Publisher's Weekly Review
Bradbury's first collection since the quasi-definitive Stories is a very mixed bag, including, along with the charming and the moving stories, some of the author's weakestfrail conceits feebly decked out in the same stylistic knick-knacks Bradbury has been pulling from his well-used trunk for the past 35 years. Storytelling itself is the theme of a number of these short narratives; Bradbury understands that a primary function of fiction is to act as a guidepost back to the emotional richness of childhood and adolescence. In ``On the Orient, North'' a ghost, at the point of dissipation, rejuvenates itself by telling scary winter's tales to a group of children. In ``Banshee'' a screenwriter and a director tell each other disturbing cautionary talesone narrator, to the other's misfortune, is not making it up. The fey souls in ``The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair'' find their relationship cannot withstand a little hard reality. The title story concerns a man who claims to have traveled into the future and declares that there the world's problems have been resolved. He produces documentation of his claims and lives to see the realization of his vision, even though a vision is all it is. The documentation turns out to be fabrications, but the hope it had inspired allows mankind to bring about its own salvation. The fiction creates the truth in this lovely exercise in utopian dreaming. 30,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Bradbury's first story sheaf since The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) finds him more lyrically Bradburyesque than ever, in 22 new fantasies. His plots here aren't plots but only points of departure for rhapsody. There are readers who admire Thomas Wolfe's song-passages more than his storytelling, and apparently hordes are willing to endure Bradbury's limp taletelling to enjoy the green-dyed spun sugar of his poetizing. To point out the best first is not easy when all is like a shelf of figurines in a Swiss schlock shop. The title tale is about an inventor who--inspired by H.G. Wells--built a time machine, went into the future, and came back with blueprints for a utopian society. Now he has lived 130 years, and that very day in the future to which he first journeyed is rearriving: the inventor will come face to face with his past self when he arrives from the past in the time machine. An intriguing beginning--followed by a dumb climax that weasels out of the confrontation. Instead of the inventor facing up to his deception, the author has him die. So the story is all premise, no conflict, and the inventor never comes to grips with his acts. And this happens over and over, with stories that set up a promising idea and then avoid meeting it head on. Among the most richly tiring is ""West of October,"" which features Bradbury's hairpin logic at its most Peter Max-ish, midsummer-night's dreamish: ""Cecy. She was the reason, the real reason, the central reason for any of the Family to come visit, and not only to visit but to circle her and stay. For she was as multitudinous as a pomegranate. Her talent was single but kaleidoscopic. She was all the senses of all the creatures in the world. She was all the motion picture houses and stage play theaters and all the art galleries of time. You could ask almost anything of her and she would gift you with it."" Lyrical word-collage pasted around candy people: fantasy that just evaporates--and maybe best suited to a YA audience. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
An old woman learns what it truly means to believe in ghosts in ``On the Orient, North''; another woman discovers a mysterious ``Trapdoor'' in a house she has occupied for years; and an old man attempts to change his own past in ``A Touch of Petulance'' in this new collection of 23 stories by one of sf's grand masters. Simplicity and warmth shine through even the weaker stories as the author continues to focus his sights on the elusive human heart. Recommended for sf and fantasy collections. BOMC alternate. JC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.