Driving Blind

Driving Blind
Ray Douglas Bradbury

One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time.Over the course of a long and celebrated career, Ray Bradbury has traveled many roads: cruising down country highways that wound through the unseen heart of small-town America; exploring rutted backwoods paths that led to dark and dangerous places; racing at mach-speed along shimmering celestial turnpikes as limitless and exciting as the unbound imagination.DRIVING BLIND is a stunning collection of short fiction. With a steady hand on the wheel, the master once again transports us to remarkable places – and to warm and achingly familiar destinations of the heart, revealed as we've never seen them before in the brilliance of day or gloom of night. Here are unforgettable excursions to the fantastic, glorious grand tours through time and memory – interspersed with strange, unexpected side trips to the disturbing and eerie – where surprises are waiting around every curve and just beyond each mile marker.These are new roads we have never ridden before – sprawling interstates and lush, twisting rural routes fraught with dangers and delights of all manner, shape and substance. With Ray Bradbury in the driver's seat, the journey promises to be a memorable one. Come along and enjoy the ride.

Ray Bradbury

DRIVING BLIND

STORIES

Copyright (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)

“Night Train to Babylon” copyright © 1997 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the September/October issue of Ellery Queen. “Grand Theft” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the July 1995 issue of Ellery Queen. “Fee Fie Foe Fum” copyright © 1993 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in Monsters in Our Midst, edited by Robert Bloch, Tor Books. “That Old Dog Lying in the Dust” copyright © 1974 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the October 1974 issue of Westways magazine, under the title “Mexicali Mirage.” All other stories are original to this collection, copyright © 1997 by Ray Bradbury.

Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1959

Cover design by Mike Topping.

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN:9780007541744

Version: 2014–07–21

Dedication (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)

With undying love to

the early-arriving granddaughters,

JULIA, CLAIRE, GEORGIA

and MALLORY.

And to

the late-arriving grandsons,

DANIEL, CASEY-RAY, SAMUEL

and THEODORE.

Live forever!

Contents

Cover (#uf0eaa6b5-c764-52c9-b011-62014c66f762)

Title Page (#u16f80621-6bfa-5e50-adf4-7fb40278de5b)

Copyright

Dedication

Night Train to Babylon

If MGM is Killed, Who Gets the Lion?

Hello, I Must Be Going

House Divided

Grand Theft

Remember Me?

Fee Fie Foe Fum

Driving Blind

I Wonder What’s Become of Sally

Nothing Changes

That Old Dog Lying in the Dust

Someone in the Rain

Madame et Monsieur Shill

The Mirror

End of Summer