Dinosaur Tales (1983) by Ray Bradbury is a slim collection of four short stories, and two poems, overly illustrated by various talented artists with the shackles of black-and-white-only put upon their imaginations. There is a short foreword by Ray Harryhausen, and gung-ho introduction by Bradbury himself, but the end-result is really a fourth-rate product. Only one of the stories is really good (the class "A Sound of Thunder" from 1951, which has been filmed a couple of times), the rest of the book is the kind of stuff one expects from a book packager who thinks: "Ray Bradbury wrote a great dinosaur tale and a few other crappy ones, and one that isn't really a dinosaur tale but we can call it one. Let's bring them together with some black-and-white illustrations, and a color cover, that we can get for cheap and make a book of it." And that's exactly what Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. did. The end-result only diminishes the reputations of everyone involved.
Showing posts with label Ray Bradbury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ray Bradbury. Show all posts
Monday, November 6, 2017
Dinosaur Tales
Dinosaur Tales (1983) by Ray Bradbury is a slim collection of four short stories, and two poems, overly illustrated by various talented artists with the shackles of black-and-white-only put upon their imaginations. There is a short foreword by Ray Harryhausen, and gung-ho introduction by Bradbury himself, but the end-result is really a fourth-rate product. Only one of the stories is really good (the class "A Sound of Thunder" from 1951, which has been filmed a couple of times), the rest of the book is the kind of stuff one expects from a book packager who thinks: "Ray Bradbury wrote a great dinosaur tale and a few other crappy ones, and one that isn't really a dinosaur tale but we can call it one. Let's bring them together with some black-and-white illustrations, and a color cover, that we can get for cheap and make a book of it." And that's exactly what Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. did. The end-result only diminishes the reputations of everyone involved. 
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