Now and Forever

by Bradbury, Ray

• ISBN13: 9780061260377
• ISBN10: 0061260371
• Edition: Large
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-29
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

From an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape come two bewitching novellas that have never before appeared in print-each distinctly different, yet uniquely Bradbury-demonstrating the breathtaking range of the master's talent and the irrepressible vitality of his mind, spirit, and heart. In Somewhere a Band Is Playing, a writer is drawn by poetry and dreams to tiny Summerton, Arizona, a community hidden in plain view, where the residents, miraculously, never seem to age. Enchanted by its powerful rural magic-and by a beautiful, enigmatic lady-the writer sets out to uncover Summerton's mysteries before the inevitable arrival of a ruthless and soulless destruction. With Leviathan '99, the author who once colonized Mars returns to the cosmos to brilliantly reimagine Herman Melville's classic masterwork of obsession and the sea, transforming a great whale into a massive, worlds-devouring comet. In the year 2099, fledgling astronaut Ishmael Hunnicut Jones boards the Cetus 7, placing his fate in the hands of a relentless madman who is blindly chasing the celestial monster's tail. Rich in poetry, wonder, and truth-brimming with imagination, intelligence, and delectable sly humor-here is proof positive that the words and stories of the inimitable Bradbury will live on . . . Now and Forever.

Table of Contents

"Somewhere" : introduction to Somewhere a band is playing	p. 3
Somewhere a band is playing	p. 9
"Radio dream" : introduction to Leviathan '99	p. 117
Leviathan '99	p. 123
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Now and Forever LP
Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99

Chapter One

There was a desert prairie filled with wind and sun and sagebrush and a silence that grew sweetly up in wildflowers. There was a rail track laid across this silence and now the rail track shuddered.

Soon a dark train charged out of the east with fire and steam and thundered through the station. On its way it slowed at a platform littered with confetti, the tatters of ancient tickets punched by transient conductors.

The locomotive slowed just enough for one piece of luggage to catapult out, and a young man in a summer dishrag suit to leap after and land running as the train, with a roar, charged on as if the station did not exist, nor the luggage, nor its owner who now stopped his jolting run to stare around as the dust settled around him and, in the distance, the dim outlines of small houses were revealed.

"Damn," he whispered. "There is something here, after all."

More dust blew away, revealing more roofs, spires, and trees.

"Why?" he whispered. "Why did I come here?"

He answered himself even more quietly, "Because."

Now and Forever LP
Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99. Copyright © by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing and Leviathan '99 by Ray Bradbury
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.