I Sing the Body Electric

In true Bradbury style an homage is paid to Papa Hemingway in The Kilimanjaro Device.  A birthing procedure gone wrong, delivering up a baby from another dimension in Tomorrows Child?  A bizarre fight for a man in The Women. An artistic chicken in the Inspired Chicken Hotel, and what every assassin and attention seeker needs in Downwind From Gettysburg.
Yes, We’ll Gather at the River is a testament to change, and a lyrical Irish tale written to amaze and astonish (what on earth did I just read?) in The Cold Wind and the Warm.  Self-aware telephones in Night Call, Collect (Ray had an uncanny sense of how things would be in the future).
I Sing the Body Electric, a story so impassioned and bittersweet.  Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s is a Friend of Mine is a very special homage to the great Charles Dickens and to the love of writing.  Heavy Set is just downright creepy (how did he do it?  I imagine him chuckling with impish glee whenever he wrote such stuff).  And in Henry the Ninth an unwillingness to let go of what is most important.
It’s a collection of stories about love, the many ways we love, the many things we love and in true Bradbury fashion, some alternatives to love.  It’s beautiful, it’s magic, it’s pure Ray Bradbury at his most loving.