The Golden Apples of the Sun
0-435-12360-2
(Heinemann, 1991)
The Golden Apples of the Sun is an anthology of 22 short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. It was published by Doubleday & Company in 1953.
The book's title is also the title of the final story in the collection. The words "the golden apples of the sun" are from the last line of the final stanza of W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus" (1899):[1]
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.[2]
Bradbury prefaces his book with the last three lines of this poem. When asked what attracted him to the line "the golden apples of the sun", he said, "[My wife] Maggie introduced me to Romantic poetry when we were dating, and I loved it. I love that line in the poem, and it was a metaphor for my story, about taking a cup full of fire from the sun."[1]
The Golden Apples of the Sun was Bradbury's third published collection of short stories.[3] The first, Dark Carnival, was published by Arkham House in 1947; the second, The Illustrated Man, was published by Doubleday & Company in 1951.
Contents
In 1990, Bantam Books collected most of the stories from R Is for Rocket (1962) and The Golden Apples of the Sun into a semi-omnibus edition titled Classic Stories 1. In 1997, Avon Books printed a new edition of the omnibus, titling it The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories. Harper Perennial titled their 2005 edition as A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories.
The semi-omnibus editions omit three of the stories that appear in The Golden Apples of the Sun: "The Pedestrian" (1951), "Invisible Boy" (1945), and "Hail and Farewell" (1953).
Story | First published | Sequence | |
---|---|---|---|
The Golden Apples of the Sun | Classic Stories 1 | ||
"The Fog Horn" | 1952 | 1 | 1 |
"The Pedestrian" | 1951 | 2 | Dropped |
"The April Witch" | 1951 | 3 | 2 |
"The Wilderness" | 1952 | 4 | 3 |
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" | 1948 | 5 | 4 |
"Invisible Boy" | 1945 | 6 | Dropped |
"The Flying Machine" | 1953 | 7 | 5 |
"The Murderer" | 1953 | 8 | 6 |
"The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" | 1953 | 9 | 7 |
"I See You Never" | 1947 | 10 | 8 |
"Embroidery" | 1951 | 11 | 9 |
"The Big Black and White Game" | 1945 | 12 | 10 |
"A Sound of Thunder" | 1952 | 13 | 23 |
"The Great Wide World Over There" | 1953 | 14 | 11 |
"Powerhouse" | 1948 | 15 | 12 |
"En la Noche" | 1952 | 16 | 13 |
"Sun and Shadow" | 1953 | 17 | 14 |
"The Meadow" | 1947 | 18 | 15 |
"The Garbage Collector" | 1953 | 19 | 16 |
"The Great Fire" | 1949 | 20 | 17 |
"Hail and Farewell" | 1953 | 21 | Dropped |
"The Golden Apples of the Sun" | 1953 | 22 | 18 |
"R Is for Rocket" | 1943 | — | 19 |
"The End of the Beginning" | 1956 | — | 20 |
"The Rocket" | 1950 | — | 21 |
"The Rocket Man" | 1953 | — | 22 |
"The Long Rain" | 1950 | — | 24 |
"The Exiles" | 1950 | — | 25 |
"Here There Be Tygers" | 1951 | — | 26 |
"The Strawberry Window" | 1954 | — | 27 |
"The Dragon" | 1955 | — | 28 |
"Frost and Fire" | 1947 | — | 29 |
"Uncle Einar" | 1947 | — | 30 |
"The Time Machine" | 1957 | — | 31 |
"The Sound of Summer Running" | 1957 | — | 32 |
Reception
Writing in The New York Times, Charles Poore reported that Bradbury "writes in a style that seems to have been nourished on the poets and fabulists of the Irish Literary Renaissance", and said he was "wonderfully adept at getting to the heart of his story without talking all day long about it and around it."[4]
Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction found Golden Apples to be a "most uncertain reading experience… material of a curiously mixed quality; writing that is often simply and perceptively moving [and] just as often sadly lacking any particular strength or color".[5]
Imagination reviewer Mark Reinsberg called Bradbury "a gifted writer", but complained that he had "a tendency to overestimate the power of style to nourish anemic themes."[6]
Groff Conklin of Galaxy Science Fiction praised the collection, saying it included "some of the best imaginative stories [Bradbury] or anyone else has ever written. One cannot even begin to describe their delights."[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b Weller, Sam, ed. (2014). Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Melville House Publishing. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-61219-422-6. OCLC 883302084. Retrieved June 6, 2017 – via Google Books.
- ^ Yeats, W. B. (1903). "The Song of Wandering Aengus". The Wind Among the Reeds (4th ed.). London: Elkin Mathews. Retrieved December 22, 2015 – via Project Gutenberg.
- ^ Gronert Ellerhoff, Steve (2016). Post-Jungian Psychology and the Short Stories of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Routledge. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-31-738491-5. Retrieved June 6, 2017 – via Google Books.
- ^ Poore, Charles (March 19, 1953). "Books of the Times". The New York Times.
- ^ Boucher, Anthony; McComas, J. Francis (June 1953). "Recommended Reading". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. p. 70.
- ^ Reinsberg, Mark (June 1953). "Imagination Science Fiction Library". Imagination. p. 145.
- ^ Conklin, Groff (August 1953). "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. Galaxy Publishing Corporation. p. 116.
Sources
- Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vol. 1. Chicago: Advent. p. 62. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
External links
- The Golden Apples of the Sun title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- v
- t
- e
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- Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
- Dandelion Wine (1957)
- Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
- The Halloween Tree (1972)
- Death Is a Lonely Business (1985)
- A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990)
- Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)
- From the Dust Returned (2001)
- Let's All Kill Constance (2002)
- Farewell Summer (2006)
- "Hollerbochen's Dilemma" (1938)
- "The Scythe" (1943)
- "I, Rocket" (1944)
- "The Lake" (1944)
- "Frost and Fire" (1946)
- "The Million Year Picnic" (1946)
- "The Small Assassin" (1946)
- "I See You Never" (1947)
- "Fever Dream" (1948)
- "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948)
- "The Long Years" (1948)
- "Mars Is Heaven!" (1948)
- "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949)
- "The Exiles" (1949)
- "Marionettes, Inc." (1949)
- "The Long Rain" (1950)
- "The Rocket" (1950)
- "There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950)
- "The Veldt" (1950)
- "Ylla" (1950)
- "Embroidery" (1951)
- "The Fog Horn" (1951)
- "Here There Be Tygers" (1951)
- "The Pedestrian" (1951)
- "The April Witch" (1952)
- "A Sound of Thunder" (1952)
- "The Wilderness" (1952)
- "The Flying Machine" (1953)
- "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953)
- "The Meadow" (1953)
- "The Murderer" (1953)
- "Sun and Shadow" (1953)
- "All Summer in a Day" (1954)
- "The Dragon" (1955)
- "The Aqueduct" (1979)
- "Banshee" (1984)
- "The Toynbee Convector" (1984)
- "Is That You, Herb?" (2003)
- Dark Carnival (1947)
- The Illustrated Man (1951)
- The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
- The October Country (1955)
- A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
- The Day It Rained Forever (1959)
- The Small Assassin (1962)
- R Is for Rocket (1962)
- The Machineries of Joy (1964)
- The Vintage Bradbury (1965)
- S Is for Space (1966)
- Twice 22 (1966)
- I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)
- Ray Bradbury (1975)
- Long After Midnight (1976)
- The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979)
- The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980)
- The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980)
- The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1980)
- Dinosaur Tales (1983)
- A Memory of Murder (1984)
- The Toynbee Convector (1988)
- Classic Stories 1 (1990)
- Classic Stories 2 (1990)
- The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991)
- Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991)
- Quicker Than the Eye (1996)
- Driving Blind (1997)
- Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001)
- One More for the Road (2002)
- Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003)
- The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004)
- A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005)
- The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007)
- Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007)
- A Pleasure to Burn (2010)
- The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury (2011, 2014)
- The Meadow (1947)
- The Flying Machine: A One-Act Play for Three Men (1953)
- The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972)
- Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975)
- The Martian Chronicles (1986)
- The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1986)
- Fahrenheit 451 (1986)
- Dandelion Wine (1988)
- The Veldt (1988)
- It Came from Outer Space (1953)
- Moby Dick (1956 screenplay)
- "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962)
- The Autumn People (1965)
- Tomorrow Midnight (1966)
- Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
- The Picasso Summer (1969)
- The Illustrated Man (1969)
- The Martian Chronicles (1980 miniseries)
- The Electric Grandmother (1982)
- Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
- Bradbury 13 (radio series, 1983–84)
- Fahrenheit 451 (1984)
- "The Burning Man" (1985)
- The Veldt (1987)
- The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV series, 1985–86, 1988-1992)
- The Halloween Tree (1993)
- Dandelion Wine (1997)
- The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998)
- A Sound of Thunder (2005)
- Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis (2008)
- The Whispers (2015)
- Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
- Futuria Fantasia (1939–1940)
- The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978)
- Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)
- It Came from Outer Space (2003 book)
- Bettina F. Bradbury (daughter)
- Spaceship Earth
- Bradbury Landing
- Ray Bradbury Award
- Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury
- Dandelion crater