The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Golden Apples of the Sun is an anthology of 22 short stories (32 in the 1997 edition) by Ray Bradbury; it was first published in 1953.

The book's namesake is one of the short stories in the collection. Bradbury drew the title for the story from the last line of the final stanza to W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus" (1899):

The last three lines of the poem are included in the beginning of the book as well.

Contents

1953 edition

1. "The Fog Horn" (1952)
2. "The Pedestrian" (1951)
3. "The April Witch" (1951)
4. "The Wilderness" (1952)
5. "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948)
6. "Invisible Boy" (1945)
7. "The Flying Machine" (1953)
8. "The Murderer" (1953)
9. "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953)
10. "I See You Never" (1947)
11. "Embroidery" (1951)
12. "The Big Black and White Game" (1945)
13. "A Sound of Thunder" (1952)
14. "The Great Wide World Over There" (1953)
15. "Powerhouse" (1948)
16. "En la Noche" (1952)
17. "Sun and Shadow" (1953)
18. "The Meadow" (1947)
19. "The Garbage Collector" (1953)
20. "The Great Fire" (1949)
21. "Hail and Farewell" (1953)
22. "The Golden Apples of the Sun" (1953)

1997 edition

Cover from the 1997 edition

1. "The Fog Horn" (1952)
2. "The April Witch" (1951)
3. "The Wilderness" (1952)
4. "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948)
5. "The Flying Machine" (1953)
6. "The Murderer" (1953)
7. "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953)
8. "I See You Never" (1947)
9. "Embroidery" (1951)
10. "The Big Black and White Game" (1945)
11. "The Great Wide World Over There" (1953)
12. "Powerhouse" (1948)
13. "En la Noche" (1952)
14. "Sun and Shadow" (1953)
15. "The Meadow" (1947)
16. "The Garbage Collector" (1953)
17. "The Great Fire" (1949)
18. "The Golden Apples of the Sun" (1953)
19. "R Is for Rocket" (1943)
20. "The End of the Beginning" (1956)
21. "The Rocket" (1950)
22. "The Rocket Man" (1953)
23. "A Sound of Thunder" (1952)
24. "The Long Rain" (1950)
25. "The Exiles" (1950)
26. "Here There Be Tygers" (1951)
27. "The Strawberry Window" (1954)
28. "The Dragon" (1955)
29. "Frost and Fire" (1947)
30. "Uncle Einar" (1947)
31. "The Time Machine" (1957)
32. "The Sound of Summer Running" (1957)

Editions

• ISBN 0-435-12360-2 (hardback, 1990)
• ISBN 0-380-73039-1 (paperback, 1997)
• ISBN 1-59606-136-7 (hardback, Subterranean Press, 2008)

Derivative anthologies

In 1990, Bantam Books collected most of the stories from R Is for Rocket (1962) and the 1953 edition of The Golden Apples of the Sun into a semi-omnibus edition titled Classic Stories 1. In 1997 Avon Books printed a new edition of the omnibus, titling it The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories. Harper Perennial titled their 2005 edition as A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories.

Reception

Writing in The New York Times, Charles Poore reported that Bradbury "writes in a style that seems to have been nourished on the poets and fabulists of the Irish Literary Renaissance," praising him as being "wonderfully adept at getting to the heart of his story without talking all day long about it and around it."^[1]

Reviewer Groff Conklin praised the original edition, saying it included "some of the best imaginative stories he [Bradbury] or anyone else has ever written. One cannot even begin to describe their delights."^[2] Boucher and McComas, however, found Golden Apples to be a "most uncertain reading experience . . . material of a curiously mixed quality; writing that is often simply and perceptively moving [and] just as often sadly lacking any particular strength or color"^[3] Imagination reviewer Mark Reinsberg, although praising Bradbury as "a gifted writer," complained that he had "a tendency to overestimate the power of style to nourish anemic themes."^[4]

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 62. ISBN 0-911682-20-1. 

External links

• The Golden Apples of the Sun title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database