Long after midnight

Long after midnight
by Ray Bradbury

Long after midnight
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ray Bradbury
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1977
ISBN: 0246109866
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon

Book Reviews of Long after midnight

Book Review: Treasures of imagination and wonder
Summary: 5 Stars

I must preface this review by stating that I have not read this edition but the original paperback Bantam publication from 1976. Assuming that the contents are the same, I will proceed thusly. . .

This collection of 22 short pieces might prove something of a puzzle for anybody picking it up based on Bradbury's reputation as a science fiction writer. To be sure, there are stories here that fit neatly into that genre due to subject matter (robots, time travel) or setting (Mars) but Bradbury is really not a science fiction writer so much as a storyteller. This is a distinction that seems to be much more clear today than it was back in 1976 when Bradbury seemed to be stuck with the Sci-Fi type despite stories such as those found in "Long After Midnight", which are closer to literary than genre fiction even when employing science fiction devices.

Perhaps a good example of the latter would be "The Messiah". This story simply yet profoundly examines the nature of religious faith via the characters of a missionary priest on Mars and a telepathic, shape changing Martian.

Other pieces defy any easy classification and stand alone as simple revelations of the human condition and the mysteries of life. "Getting Through Sunday Somehow" is such a one. Bradbury's gift for poetic nostalgia is used to brilliant effect here as an American writer in Dublin, facing a gray wall of ennui, is transformed and made aware of his blessings through a bar room philosopher and a street side harp player.

Bradbury, with his seemingly boundless imagination and gift for transcribing the visions of that imagination, is a treasure and these stories are literary jewels shining dark and light.

Summary of Long after midnight

Two drifters caught in the backwash of space wander from city to dead city, sifting the rubble for the fabled Blue Bottle of Mars-and find in it two different, equally entrancing, dooms...A young boy in Green Town, Illinois, does not marry-yet marries-his beloved eighth-grade teacher...In the hell of a Manhattan July night, Will Morgan is offered a possibly Mephistophelean proposal by which he might gain a perfect love and a magical immunity...A jealous husband who orders an exact replica of his unfaithful wife from an android manufacturing company (purpose: murder) runs afoul of the compassionate new "live robot" law...At forty-eight, seized with an overwhelming desire to settle an old score, a man journeys back into the past under the spell of his "utterly perfect, incredibly delightful idea," only to recoil in stunned disbelief when he confronts, at last, his former tormentor...Bradbury's imaginative field is boundless. In this book, his stories carry us from the cozy familiarity of the small-town America we lived in in Dandelion Wine to the frozen desert and double moon that have been part of our interior landscape since The Martian Chronicles. His characters range from the "ordinary"-a rookie cop, an unhappy wife on vacation in Mexico, an old parish priest hearing confession-to the quite extraordinary: the parrot to whom Ernest Hemingway confided the plot of his last, greatest, never-put-down-on-paper novel, and a woman who, in New York City in the summer of 1974, hangs out a sign reading "Melissa Toad, Witch."Fantastic or conventional, chillingly suspenseful or hauntingly nostalgic, each of these stories has that aura of the unexpected combined with the special ring of absolute rightness that is brilliantly, uniquely Bradbury.Track List for Long After Midnight: Disc 1"The Blue Bottle"-Track 1"One Timeless Spring"-Track 10"The Parrot Who Met Papa"-Track 16Disc 2"The Burning Man"-Track 2"A Piece of Wood"-Track 9"The Messiah"-Track 13"G.B.S.-Mark V"-Track 21Disc 3"The Utterly Perfect Murder"-Track 3"Punishment Without Crime"-Track 11"Getting Through Sunday Somehow"-Track 19Disc 4"Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds"-Track 1"Interval in Sunlight"-Track 11Disc 5"A Story of Love"-Track 9"The Wish"-Track 17Disc 6"Forever and the Earth"-Track 2"The Better Part of Wisdom"-Track 17Disc 7"Darling Adolf"-Track 4"The Miracles of Jamie"-Track 17Disc 8"The October Game"-Track 1"The Pumpernickel"-Track 8"Long After Midnight"-Track 11"Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!"-Track 16

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