R is for Rocket

R is for Rocket
Ray Douglas Bradbury

One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time.Science fiction, fantasy, small town life, and small town people are the materials from which Ray Bradbury weaves his unique and magical stories of the natural and supernatural, the past, the present , and the future.This book contains seventeen of Bradbury's most popular science fiction stories, from one of the genre's master storytellers.

R IS FOR ROCKET

Ray Bradbury

Table of Contents

Cover (#u8b3de402-cd46-5ae5-8d8d-f449e312a7dd)

Title Page (#uf118f012-b1d4-5d9e-8f58-83e6c90de0fa)

Prologue (#ulink_45fdb0ac-1d7e-5f2f-9997-12ba8887200c)

R Is for Rocket (#ulink_f3fac659-df0e-55c6-b650-bd2dd13d22dc)

The End of the Beginning (#ulink_37d0505b-85d1-5ee0-8bdf-f75cdb369b90)

The Fog Horn (#ulink_6a093b31-e94f-57fc-bc71-1f3ca649b25f)

The Rocket (#ulink_8dfd07ea-4207-5bcb-a4aa-8a10b0409db9)

The Rocket Man (#ulink_f9fbe5ed-e252-5635-bc30-839675d570ae)

The Golden Apples of the Sun (#litres_trial_promo)

A Sound of Thunder (#litres_trial_promo)

The Long Rain (#litres_trial_promo)

The Exiles (#litres_trial_promo)

Here There Be Tygers (#litres_trial_promo)

The Strawberry Window (#litres_trial_promo)

The Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)

The Gift (#litres_trial_promo)

Frost and Fire (#litres_trial_promo)

Uncle Einar (#litres_trial_promo)

The Time Machine (#litres_trial_promo)

The Sound of Summer Running (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#ulink_a05684fd-6109-5a4e-a0a6-1d1400e8259b)

When I was a boy in the Midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them.

I guess every boy has done that.

When I wasn’t looking at the stars, I was running in my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or Time Machines.

I guess every boy has done that, too.

This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, because that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years.

Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the Future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the Years Ahead.

Nor have I forgotten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a Machine that travels back in Time to step on a butterfly.

This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small Illinois town and lived to see the Space Age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would.

I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the Past, run swiftly in the Present, and have high hopes for our Future.

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles March 28, 1962

R is for Rocket (#ulink_50644d99-bf73-55d6-b375-c3641f163d0f)

There was this fence where we pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go.…

Yet we were boys and liked being boys and lived in a Florida town and liked the town and went to school and fairly liked the school and climbed trees and played football and liked our mothers and fathers.…

But some time every hour of every day of every week for a minute or a second when we thought on fire and stars and the fence beyond which they waited … we liked the rockets more.

The fence. The rockets.

Every Saturday morning …

The guys met at my house.