The Dragon (short story)

"The Dragon"
Author	Ray Bradbury
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy Short story
Published in	Esquire
Publication type	Periodical
Media type	Print (Magazine)
Publication date	August 1955

The Dragon
dust-jacket from the first edition
Author	Ray Bradbury
Illustrator	Ken Snyder
Cover artist	Ken Snyder
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy short story
Publisher	Footsteps Press
Publication date	1988
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	15 pp
ISBN	NA

"The Dragon" is a short story by author Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1955 in the magazine Esquire. A limited edition (352 copies, signed and numbered or lettered) of the story was published by Footsteps Press in 1988. It appears in A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), R is for Rocket (1962), Classic Stories 1 (1990), and Bradbury Stories (2003).

Plot

The story concerns two knights who have a mission to slay a dragon. They describe the dragon as huge, fire-breathing, and horrific, having only one eye. They charge the dragon but they fail, presumably dying in the attempt.

The "dragon" is revealed to be a modern steam train, and its single eye is the train's head light. They then go away without attempt to find the knight.

References

Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd. p. 264.
Brown, Charles N.; William G. Contento. "The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1998)". Retrieved 2007-12-12.

External links

The Dragon title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Works of Ray Bradbury

Novels	The Martian Chronicles (1950) Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Dandelion Wine (1957) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) The Halloween Tree (1972) Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) From the Dust Returned (2001) Let's All Kill Constance (2002) Farewell Summer (2006)

Short stories	"The Scythe" (1943) "The Lake" (1944) "Frost and Fire" (1946) "The Million Year Picnic" (1946) "The Small Assassin" (1946) "I See You Never" (1947) "Fever Dream" (1948) "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948) "The Long Years" (1948) "Mars Is Heaven!" (1948) "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949) "The Exiles" (1949) "Marionettes, Inc." (1949) "The Long Rain" (1950) "The Rocket" (1950) "There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) "The Veldt" (1950) "Ylla" (1950) "Embroidery" (1951) "The Fog Horn" (1951) "Here There Be Tygers" (1951) "The Pedestrian" (1951) "The April Witch" (1952) "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) "The Wilderness" (1952) "The Flying Machine" (1953) "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953) "The Meadow" (1953) "The Murderer" (1953) "Sun and Shadow" (1953) "All Summer in a Day" (1954) "The Dragon" (1955) "The Aqueduct" (1979) "Banshee" (1984) "The Toynbee Convector" (1984) "Is That You, Herb?" (2003)

Collections	Dark Carnival (1947) The Illustrated Man (1951) The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) The October Country (1955) A Medicine for Melancholy (1959) The Day It Rained Forever (1959) The Small Assassin (1962) R Is for Rocket (1962) The Machineries of Joy (1964) The Autumn People (1965) The Vintage Bradbury (1965) Tomorrow Midnight (1966) S Is for Space (1966) Twice 22 (1966) I Sing the Body Electric (1969) Ray Bradbury (1975) Long After Midnight (1976) The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979) The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980) The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1980) Dinosaur Tales (1983) A Memory of Murder (1984) The Toynbee Convector (1988) Classic Stories 1 (1990) Classic Stories 2 (1990) The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991) Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991) Quicker Than the Eye (1996) Driving Blind (1997) Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001) One More for the Road (2002) Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003) The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004) A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007) Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007) A Pleasure to Burn (2010) The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury (2011, 2014)

Plays	The Flying Machine: A One-Act Play for Three Men (1953) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972) Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975) The Martian Chronicles (1986) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1986) Fahrenheit 451 (1986) Dandelion Wine (1988) The Veldt (1988)

Adaptations	It Came from Outer Space (1953) Moby Dick (1956 screenplay) "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962) The Electric Grandmother (1982) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV series, 1985-86, 1988-92) The Halloween Tree (1993) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998) A Sound of Thunder (2005) The Whispers (2015)

Miscellaneous	The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978) Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) It Came from Outer Space (2003 book)

Commons Wikiquote Wikisource texts