Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing and Leviathan '99

by Ray Bradbury

Overview

Two never-before-published novellas by one of America's finest living writers, Ray Bradbury.

A journalist bearing terrible news leaps from a still-moving train into a small town of wonderful, impossible secrets . . .

The doomed crew of a starship follow their blind, mad captain on a quest into deepest space to joust with destiny, eternity, and God Himself . . .

Now and Forever is a bold new work from an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape; 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 no small children play, and where the residents never seem to age. Enchanted by its powerful rural magic -- and by a beautiful, enigmatic lady who bears the name of an Egyptian queen -- the writer sets out to uncover Summerton's mysteries before the inevitable arrival of a ruthless 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 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. And in the merciless void, a crew of earthborn and alien star-travelers will face a divine judgment, and an "enemy" wielding the most fearsome weapon of all . . . Time.

More than a half century into his remarkable career, Ray Bradbury continues to delight and astound with grand visions, lyrical prose, and provocative thought. Rich in poetry, wonder, imagination, and truth, here is proof positive that the words and stories of the inimitable Bradbury will live on . . . Now and Forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780007284733
Publisher:	Harper Voyager
Publication date:	08/28/1993
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Hometown:

Los Angeles, California

Date of Birth:

August 22, 1920

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

Attended schools in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California

Website:

http://www.raybradbury.com

Read an Excerpt

Now and Forever
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
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.