By Ray Bradbury

No one blends classic American literature and poetry with my favorite genre, science fiction, like Ray Bradbury. He is a writer, story teller, and a poet above all. I was introduced to Bradbury in 7th grade by my English teacher, who had us read Dandelion Wine and Fahrenheit 451. As an adult science fiction fan, Bradbury is candy, but he’s the good candy, the flavor that stays with you and causes cravings long after. I got this from Amazon, the book devil, for cheap. Since the pandemic, many of my favorite book stores have been closed and I had to have some Bradbury.

This collection of odd stories did not disappoint. It gets it’s title directly from Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name. Google, like Amazon is both evil and amazing. I just found this fact out and immediately read Whitman’s poem. In it Whitman describes our beautiful bodies in every sensual detail, ending with this statement:

“O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!”

It seems as though Whitman has answered in 1855 the question that those of us who are interested in artificial life continue to ask ourselves, “Where does the body end and the soul begin?” The title story of Bradbury’s collection was adapted from a Twilight Zone screenplay written by the same author in 1962, and then published as a magazine story under another title in 1969. It tells the story of a group of children and their father following the tragic death of their mother. They order a custom built electronic grandmother from the Fantoccini Company. She arrives some time later in a mysterious sarcophagus, and is brought to life by turning a key. The family takes to her quickly, with the exception of the youngest who resists until she is saved from being run over by the faithful grandmother. The story is sweet and did absolutely bring a tear to my eye. Bradbury reaches into his bucket of emotional power in a way that few SciFi authors can do. His techno babble is less sophisticated, and old-timey, but that’s one of those things that is endearing to me.

Other stories of note are, The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place, about a Lord who is so nice to an angry mob, that they decide it is too much trouble to burn down his house; Tomorrows Child, about a child born partially in another dimension, and a whole bunch of weird, supernatural, and futuristic tales.