I Sing the Body Electric (Bradbury)

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I Sing the Body Electric!

Author	Ray Bradbury
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publisher
Released	1969
Media Type	Print
ISBN	ISBN 0394429850

I Sing the Body Electric! is a 1969 collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. The book takes its name from a line in the famous Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. The collection of includes these stories:

• "The Kilimanjaro Device": about time travel, regret, and a lucky old man.

• "The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place"

• "Tomorrow's Child": a woman gives birth to a small blue pyramid.

• "The Women": draws on ancient mythology and how it interacts with two present-day people. This is the story of the ancient sirens, who call persistently a man they desire, and how his wife tries to keep him from the sea. Inevitably, she fails, and his body floats back to his wife. The story is poetically written from both the perspective of the sirens and the wife.

• "The Inspired Chicken Motel": A family learns about a chicken which laid an egg with the phrase "Rest in Peace. Prosperity is Near" written neatly on it.

• "Downwind from Gettysburg": a sci-fi twist on Lincoln's assassination.

• "Yes, We'll Gather at the River"

• "The Cold Wind and the Warm"

• "Night Call, Collect": The last man on Mars is haunted by automatic recordings of his own voice which have developed minds of their own.

• "The Haunting of the New"

• "I Sing the Body Electric!": a child, Agatha, is unwilling to accept an Electrical Grandmother as a surrogate for her dead mother, until the Grandmother demonstrates her own immortality.^[1]

• "The Tombling Day"

• "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine"

• "Heavy-Set"

• "The Man in the Rorschach Shirt"

• "Henry the Ninth": Harry is the last man left in the British Isles. This story centres around his friend Samuel's attempt to convince him to leave Britain, and come to one of the warmer places in the world. The story reflects modern society's growing need for comfort and simplicity, and reminds us of the importance of our heritage.

• "The Lost City of Mars"

• "The Blue Bottle"

• "One Timeless Spring"

• "The Parrot Who Met Papa"

• "The Burning Man"

• "A Piece of Wood"

• "The Messiah"

• "G.B.S.-Mark V"

• "The Utterly Perfect Murder"

• "Punishment Without Crime"

• "Getting Through Sunday Somehow"

• "Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds"

• "Christus Apollo"

[edit] In popular culture

• The title story, "I Sing the Body Electric!" was adapted into a Twilight Zone episode of the same name, with Bradbury as writer of the screenplay.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.unl.edu/Price/WCM/television/twilight_zone.html