The Small Assassin - Ray Bradbury ****

By Brian Clegg

It’s a shame that the literati picked up on Fahrenheit 451, arguably one of Bradbury’s less effective books to enthuse over, as it has got him labelled in some circles as a science fiction writer, where he was primarily a brilliant writer of fantasy. This collection of short stories features a number that could be described as fantasy, but as there are also some that don’t have a fantasy element, it is more reasonably described as horror. Horror generally of a relatively mild, but entertaining nature.

My copy of the book (cover shown here) is dated 1976, but the majority of the stories originate in the collection Dark Carnival, first published in 1947 (apparently his first ever book). Despite being from a period when pulp writing could be painfully bad, most shine with Bradbury’s trademark lyrical prose. One or two feel a little overlong – too much time is spent ladling on the atmosphere – but most still work very well.

At the fantasy end we have, for example, the title story, featuring a killer baby – this sounds like something out of a schlocky horror film, but here is a much more subtle version of the trope which is genuinely chilling (particularly the ending). Others are more like a ghost story – I particularly liked The Lake, where a sad story of childhood drowning only strays into the mysterious with a part-built sandcastle. And then there are tales simply of human nastiness (sometimes attributed, in classic Bradbury fashion, to children). Two that stood out to me were The Next in Line – one that was over-long, but powerfully featured a Central or South American town where people were removed from their graves and stored as mummies if they couldn’t pay rent on the grave, and The Handler featuring a particularly gruesome undertaker (for example, replacing a brain with whipped cream and sprinkles), which at the end tips into fantasy.

All in all, if not up to Bradbury’s most remarkable output, a very effective collection.

Sadly The Small Assassin is out of print, but you can buy used copies from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com - alternatively, Dark Carnival is still in print and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.