Customer Reviews

I Sing The Body Electric: And Other Stories

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When I was about 14, I went through a several year phase of reading every science fiction book I could get my hands on. And now, fifteen years later, I decided to go back and try to read a few of the books I remembered. I especially remember enjoying books by Asimov, Bradbury, Dick, Wells and a few others. This was the first one I happened to read, and I was amazed. The first few stories were kind of 'iffy', but I was quickly pulled into each and every story. Ray Bradbury has a writing talent that few today can replicate. His mastery of words and his imagination are amazing.

I've read a few 'modern' sci-fi, and they've all failed to impress me. The true wonder of sci-fi is in books like this. Sure some of the ideas are out-dated, but who cares? It is science-fiction. Stephen King and the others I read didn't seem to capture the wonder that is in books like this.

I know that some prefer modern sci-fi, but for me, the 'oldies' are where the great science-fiction lies.

A lovely short story + 1 poem collection, with some Martian and Royal Hibernian cheek by jowl. My review is in alphabetical order rather than presentation order, for ease of reference.

"Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine" - One fine summer's day, a man arrived at the train station in Green Town, Illinois - giving the name Charles Dickens.

"Christus Apollo" - A poem, speculating on how many worlds in the wide universe have seen the birth of a Christ child.

"The Cold Wind and the Warm" - The Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin is having a dull winter, when six male ballet dancers descend out of the blue for a 24 hour stay, looking for an unlikely new place.

"Downwind from Gettysburg" - Phipps says that's where we must stand, the only hearing place. (He's always dreamed of making a movie with a farmer and his son standing at the edge of the crowd listening to Lincoln's address.). Instead, he built a tourist attraction in Illinois with a robot Lincoln - and someone has now 'assassinated' the robot.

"The Haunting of the New" - Another story near Dublin's Royal Hibernian Hotel, but not with the same characters. Nora's family has lived at Grynwood for the last 200 years, each generation wilder than the last. (On Charlie's first visit, two rival ballet mobs, separated by a language barrier (Manhattan vs. Hamburg) were visiting, along with a Duchess. Nora greeted Charlie stark-naked at the front door, only to have the Duchess strip down in response as she came in.) Sometimes Marion brings his Pekingnese dog troupe, which always gets drunker and sicker than he. Now (years later) Nora offers to sell Grynwood to Charlie - and for the first time, the house has no weekend guests. What happened?

"Heavy-Set" - That's one of his nicknames, as well as Sammy (for Samson). He spends all his free time bodybuilding, but there's something not quite right about him.

"Henry the Ninth" - He's the last man in Britain, this December, because everyone else has finally given up, left the island, and relocated south. (Obviously written, I must say, by somebody who never lived through a Florida summer, but I love it anyway.)

"The Inspired Chicken Motel" - The family stayed there while looking for work in the Depression. The motel chicken laid eggs "right out of Revelation".

"I Sing the Body Electric!" - This was turned into an episode on the original Twilight Zone, which was OK, but the source is better. It begins the week the world ended - the day Tim, Tom, Agatha, and Father returned from Mother's funeral. So Father picked up a Fantoccini brochure on buying an Electrical Grandmother...

"The Kilimanjaro Device" - The narrator is one of the loyal readers of an old man who died in the wrong place at the wrong time; they've all chipped in to try to change that. The writer isn't named. If you don't recognize him from the context, look up Ernest Hemingway and start reading.

"The Lost City of Mars" - This really ought to have been in The Martian Chronicles; it explains how the dry canals were reborn. A very rich man, looking for the fabled lost city of Dia-Sao, had the canals refilled so that he could search for it by water (air and land expeditions having failed). Wilder and Parkhill (from the 4th Expedition) are invited to join the canal yacht party. Nobody quite knows why the city was abandoned.

"The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" - The doctor's shirts were an easy talking point with total strangers - designed by Jackson Pollack.

"Night Call, Collect" - When Mars was evacuated at the beginning of the war, Emil Barton was left behind in one of the Martian cities, alone. He recorded messages and set up the computers to call him at random, so he could hear a human voice. But at eighty, messages left by twenty-year-olds can be hard to take.

"The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place" - A gang of Dublin men show up at Lord Kilgotten's place to burn it down (some of them also appear in 'The Cold Wind and the Warm'). But the old lord himself answers the door, invites them in, and offers them a drink (asking them to wipe their feet, which they do). And nothing is ever as easy at you think it will be.

"The Tombling Day" - As the bodies of the old cemetery are moved to the new, Grandma has come to see William Simmons one last time. And the real tragedies of the deaths of the young are explored.

"Tomorrow's Child" - The baby was born healthy, but in the wrong dimension - he looked like a blue pyramid. A terrible problem for his parents, who can't communicate with him, and for him - he doesn't know what the 'normal' world looks like, never having seen it that way.

"The Women" - One of the 'women' is the ocean, luring the husband of the other woman to his doom.

"Yes, We'll Gather at the River" - A line from a hymn, which springs to mind since "the Lord giveth, and the Highway Commissioner taketh away." The new highway is being built 300 yards from the tiny hamlet of Oak Lane. (If you like this, read the opening chapters of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, particularly the definition of a bypass).

The edition I read had 18 stories, but by the end that felt like plenty to me. Bradbury's certainly a fine writer, but like that other renown master of the short form, Borges, he totally fails to engage me. I guess it's all a matter of taste, but the stories in this collection felt rather dated, and that's probably why I didn't enjoy them that much. Many of the stories raise questions about what it is to be human, and the intersection of humanity and the technology humans create to mimic humanity. And while they're moderately effective (especially the one about the robot grandmother), once you've read Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," everything else tends to pale in comparison. So, not my cup of tea, but that's just me.

I highly recommend this book to any fan of Ray Bradbury's work, or to anyone who wishes to introduce his classic works into their library. He is a passionate visionary that writes not only about sci-fi, but his colorful writing style encapsulates the sometimes ineffable feelings that each and every one of us have had about every possible situation in life, and dare I say, in death. I always feel like a kid again when I read his books, I am taken away to warm, sunny Saturdays when I was still in awe of the newness of life. I can hardly force myself to read the works of others as I am convinced that no one can do with words the magic that Ray Bradbury has done.

este escritor es muy bueno, escribe de manera corta e interesante y a los norteamericanos parece encantarles, sus historias son extranas tal vez localistas, tal vez solo extranas, pero son excelentes, aunque es muy americano y no creo que llegue nunca a ser muy leido en america latina, aunque en realidad no se como esta su pópularidad por aqui. este libro es muy bueno para las personas que estudian o planean estudiar cultura americana, les puede servir de complemento, tiene un buen rango de historias que van desde pueblos, hasta espaciales... LUIS MENDEZ luismendez@codetel.net.do

I've been a big fan of Ray Bradbury for ten years now, since my high school American Lit teacher gave me "Dandelion Wine" to take home over Christmas break. It wasn't assigned reading, but he knew I liked to read, as he did, and he thought I might like it. He was right. Actually, I loved it. In the years since I've read almost all of Bradbury's writing and I've been consistently impressed. Bradbury is a short-story-writing poet whose subject is the intangible wonder we all experience in our finest moments of living and dreaming. Those moments are often far-too-fleeting, but Ray Bradbury knows how to chase them down with his typewriter. I've never read a Ray Bradbury book that didn't make me feel wonderfully alive.

When I began reading "I Sing the Body Electric" I was a little worried that it wasn't up to the par of his other short story collections. Bradbury sometimes writes in broad strokes that result in unfulfilling caricature. I felt this was true of the first couple stories. But after that, the book really took off, and I felt he was firing on all cylinders again and again. "Yes, We'll Gather at the River" has to be one of my favorite Bradbury stories. "Night Call, Collect," the title story, "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine," and "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt" are other high points in the collection. He also takes some stylistic excursions in this book. "Heavy-Set" is an excellent prose portrait, but is not really like anything else he's written. There is also a poem included as the last entry in the book. If you've never read anything by Ray Bradbury, I highly recommend you pick up one of his many fine books. "I Sing the Body Electric" is right up with the best of them.

This is the kind of reading that should be taught in high schools. It is wonderfully imaginative, well constructed, and is fun to read. I hate to see this book in the SF category. It is about people and life. The real magic from the book comes from the hearts of the characters.

I remember reading this collection for the first time about 25 years ago. I was in maybe 7th or 8th grade and was going through a Bradbury period, reading everything of his I could get my hands on. To this day, Mr. Bradbury's writing touches me as few other writers ever have or will. Right now, as I write this small review, I can remember vividly, as if I were there right at this moment, lying in my bed and reading the title story. I remember the grace and humanity at its core and I remember reading the final sentence and weeping.

This is a magnificent book. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves stories and life.

Now that my children are quickly approaching their teen years - I find myself going back and looking to share with them the books that I loved as a teen; books and stories that not only introduced me into the sci-fi genre of writing, but made me pause and think of the possibilities that our world COULD hold. I Sing the Body Electric is one of those books. Ray Bradbury is at his most masterful with his stories here - some offering hope and comfort, others sharing glimpses into lives that reach far beyond our day to day realities. So, as my children reach their age of questioning and searching for knowledge, I want to share with them what I consider one of the greatest collection of stories of all time, not just of science fiction. My hope is that they too will read and marvel and wonder and question about the possibilities of what COULD be that Ray Bradbury presents in I Sing the Body Electric.