40. Ray Bradbury, R is for Rocket

This is a great collection of short stories which, I think, were put together for a young adult audience though some seem quite sophisticated. Some of the stories are just brilliant. The Fog Horn is about a lighthouse whose repetitive horn and light attract an ancient sea creature from the depths of the ocean. The sea creature gets himself to the lighthouse and begins slowly and carefully introducing himself to the lighthouse and its operators who, then, foolishly turn off the horn leaving the sea creature distraught and helpless. The Rocket is about a family who can barely make ends meet in a world where only rich people get to ride in rockets to and from Mars. The father runs a scrap heap and is one day offered the opportunity to purchase a full scale model rocket. He blows the family's entire savings and proceeds to refit the rocket with car engines and other bits and pieces. He then invites his kids over, buckles them in, turns on the car engines and manages to convince them that they are on a real rocket ship leaving them forever happy. Frost and Fire is a story about a group of rockets that crashed in a planet resembling Mercury. The heavy radiation on the planet speeds up the survivors metabolism to the point that it reduces their lifespans down to just eight days which means that life has to be lived in fast forward. The survivors live in hill side caves that protect them from the extreme daytime heat and nightime cold leaving them with only dusk and dawn to go outside to gather food, get into fights, wage war and make love. All of the rockets that crashed on the planet have been destroyed but one which crash landed at the crest of a hill and has been able to survive the elements. But it is just far enough away that no one has been able to make it to the ship before they die until Sim. Sim ingeniously finds a way to get to the ship and to save many of the people from the planet.

Ray Bradbury is an interesting writer who was always a little skeptical of the advancement of technology and the dawn of space travel. This collection of stories really highlights his skepticism.