Driving Blind

The incomparable Ray Bradbury is in the driver's seat, off on twenty-one unforgettable excursions through fantasy, time and memory, and there are surprises waiting around every curve and behind each mile marker. The journey promises to be a memorable one.

Amazon.com Review

Reading Ray Bradbury is like going through a door into a nostalgic, odd America that never existed, a universe of strange possibility that brings to mind the haunting memories of childhood. The short stories in Driving Blind are vintage Bradbury, with a pleasant smattering of ideas: dark fantasy, boyhood sense of wonder, Twilight Zone-esque twist. These 21 stories (4 are reprints) were inspired by a dream Bradbury had in which his muse, blindfolded, drove him to destinations unknown. We're glad he went along for the ride. Spare word portraits will transport you to a world of scratchy phonograph records and cuckoo clocks, evil garbage disposals and Mexican border-town circuses. Bradbury fans will enjoy revisiting the worlds of his imagination, while those new to the master will find themselves in need of another shot of Bradbury... quick. --Therese Littleton

From Library Journal

Following his Quicker than the Eye (Avon, 1996), Bradbury, author of such sf classics as Fahrenheit 451 (1953), returns in top form with another new collection of 21 short stories, only four of which were previously published. In "Fee Fie Foe Fum," Grandma fears her grandson-in-law's intentions for her with his new garbage disposal unit. In "Someone in the Rain," a man's adult experiences at a summer resort don't live up to his childhood memories. Bradbury explores a tarnished circus, one of his favorite themes, in "That Old Dog Lying in the Dust." He paints vivid word pictures of people and small towns in a kind of skewed Norman Rockwell way that moves beyond sf categorization. A must for all fiction collections.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Arriving too late for a full review, grandmaster Bradbury's latest collection (Quicker Than the Eye, 1996, etc.) consists of 17 new tales and 4 reprints, 197497. Among the themes: gambling, WW II, a dead man who doesn't realize he's dead, sexual awakening and ghost stories, a mysterious theft, a sinister butcher and an equally sinister garbage disposal unit, a man with no face who's an expert car salesman (the title piece), circuses, moths, twins, September, a street-cleaning machine, a persecuted smart kid, Irish blarney, religion, and the death of Death. Typically diverse, veering between sentiment and nostalgia, and set forth in the curiously mannered, modern-antique style that has become Bradbury's trademark. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

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