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Now and Forever

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Two dazzling novellas from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451. Two previously unpublished novellas comprise this astonishing new volume from one of science fiction's greatest living writers. In the first, 'Somewhere a Band is Playing', newsman James Cardiff is lured through poetry and his fascination with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman to Summerton, Arizona. The small town's childless population hold an extraordinary secret which has been passed on for thousands of years unbeknownst to the rest of human civilization. In the second novella, 'Leviathan '99', the classic tale of Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' is reborn as an interstellar adventure. It recounts the exploits of the mad Captain Ahab, who, blinded by his first encounter with a gigantic comet called 'Leviathan', pursues his lunatic vendetta across the universe. Born in space and seeking adventure in the skies, astronaut Ishmael Jones joins the crew aboard the Cetus 7 and quickly finds his fate in the hands of an indefatigable captain. Published together for the first time in one volume, these two stories twinkle with Bradbury's characteristically intricate metaphors and lyrical phrases. Both are a lasting testament to an older generation of writers that, much like the Leviathan itself, are on the threshold of passing on into the realm of legend.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 30, 2007
      This slim volume eloquently displays two sides of the venerated Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles
      ) with two highly contrasting tales of the fantastic. “Somewhere a Band Is Playing,” the quieter piece, explores journalist James Cardiff's unexpected attraction to the rural town of Summerton, Ariz. Summerton's secrets unfold with Bradbury's hallmark pacing, gentle and inexorable, and the plot arcs just as gently into the fantastical before circling back to Cardiff himself. Framed by engagingly wistful lyric verse, this classically appealing Bradbury fantasy is at distinct odds with the prickly and disturbing “Leviathan '99.” In this space-faring homage to Melville, the dread comet Leviathan takes the whale's place, and Queequeg becomes the enigmatic telepath Quell. The result, while not at all comfortable, cogently packs Moby Dick
      's psychological complexity into a quarter of the space, despite the padding of lengthy quasi-Shakespearean dialogue. Bradbury's brief summaries of each novella's decades-long path to completion invoke the extraordinary length of one of the most distinguished careers in speculative fiction.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 3, 2007
      This slim volume eloquently displays two sides of the venerated Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles ) with two highly contrasting tales of the fantastic. "Somewhere a Band Is Playing," the quieter piece, explores journalist James Cardiff's unexpected attraction to the rural town of Summerton, Ariz. Summerton's secrets unfold with Bradbury's hallmark pacing, gentle and inexorable, and the plot arcs just as gently into the fantastical before circling back to Cardiff himself. Framed by engagingly wistful lyric verse, this classically appealing Bradbury fantasy is at distinct odds with the prickly and disturbing "Leviathan '99." In this space-faring homage to Melville, the dread comet Leviathan takes the whale's place, and Queequeg becomes the enigmatic telepath Quell. The result, while not at all comfortable, cogently packsMoby Dick 's psychological complexity into a quarter of the space, despite the padding of lengthy quasi-Shakespearean dialogue. Bradbury's brief summaries of each novella's decades-long path to completion invoke the extraordinary length of one of the most distinguished careers in speculative fiction.

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  • English

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