Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99 - Softcover

Bradbury, Ray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061131571 ISBN 13: 9780061131578

Publisher: Harper, 2008

Synopsis

A journalist bearing terrible news leaps from a still-moving train into a small town of wonderful, impossible secrets . . .

The doomed crew of a starship follows their blind, mad captain on a quest into deepest space to joust with destiny, eternity, and God Himself . . .

Now and Forever is a bold new work from an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape. Two bewitching novellas—each distinctly different, yet uniquely Bradbury—demonstrate the breathtaking range of his undimmed talent and the irrepressible vitality of the mind, spirit, and heart of America's preeminent storyteller.

About this title

About the Author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2011 at the age of 91, 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, teleplays, 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. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. 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.

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This slim volume eloquently displays two sides of the venerated Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) with two highly contrasting tales of the fantastic. Somewhere a Band Is Playing, the quieter piece, explores journalist James Cardiff's unexpected attraction to the rural town of Summerton, Ariz. Summerton's secrets unfold with Bradbury's hallmark pacing, gentle and inexorable, and the plot arcs just as gently into the fantastical before circling back to Cardiff himself. Framed by engagingly wistful lyric verse, this classically appealing Bradbury fantasy is at distinct odds with the prickly and disturbing Leviathan '99. In this space-faring homage to Melville, the dread comet Leviathan takes the whale's place, and Queequeg becomes the enigmatic telepath Quell. The result, while not at all comfortable, cogently packs Moby Dick's psychological complexity into a quarter of the space, despite the padding of lengthy quasi-Shakespearean dialogue. Bradbury's brief summaries of each novella's decades-long path to completion invoke the extraordinary length of one of the most distinguished careers in speculative fiction. (Sept.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0061131571
• ISBN 13: 9780061131578
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256