This 1997 short story collection is uneven and at times weak. There is less fantasy or science fiction than in many of Bradbury’s earlier works. All but four of the stories are new. A snapshot of the collection is seen in some of the themes.
In the short story “Remember Me?” we find the theme of meeting a familiar face in a distant place.
The theme of children’s storytelling and kissing games is found in “House Divided”.
The theme of looking up an old flame is in “I Wonder What’s Become of Sally?”.
One of my favorite themes, the revenge of the nerd everybody picked on is the theme of “The Highest Branch on the Tree”.
But the book has some terrific moments. Examples are when Bradbury recalls a tiny, dusty, moth-eaten Mexican circus, tells the hilarious story of Irish drinking buddies looking for a safe place in the bogs to take a woman, and yet another tale of perfect love squandered (“Madame et Monsieur Shill”).
If you’re new to Bradbury, this will do nicely, but for veteran readers it’s a bit of same old same old.
My access card unlocked the door. As I stepped inside, motion detectors turned on banks of fluorescent lights filling the room with near-blinding white light. A blast of refrigerated air caused goose bumps to form on my arms and the nape of my neck. Tiny pulsating blue, green, yellow, and red LED bulbs filled the room signaling the nonstop activity of one thousand computer servers.
The dancing signals reminded me of Mercy Hospital’s biomedical equipment. For months, as I sat in mother’s hospital room I watched them flash their never-ending warnings.
While I never understood the lines on the heart monitor, I knew if the line went flat, doctors and nurses raced trying to save the patient. If they could not resuscitate her, hearts broke. I knew the monitor’s continuous flat line pronounced death. Soon after that proclamation, a doctor with solemn eyes would confirm the machine’s decree. In time, the chaplain followed offering religious comfort in whatever denominational flavor the family preferred.
Breast cancer consumed mother. She wasted away under the machines’ watch care. The lights danced their death ritual. The beeps disturbing her rest until the lines on the heart monitor screen pointed to eternity. Then, she was gone.
“It’s on the second server rack,” said Andrew, the night computer operator. His voice broke my reminiscing. He pointed to my left making sure I knew where our problem child resided.
My thoughts focused on why I hurried to work at two o’clock in the morning. I moved over to the finicky server. I started my diagnosis by connecting the keyboard, mouse, and flat-panel monitor that made up the crash cart as we called it. As I leaned in for a look, I placed my left hand behind my back.
“I found your problem,” I yelled in a voice that boomed over the roar of the servers, switches, and air conditioners.
Scratching the stubble on his chin, Andrew said, “Wha – what was wrong?”
I stood up straight glaring at Andrew. “The server hung up when rebooting. It’s right here on the screen. That’s why we couldn’t access it with a remote connection. My guess is it happened when you restarted it after applying the patches. It’s rebooting now. Yes, it’s starting okay.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Andrew, that’s something you have to find and fix on your own if you want to work here long-term. I should troubleshoot and repair this. You just hook up a crash cart as I did, check the monitor, find the problem and fix it. I’ll check the log files in the morning. Open a Severity 3 problem ticket. Assign it to me. Keep an eye on it, but I don’t expect any problems.”
“Thank you, James. You know I hate to call and wake you up.”
I nodded.
“Idiot,” I thought
“I appreciate it. I would be in a fix without you. Go home. Enjoy the company of your bride,” Andrew said.
I understood. It seemed most of my coworkers were surprised at both my recent marriage and that I wed someone as beautiful and charming as Kat.
“Please give my apology to your Katherine,” he said with an even bigger grin adding a wink.
“I hope the rest of your night is quiet. If you must know, I was just trying to get to sleep – as if it’s any of your business,” I said as I headed for the door.
The servers’ blue, green, yellow, and red lights flashed their goodbyes to me. They reminded me of the conversation Kat, and I had that evening. At first, we were trying to make sense out of life while dreaming of a bright future and long life together. Then I talked about mother’s death while Kat listened. Next, we discussed how the grim reaper had a destiny with everyone. Just before the call, our conversation had shifted to mother’s twin sister Elizabeth.
Aunt Elizabeth became a dedicated vegetarian, runner of marathons and breast cancer activist in the two years between mother’s death and her own malignancy’s diagnosis. Since her tumor’s discovery, she had morphed from athletic and energetic to a bed-ridden skeleton, unable to take care of herself or even control routine bodily functions. The grim reaper was at her door, knocking. I didn’t know how soon the door would open, but I knew it would open.
Before her cancer, Aunt Elizabeth lived an active lifestyle. That changed. A routine self-exam while showering discovered the lump. A mammogram followed. Then the biopsy, the radiation treatments, having a double, radical mastectomy “just to be safe” she had said and now the metastatic breast cancer at only age 47, the death sentence.
My grandparents, Aunt Elizabeth’s parents, were dead. She didn’t have any brothers. My mother, her only sister, had died four years. She had never married. Had no partner and had never had children. I was her only living relative.
After marriage, Kat and I rented the other half of Aunt Elizabeth’s duplex. Kat had become her closest friend and as the daughter, she wished she had. My wife loved her more than she loved her mother, doing what she could to care for her, trying to make her comfortable. Kat was in total denial of my aunt’s condition.
#
One day Aunt Elizabeth’s physician said the end was near. She had less than three months. The doctor recommended she get her personal affairs in order and immediate hospice care if for nothing more than providing Kat, and I support as we cared for her. She had removed her glasses getting serious when the physician added the hospice could also provide something to mask the ever-increasing pain.
“James,” Aunt Elizabeth said struggling to catch her breath. “The drugs scare me.”
“I understand.” I held her hand looking at the fear in her eyes.
She continued in a breathy, low voice, “No, I’m not sure you do. Those drugs are both evil and good. The masking of pain is their benefit. James, I fear they will destroy my mental faculties. That frightens me more than death. I don’t want to fade into a drug induced stupor where I don’t recognize Kat or you.”
I nodded.
#
Each morning before work, I checked on Aunt Elizabeth. My routine was taking her a cup of black coffee and bowl of grits for breakfast. She loved grits. She would add sugar and real butter, not that artificial margarine. She also savored her coffee nursing it to last all morning.
Kat’s job permitted her to work from home allowing her to check on our patient every few hours.
One Saturday morning after breakfast when Kat wasn’t there, Aunt Elizabeth had a frank talk with me.
“James,” she said. “I’ve decided to stop all treatments. It’s time to face reality. I am going to die. I want to depart this life with a clear mind. I may wither away as the cancer destroys my body, but I don’t want the long death your mother went through or any hospitals.”
I looked at Aunt Elizabeth. Her words were heading where I wasn’t expecting. “Go on,” I heard my voice say.
“I’m not afraid of dying. We all have to face it. I’m going to embrace death. I’ve decided to go to heaven in the next few days,” she said.
I watched her facial expressions as she next shared how her faith would sustain her through the passage from this life to the next. I smiled as she even shared her Christian faith trying to make sure I would join her and mother one day in heaven. I tried not being too annoyed as she pressed me for a reply, not to her evangelization of me, but that I assist in her suicide.
I remembered mother’s suffering. I wanted better for Aunt Elizabeth.
“James, I can’t do this by myself. I don’t have the means to get the required medication to put me to sleep … permanent like. You must help.”
I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth as I replied, “Yes, I’ll help.” I could not believe I gave such a cavalier answer.
#
At work that morning, all I could do is think about what I had agreed to do. I knew it was the right decision, but I had agreed to kill Aunt Elizabeth. I took the afternoon off as I was face to face with an ethical dilemma. I had agreed to help Aunt Elizabeth commit suicide.
I hadn’t drunk since I was in the army, but that day I downed my first liquor in over five years. I drank and drank, as the finality of the decision I made became reality. The bartender had to call Kat to come rescue me from myself.
“What the devil are you doing drinking?” asked Kat as she sat down on the stool beside me. Irritation was in her voice and on her face.
I looked up with a sheepish grin on my face.
“Hello, my love,” I said.
“Don’t you hello my love me. Why are you drinking? Dammit, you know you can’t handle alcohol.”
“Hello, my love. You look beautiful when you are mad. Work, yes, work, that’s why, and Aunt Elizabeth and the economy,” I replied.
I knew Kat would never agree to my decision. I could never broach the subject with her. She hadn’t been around to see mother’s suffering. She didn’t fathom how much worse it would get. She was too noble and virtuous for assisting in a suicide.
“How could you!” was her last comment as she helped me to the car.
I smiled a broad grin showing my teeth.
She glared at me before driving us home in icy silence.
#
I decided to have a good-bye tour for Aunt Elizabeth. Over the next few days, I invited her friends to pay their last respects in person. The visits helped keep a smile on my aunt’s face. She seemed to have found new strength from her guests.
Two days later, she asked, “James, have you figured out how to do it yet? I’d like to die this Sunday.”
I looked out the window staring, thinking and didn’t reply.
She interrupted my thoughts. She said, “I figured it out. We can borrow some extra pain pills when the hospice nurse isn’t looking.”
“What? We can’t do that.”
“Honey, I remembered the nurse mentioning I was on the largest dosage of the pain pills. She said not to take too many. That would bring the end faster than we wanted. I recall she said only five or six of the pills would kill a person. We only have to skip one pill a day to have five saved by the weekend. I already have four stashed.” She reached under her pillow collecting her supply in her hand then slowly moved her clenched fist in my direction. As the hand drew closer, her fist opened showing four pills resting in the palm of her hand.
I turned toward my aunt. I rubbed my center of my forehead with the tips of my fingers. After a deep breath, I said, “Sunday, we’ll do it Sunday morning. I’ll grind up the pills and mix them with your grits. We can pray, watch your television preacher and then you can enjoy your grits.”
“Yes and have Katherine bath me Saturday night,” instructed Aunt Elizabeth. “I have a new nightgown in my dresser. I want to wear it. Make sure you call Brenda and Jennifer from my Bible study class. Brenda can do my hair. Jennifer can do my nails. Did you know they own The Magic Mirror? I use that beauty shop. I must look my best to greet Saint Peter when I arrive at the Pearly Gates. First impressions are important. Have them come Saturday afternoon, say 2 PM and please tell them, I will be forever grateful.”
I had to turn away, look at the floor. I was choking up, about to cry.
Get a hold of yourself. Death is her choice. Looking up from the floor, I said, “I’ll call them. Yes, I knew that was their business.”
“James. I’m ready,” she said. The fear disappeared from her eyes.
I nodded. Nothing more was said. I made the requested arrangements. Saturday went well. Kat asked no questions. She bathed her and changed her into a new gown. Brenda did her hair where she looked like she was ready for the country club black-tie dance. Jennifer manicured and painted her nails.
#
Saturday night I went to bed thinking about Sunday morning’s plans.
“What’s wrong?” asked Kat.
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Aren’t we going to make love?”
I smiled. “Darling, I’m just too tired. Work has me pretty stressed out. Besides, you know I’m on-call. The servers have been finicky, as Andrew has done software patching again. This weekend is the production Linux servers.”
“Well, okay, but don’t let this become a habit,” she said. She kissed my forehead.
My statement about the servers was true. The stress I faced was accepting the fact I would be Aunt Elizabeth’s executioner in but a few hours, and I would be her executioner.
Kat was right; I had never turned down sex before in my life. One of the things I like about Kat was she was one of the few women I ever knew who liked sex as much as I did, but not tonight.
Sleep was hard to come as my thoughts focused on Aunt Elizabeth. Sometimes I saw mother’s face. Around one o’clock, I fell asleep.
At two in the morning, I awoke to a text then a phone call that the production Linux servers didn’t like the new patches Andrew applied tonight. My going into the office would make sure the jobs scheduled for five o’clock A.M. ran on their appointed timetable.
I told Kat what was up and hurried to the data center.
When I returned home just before seven A.M., all was quiet. I thought of my commitment to Aunt Elizabeth. I went into the kitchen and started cooking a big pot of grits. I took the pills and crushed them in a cup. I used the handle of a knife for the pestle and ground them into a fine powder. With care, I stirred the medicine into the pot of grits. I was afraid of not using enough meds to do the job, so I ground up all the pills.
Another text from Andrew came in interrupting my cooking, and my work phone started ringing before I finished reading the message. The data center again required my attention. A Linux Server wasn’t restarting. It hosted the critical database. A reboot of the server failed to correct the issue. If I didn’t get there and get it repaired fast, the weekly Sunday only jobs wouldn’t start on time. Therefore, they would fail to finish running today. There would be the heck to pay Monday morning if the jobs failed to complete. I could see my director’s red face and hear his booming bass voice yelling at me if he had to explain to the VP why the jobs didn’t finish. I physically shook just thinking about the situation.
I turned off the burner heating the grits. I removed the pot from the burner.
“Who called?” asked Kat. She stood in the kitchen door leaning against the door frame.
I filled her in on the impending disaster at work.
“Don’t touch the grits. I’ll take Aunt Elizabeth her breakfast when I return. I promised her I would spend time with her this morning. You could go into the data center with me,” I said with a wink.
“No way am I going to that freezing, noisy place. Besides, I am not going to let that pervert Andrew rape me with his eyes. Good luck. I’m going back to bed,” said Kat.
#
At the data center, the tiny pulsating blue, green, yellow, and red lights greeted me signaling the nonstop activity of one thousand computer servers. Again, the dancing lights had me thinking of our hospital’s biomedical equipment. One hour later, the issue solved, and I arrived back at the duplex. I had averted another potential crisis.
“Kat, I back,” I said as I opened the door to the duplex.
There was no answer.
“Kat?”
I glanced in the bedroom. The bed was empty. Kat wasn’t there. I noticed the stove top. Gone was the pot of grits. I felt sick to my stomach as I made my way next door.
I could hear the TV preacher delivering his sermon as I entered Aunt Elizabeth’s side of the duplex. A faint, distant hissing sound produced a white noise in the background. I saw the pot of grits was sitting on the kitchen counter. My aunt’s face came into view. She had a blank stare with tear stains visible on her cheeks. A bowl with a spoon in it sat on her nightstand.
On the dark mahogany end table, next to the recliner was a second bowl. Kat sat slumped in the recliner, eyes wide open, her countenance showing the shock of her unexpected face-to-face meeting with death’s grim reaper. She looked more mad than peaceful.
“Kat?” I said.
Turning toward me, she stood and screamed, “How could you? How could you?”
“How could I what?”
Two uniformed police officers stepped out of Aunt Elizabeth’s second bedroom. The shorter one said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”
I looked at Aunt Elizabeth. I saw tears again streaming down her cheeks.
“James, Kat said the grits smelled funny. I told her why they smelled to keep her from eating them.”
“How could you?” screamed Kat a second time. She reached for me with her hands trying to choke me.
I sidestepped her attack.
“When I told her why,” added Aunt Elizabeth, “she freaked out and called the police.”
“Yes, I did,” said Kat.
“The police said I am unable to make my competent decisions. James, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
I nodded.
The taller police officer said, “Let’s go sir. You are under arrest for attempted murder by poisoning.”
Beep, beep, beep blared the alarm.
“What the?” said the shorter officer.
We all looked toward the kitchen. The sound was coming from that direction.
“It must be the smoke alarm,” said the second officer. “I don’t smell any smoke. I’ll turn it off.”
“It’s in the kitchen,” said Kat.
“Ha.” A sinister, psychotic grin appeared on Aunt Elizabeth’s face as she showed them a Bic® lighter held in her right hand. “You’ll give me my bowl of grits or I’ll flick my Bic®.”
The relentless beeping of the alarm continued.
“My god, that’s not a smoke detector, that’s a natural gas detector,” said the shorter officer. “She’s filled the house with natural gas.”
I saw she had used some of her last strength and opened the old gas jet at the head of her bed.
“Give me my grits, then stand back, or you all join me meeting our maker now!” she screamed.
She held the Bic® out with her thumb primed, ready to ignite the lighter.
“Give me my Grits! You’re too slow!”
#
“Saint Peter, the last thing I remember was seeing Aunt Elizabeth. She flicked her Bic®. Then there was an immediate flash of light, explosion, ball of fire engulfing me, and then suddenly I’m standing in front of you telling my story,” I said.
“And the Moon Be Still as Bright” was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1948.
The next chapter opens with the men of the Fourth Expedition gathering firewood against the cold Martian evening. The scientists have found that all the Martians have died of chickenpox (brought by one of the first three expeditions) — analogous to the devastation of Native American populations by smallpox.
The men, except for the archaeologist Spender and Captain Wilder, become more boisterous. Spender loses his temper when one of his crew-mates starts dropping empty wine bottles into a clear blue canal. He knocks him into the canal. When questioned by his captain, Spender replies “We’ll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves…We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things,” referring to Earth. He leaves the rest of the landing party to explore Martian ruins.
Note that, in some editions of the collection, the two stories about Jeff Spender have been combined as one.The two collections are chapters seven and eight.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years. This story is advanced from 2001 to 2032.
The Third Expedition was first published as “Mars is Heaven!” in Planet Stories, Fall 1948.
The arrival and demise of the third group of Americans to land on Mars is described by this story. This time the Martians are prepared for the Earthlings. When the crew arrives, they see a typical town of the 1920s filled with the long-lost loved ones of the astronauts.
Captain John Black tells his crew to stay in the rocket. The crew are so happy to see their dead family members that they ignore their captain’s orders and join their supposed family members. The Martians use the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their “old” houses where they are killed in the middle of the night by the Martians themselves. The next morning, sixteen coffins exit sixteen houses and are buried.
The original short story was set in the 1960s and dealt with characters nostalgic for their childhoods in the Midwestern United States in the 1920s. In the Chronicles version, which takes place forty years later but which still relies upon 1920s nostalgia, the story has a brief paragraph about medical treatments that slow the aging process, so that the characters can be traveling to Mars in the 2000s but still remember the 1920s.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years. This story is advanced from 2000 to 2031.
Chapter five, The Taxpayer, first appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
A man insists that he has a right to be let onto the next rocket to Mars, because he is a taxpayer. He insists on being let on the ship so strongly because the Earth will be having a great atomic war soon, and no one wants to be around when it happens. He is not allowed on the ship and eventually gets taken away by the police.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years. This story is advanced from 2000 to 2031.
Chapter Four – The Earth Men (August 1999/2030) was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948. This story tells of the “Second Expedition” to Mars.
The astronauts arrive to find the Martians to be strangely unresponsive to their presence. The one exception to this is a group of Martians in a building who greet them with a parade. Several of the Martians in the building claim to be from Earth or from other planets of the solar system, and the captain slowly realizes that the Martian gift for telepathy allows others to view the hallucinations of the insane, and that they have been placed in an insane asylum.
The Martians they have met all believed that their unusual appearance was a projected hallucination. Because the “hallucinations” are so detailed and the captain refuses to admit he is not from Earth, Mr. Xxx, a psychiatrist, declares him incurable and kills him. When the “imaginary” crew does not disappear as well, Mr. Xxx shoots and kills them.
Finally, as the “imaginary” rocket remains in existence, Mr. Xxx concludes that he too must be crazy and shoots himself. The ship of the Second Expedition is sold as scrap at a junkyard.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years from 1999 to 2030.
Photo of Robert A. Heinlein from Imagination, 1953 (scan of original magazine), digitally enhanced, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
I love reading and writing short stories. A few years ago I came up with the idea of writing a nonfiction article on the five most influential pre-1950 computers in science fiction. In researching that list of potential computers, I read a number of books and short stories. E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” topped off the list. It left me speechless and amazed. I wrote a review about that story last week. You can find it HERE.
The second short story on the list is “Misfit” by Robert A. Heinlein. In the weeks ahead I will share some of the science fiction gems I unearthed or rediscovered.
“Misfit” is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. It was originally titled Cosmic Construction Corps before being renamed by the editor John W. Campbell. The November 1939 issue of “Astounding Science Fiction” first published the story. One of the earliest of his Future History stories, it was later included in the collections Revolt in 2100 and The Past Through Tomorrow.
The story concerns Andrew Jackson Libby (here nicknamed Pinky, for his red hair, but later nicknamed Slipstick), a boy from Earth with extraordinary mathematical ability but meager education. He found few opportunities on Earth. He joins the Cosmic Construction Corps, a future military-led version of the Civilian Conservation Corps (remember it from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal?) employing out-of-work youth to colonize the Solar System. With a group of other inexperienced young men, he is assigned to a ship traveling to the asteroid belt where their task is to move an asteroid into a more convenient orbit between Mars and Earth.
Pinky comes to the Captain’s attention during the process of blasting holes in the asteroid for rocket engines. Pinky realizes that a mistake has been made in calculating the size of the charge, preventing a catastrophic blast.
He is assigned to the ship’s astrogation computer. During the trip back to Earth, the computer malfunctions and Libby take over, performing all the complex calculations in his head. The asteroid is settled successfully into its final orbit.
“Slipstick” Libby became one of Heinlein’s recurring characters, and would later appear in several works associated with Lazarus Long, among them Methuselah’s Children and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
The short story includes one of the first examples of the phrase “space marine”.
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists. The book lies somewhere between a short story collection and an episodic novel, containing stories Bradbury originally published in the late 1940s in science fiction magazines. For publication, the stories were loosely woven together with a series of short, interstitial vignettes.
Bradbury has credited Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as influences on the structure of the book. He has called it a “half-cousin to a novel” and “a book of stories pretending to be a novel”. As such, it is similar in structure to Bradbury’s short story collection, The Illustrated Man, which also uses a thin frame story to link various unrelated short stories.
The first third (set in the period from January 1999—April 2000) details the attempts of the Earthmen to reach Mars, and the various ways in which the Martians keep them from returning. In the crucial story, “—And the Moon be Still as Bright”, it is revealed by the fourth exploratory expedition that the Martians have all but perished in a plague caused by germs brought by one of the previous expeditions. This unexpected development sets the stage for the second act (December 2001—November 2005), in which humans from Earth colonize the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. However, as war on Earth threatens, most of the settlers pack up and return home. A global nuclear war ensues, cutting off contact between Mars and Earth. The third act (December 2005—October 2026) deals with the aftermath of the war, and concludes with the prospect of the few surviving humans becoming the new Martians, a prospect already foreshadowed in “—And the Moon be Still as Bright”, and which allows the book to return to its beginning.
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years (thus running from 2030 to 2057), includes “The Fire Balloons”, and replaces “Way in the Middle of the Air” (a story less topical in 1997 than in 1950) with the 1952 short story “The Wilderness”, dated May 2034 (equivalent to May 2003 in the earlier chronology).
Next week I’ll begin doing a summary for all 31 of the short stories in the book summarizing one each Monday.
Kristen Clark and Lawrence J. Clark book “How to Write & Publish Your Inspirational Short Story” is a must read for not only writers of inspirational short stories, but for short story writers of any genre. It delivers on the promise of the book’s title. It shows you how to do it.
I liked the way the book begins telling their story of how they got started. The authors share their experiences and lessons learned when writing and getting their work published. They are writing from the practitioner point of view. The content of the chapters matches the chapter titles. Chapters titles like The Art of Getting Started, A Powerful Opening, The Compelling Ending as well as Writing Tips and Editing will guide the want to be writer through the process and serve as sharpen the skills of the established short story author.
Bravo on a job well done. This is a much-needed work addressing the short story from the inspirational point of view with principles and ideas that work in any genre. Five stars with a strong recommendation. It would make a great resource for writing groups or college English writing classes.
