Now and Forever
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Two dazzling novellas from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451.
Two previously unpublished novellas comprise this astonishing new volume from one of science fiction's greatest living writers. In the first, 'Somewhere a Band is Playing', newsman James Cardiff is lured through poetry and his fascination with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman to Summerton, Arizona. The small town's childless population hold an extraordinary secret which has been passed on for thousands of years unbeknownst to the rest of human civilization.
In the second novella, 'Leviathan '99', the classic tale of Herman Melville's ‘Moby Dick’ is reborn as an interstellar adventure. It recounts the exploits of the mad Captain Ahab, who, blinded by his first encounter with a gigantic comet called 'Leviathan', pursues his lunatic vendetta across the universe. Born in space and seeking adventure in the skies, astronaut Ishmael Jones joins the crew aboard the Cetus 7 and quickly finds his fate in the hands of an indefatigable captain.
Published together for the first time in one volume, these two stories twinkle with Bradbury's characteristically intricate metaphors and lyrical phrases. Both are a lasting testament to an older generation of writers that, much like the Leviathan itself, are on the threshold of passing on into the realm of legend.
Reviews
‘A meditation on writing, inspiration, ageing and change, all deep themes lightly handled, both elegiac and suspenseful… There are echoes in it not only of Melville, but of Shakespeare, Whitman and Poe … The language sings.’ The Times
‘Brilliant’ DeathRay
Praise for Ray Bradbury:
'It is impossible not to admire the vigour of his prose, similes and metaphors constantly cascading from his imagination' Spectator
'Bradbury has a remarkable range of intensity and vision' Sunday Times
‘Bradbury is an authentic original’ Time Magazine
‘No other writer uses language with greater originality and zest. he seems to be an American Dylan Thomas – with discipline’ Sunday Telegraph
About the author
One of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers of all time, Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. He moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1934. Since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was twenty years old, he published some 500 short stories, novels, plays, scripts and poems. Among his many famous works are Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury died in 2012 at the age of 91.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
