classics and loved nearly every story. These stories cover the gamut from time travel, to monsters, to the wonder of a child getting a new pair of sneakers for the summer. I found that many of the stories had children of child like themes. _The Sound of Summer Running_ definately hit home for me. _The Long Rain_ reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft's story about man being stranded on Venus. And _A Sound of Thunder_ is a classic story of the consequences of theoretical time travel...at the expense of a single butterfly. This is NOT a novel, it is a collection of short stories. Many of them fantastical...few based in science, since at the time little was known about Mars, or Venus, or space travel. Definately Golden Age sci-fi here.

I am quite baffled by the previous review of this book. Our reviewer from Maine insists that Mr. Bradbury has produced much better material than this "junk" and that this "novel" was a weird, disappointing read. R is For Rocket is an anthology, not a novel, and does not (nor is it intended to) provide any semblance of a sequential story line. Furthermore, R is For Rocket is largely a collection of previously released material, containing some of Bradbury's most popular and acclaimed works from earlier anthologies (such as The Golden Apples of the Sun), and includes such landmark works as "A Sound of Thunder", easily among Bradbury's Top 10 Short Fiction Works. Every story in this anthology is not a masterwork, but there are enough masterworks present to make up for the occasional misstep. Anyone who has ever had childhood fantasies of becoming an astronaut cannot help but be moved by the title story. And mainstream fiction stories like "The Sound of Summer Running" should tweak the heartstrings of anyone who has ever taken pleasure in being a child, even if one has never harbored a burning desire for space flight or distant worlds. Bradbury's timeless prose evokes nostalgia for a time that never was, a future that never occurred, but oh, it should have. Most of these stories have been rendered obsolete by technology, but the style and mythic quality present in them will ensure their continued presence long after many of Ray Bradbury's contemporaries are forgotten. Weird, perhaps. Junk, most definitely not. If flowery flights of fantasy and fond remembrances of childhood don't float your boat, then perhaps you should try Thomas Disch.