Dark Carnival

For all my love of the fantastique, I've never been much of a fan of Ray Bradbury. At least not his science fiction. The problem is I find that a lot of his work pours over into the saccharine, and the prose borders on purple. But reading this, his first published collection, which he kept out of print after re-tooling it into The October Country, has given me a new perspective. It's a bit more gruesome and explicit than his other work, and being his first published collection, these stories are raw, and they show a real cruel streak. When the stories were revised for The October Country some of the more explicit material was toned down, or outright removed. There's even a micro short story in here about decapitation and fetishism. At show more the best these stories are revolutionary. "The Small Assassin" and "The Next In Line" are two of the greatest horror short stories, both dealing frankly with misogyny, marital ennui, and post-partum depression. At the same time Bradbury's outlook represents a fundamentally conservative worldview, and I don't mean that in the reactionary sense, but more that there is a vanishing world he wanted to conserve in his writing. Apocryphally Bradbury hated television, and refused to own one for a long time. I think that's why his horror and dark fantasy works better than his more famous science fiction stories. Science fiction falls into either an optimistic look at the future, or outright cynicism of the dystopia the authors think we're headed to. Bradbury was a cynic about technological progress, but also a sentimentalist. Bradbury himself even said he didn't consider himself a science fiction writer, but it's the sci-fi that holds in the public imagination. This reprint from Subterranean Press also contains five previously uncollected stories that weren't included when Bradbury originally published Dark Carnival. These are nice extras, but by no means essential, and it's easy to see why they were cut. Dave McKean's mixed media illustrations that precede every story are also gorgeous and evocative. The whole package is really special. For those who don't want to shell out for the deluxe hardcover, a bare-bones trade paperback of Dark Carnival was finally published for the first time last year, but it doesn't include the extra stories. show less

After reading Michael Dirda's book Browsings I wanted to read some Bradbury short stories so I was planing on rereading The Illustrated Man then I discovered I had this book which I'd never read Bradbury's first collection. So glad I did it was just what I was looking for. So many great stories, the first one "The Homecoming" is one of my favorites, story a about a normal boy in a weird family. Later in the collection I was pleasantly surprised to find a sequel of sorts "Uncle Einar". Soon after beginning "The Crowd" I thought that I'd already read it then realized that I'd seen a TV adaptation, back in the 1985. It's a fun story and you can watch it on Ray Bradbury Theater youtube .

His first collection of short stories, vanishingly rare. My parents got this got me when I was in college. Some of the stories can be found in The October Country, many smoothed out quite a bit.

First edition bought by my father, David L. Fox, in 1947. He knew Bradbury at the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society (LASFS). He let me read this when I was a kid and it's a great collection.

Beautiful reprint of the original book, with many extras, including thumbnails of the pulp magazine covers that represent the issues in which the stories first appeared. Also, some previously unpublished material and reminiscences by Bradbury. The dust jacket is a facsimile of an oil painting done by Bradbury around the time Dark Carnival was originally published.

Linited edition reprint of Ray Bradbury's first book. Includes additional bibliographic information and stories.

Een dun pocketboekje met tien korte verhalen van de hand van Ray Bradbury. Op de kaft staat onder de titel alleen science fiction maar op het tweede titelblad staat daarnaast ook fantasy & horror. Deze laatste twee genres vind ik meer van toepassing op de korte verhalen die dit boekje bevat en dan met de meeste nadruk op horror.

Alle verhalen hebben een beklemmende sfeer. Als lezer word je opgezweept om verder te lezen zodat je uit die benauwende situatie kan komen. Vaak is het lang onduidelijk wat nu precies de oorzaak van het opgeroepen ongemak is en soms blijft dat zelfs tot en met de laatste punt onduidelijk.
De macabere situaties zijn in een aantal gevallen zo bizar dat het heel humoristisch wordt waardoor je het nare van je af kunt show more lachen. Maar nooit helemaal. Ze blijven na het lezen nog even je plakken en kunnen zelfs tot verder nadenken zetten.

De vertaling vind ik opmerkelijk sterk. Veel science fiction boeken uit deze tijd die vertaald zijn in het Nederlands hebben iets houterigs. In deze vertaling is daar absoluut geen sprake van. Als ik niet geweten had dat het oorspronkelijk Engels was, had ik gedacht met een Nederlandse schrijver te maken te hebben. show less