Ray Bradbury has died.
As they said on the radio, he was probably best known for novels like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. But the first of his books I read was The Day it Rained Forever, one of his many books of short stories. I think of him as a short story writer rather than a novelist. Each story took one remarkable idea and executed it perfectly. My favourite of his novels is Dandelion Wine, which is actually more like a themed collection of short stories, on growing up in small-town America between the wars, a subject to which he often returned.
He had an astonishing way with words. At one time I tried to write like he did, though now I see that would be quite impossible.
In the title story of The Day it Rained Forever, three dried-up old men in a dried-up old hotel in the desert are unexpectedly visited by a retired music teacher whose car has broken down outside. She says, “I always figured we were born to fly, one way or other, so I couldn’t stand most men shuffling along with all the iron in the earth in their blood.”
As a tribute, here are the titles of the stories in The Day it Rained Forever. If you don’t know them, read this like a poem, and let your imagination fly.
The Day it Rained Forever
In a Season of Calm Weather
The Dragon
The End of the Beginning
The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit
Fever Dream
The Referent
The Marriage Mender
The Town Where No One Got Off
Icarus Montgolfier Wright
Almost the End of the World
Dark They were and Golden-eyed
The Smile
Here there be Tygers
The Headpiece
Perchance to Dream
The Time of Going Away
The Gift
The Little Mice
The Sunset Harp
A Scent of Sarsaparilla
And the Rock Cried Out
The Strawberry Window
