One of my all-time favorite authors is Ray Bradbury. Beginning with The Martian Chronicles, which I read when I was in junior high, I fell in love with his imaginative writings. Wildside Press has collected 15 science fiction tales that Bradbury wrote early in his career for pulp magazines, circa 1944 – 1951. While the first few stories aren’t the greatest things he’s written, for $0.99 the collection is still a great bargain. 

Included is a stone-cold Bradbury classic, The Creatures That Time Forgot, the story of a group of humans and their descendants who are stranded on a planet with properties that cause them to live their entire lives in the span of eight days. Born one day, reaching adulthood by the third day, they die of old age on the eighth. Even though it sounds implausible, even for science fiction, Bradbury makes it entirely believable and paints a realistic picture of the struggles a community would undergo to survive under such conditions. 

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