“The October Game”
The Queen’s Own Evaders, also known as The Anthem Sprinters
Dan
New to me. Whoa.
The Lake. It was one of the first stories he ever sold, for $13.75 when he was 22 yrs old. A simple, short story, no science fiction, but it shows the emotional talent that would come in all of his later works. Moving, simple, may make you cry. It has never been out of print.
Here is is: The Lake
Link doesn’t work for me.
Never mind, seems like a personal cell phone problem.
A Sound of Thunder
Wow, that’s an amazing story for such a young writer, for any writer, really.
I’ll second that 
The Long Rain.
Great question. Bradbury is my favorite writer and I just finished a 900 page tome of his short stories, so I can answer this question informed!
My first favorite story was All Summer in a Day which I read in high school before I knew who Ray Bradbury was. It just gave me this feeling of sadness that stayed with me for years whenever I thought of it, but the author was lost to me. Then in college I borrowed a collection of Bradbury short stories and was enamoured of the whole thing, when lo and behold, there was All Summer in a Day.
I would consider Dandelion Wine his masterpiece. It’s not one story so much as a collection of stories in the same small town Illinois setting, loosely based on his childhood. The best story is The Swan and that’s my current favorite. It’s about a young man who falls in love with a woman based on her photo in the newspaper, only to find out it’s a very old photo and the woman in question is elderly. When he meets her by chance in an ice cream shop, they hit it off immediately. So he goes to visit her in the weeks preceding her death and they fall in love, dreaming of a world where they could have been lovers.
Having read through so many Bradbury stories at this point, I find much to admire in him as a writer myself, not only because his prose is gorgeous and haunting but because you can tell that he’s the kind of writer who writes any bizarre idea that comes into his head and puts it out into the world regardless of how silly it is, which is a risky proposition. The result is not all of his stories hit the mark, and many are downright odd. In this last collection there was one about an old guy who wakes up with an erection and invites all his girlfriends over to see it. And there was one about a German psychiatrist who had a magic periscope in his office because he was a former submarine captain. You can hear Bradbury’s gears turning, “What if…? What if…?” Has any person taken as much joy in writing as he has?
Compare to me, unable to finish things because I’m stuck in the process of trying to improve upon them, eternally. And he’s like, “What if all the Black people built a rocket ship to Venus? What if an old lady had a date and slept with Death? What if there was this guy who was obsessed with weight lifting and his Mom was sad about it?”
It’s so cool.
I don’t have a favorite Bradbury story to nominate, but I just want to add my admiration for him as a great writer. Consider, for instance, this excerpt from his introduction to the beautiful collection of short stories, The October Country, explaining the title:
. . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. .
Then there’s his deeply moving nostalgic reminiscences about youth and growing old, the semi-autobiographical novels Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer that demonstrate his uncanny ability to see the world through the eyes of a child. The latter has been described this way:
October 1st, the end of summer. The air is still warm, but fall is in the air. Thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding, his younger brother Tom, and their friends do their best to take advantage of these last warm days … If only, the boys believe, they could stop the clock atop the courthouse building. Then, surely, they could hold onto the last days of summer . . . and their youth.
^^This^^
I can’t name a favorite story because his writing is what I find so impressive and memorable instead of character and plot details.
True, I always pause while reading his stuff to just appreciate singular sentences.
One that I read only recently (and saw on the DVD of “Ray Bradbury Theater”) is “Banshee”, based on his experiences in Ireland with John Huston while writing the screenplay for the 1956 film “Moby Dick”.
Others:
“There Will Come Soft Rains”
“All Summer in a Day”
“The Illustrated Man”
I went through a deep Bradbury phase in high school, but confess it’s been years since I’ve read anything by him. I had the privilege, though, a few years before he died, of taking part in a library-sponsored conference call with him in which he discussed his work.
He wrote so many great stories… if I could only pick a few, I’d say:
“The Veldt,” in which he chillingly anticipated ST:TNG’s Holodeck. Brrrrr.
“The Scythe,” in which a simple but honest man becomes the mad personification of Death.
“Zero Hour,” in which a terrible secret lies behind what only seems to be a curious children’s game.
“The Small Assassin,” in which a new mom becomes convinced that her baby is trying to kill her.
“The Exiles,” in which the shades or spirits of Poe, Bierce and Dickens, among others, grimly prepare on Mars for the arrival of puritanical astronauts from Earth.
“Usher II,” with a similar message in favor of literary self-expression and against well-meaning but ignorant censorship, in which a wealthy man, inspired by Poe, builds a lethal house to slay the censors.
And, so as not to seem too morbid (although I think his dark tales are his best, or at least his most memorable), I’ll add “The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse,” a wry, uplifting tale about embracing and truly enjoying life.
Yes! Also very good, with a perfect bittersweet ending.
My personal favorite is The Murderer. He saw something in the connected world long before it existed, and the story feels more apt with every passing day.
Bradbury reminds me of Stephen King. A lot of what they write can be depressing or scary, but there are notable exceptions.
Did you ever read Bradbury’s tales of his teenage years in LA? I read a condensed version first in Reader’s Digest, titled “On roller skates in Hollywood.” It’s absolutely hilarious, and had some touching moments as well.
Yes, should have mentioned this one too. A real masterpiece. “Not a weak-kneed fellow like Keith!”
I particularly like the detail of spelling being slightly different…