Here There Be Tygers

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This article is about the story by Ray Bradbury. For the Stephen King story, see Here There Be Tygers (1968 short story).

"Here There Be Tygers" is a short story written by Ray Bradbury, originally published in New Tales of Space and Time in 1951. It was later collected in Bradbury's short story collections R is for Rocket and The Golden Apples of the Sun. It deals with a rocket expedition sent to a planet to see whether or not its natural resources can be harvested for the human race. They discover a paradise which seems to provide for them whatever they desire even as they think of it. They ultimately decide to leave the planet and report that it is hostile and of no benefit to humans. A teleplay of this story was written by Bradbury for possible use on the television program The Twilight Zone, but Rod Serling and the producers of the show deemed it too expensive to film on the show's rather tight budget. This led to the end of Ray Bradbury's rather brief association with the show, which resulted in just one of his stories ("I Sing the Body Electric") being used.

The reference is to the phrase "Here be dragons" used by medieval cartographers as warnings on unexplored portions of their maps.

[edit] Similar stories in popular culture

In the Star Trek episode "Shore Leave", a crew finds a planet where any of their desires once thought are acted out in real life. This is due to an alien lifeform's superior technology as the planet is actually an alien amusement park. The crew eventually comes to relax on the planet before continuing on their journey. This episode aired in 1966, fifteen years after Ray Bradbury's story was first published.