We do not hear the old-time stories where a doctor gives his patient “six-weeks” to live* or some other somewhat arbitrary period as often as we used to. One of these ways, which this story led me to ponder about would be a human’s sometimes increased knowledge of the specific time of our inevitable death. The human experience has been changed in many ways by technology. An argument could be made that this Bradbury story qualifies on all three grounds. This year, stories in that suit are supposed to be of the “Ghost, Scary, or Sci-Fi” category. I drew the six of spades from my short story deck this past weekend. I am participating in this meme in conjunction with my own short story reading project for 2013 – “Project: Deal Me In!” Many times the stories posted about are available for free on line and are linked within the post – as mine is this week. It’s a great way to learn about new stories and writers. Participants read (at least) one short story a week and post about it, usually linking to their post in a comment on Nancy’s site. It delves into the deep and murky darkness of human behavior as it attempts to shed some light on those recesses of humanity that we hope we never get to personally experience.Short Stories on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Nancy at A Simple Clockwork. On balance, however, it is a good situational character study. The boy makes a wish at his mother’s hurried suggestion and thus the doomed man has his day in the spotlight in at least one young light.īradbury’s story is typical of the period and filled with the usual misinformation and triteness. Fate grants his wish as he enters the atmosphere and a small boy looks up to see his body as a falling star. His past life, “terrible and empty” stretches out behind him as the blue disk of Earth looms ever closer. At several points the men find their limbs rudely sheared off by passing meteorites but they deal with this calmly by simply tightening the joints in their space suits to compensate.įinally, out of radio range, one man, headed for Earth, wishes that he had done some good in the world before he died. Several “mutinies of one” break out and the men console themselves by asserting their independence from the captain despite the fact that in this situation, they really are at the mercy of luck rather than authority. This seems an unlikely luxury since once they are clear of the initial debris field and each other, any ability to determine velocity or direction will be rendered impossible by the lack of any local context.Īfter the initial panic has concluded, the men fall to settling old scores and generally having it out with each other over their increasingly weak radio links. Moving in a dozen different directions, the men are able (somewhat impossibly) to discover where they’re going to end up. For the first ten minutes the crew assesses their situation and come to terms with the grim future that awaits them. Unlike their more earth-bound counterparts, these men have the advantage of radio communication. Cast adrift on an infinite sea, if they’re extremely lucky, they can look forward to a quick and painless death. Kaleidoscope, I suspect anyway, is a variation on some old nautical tale about shipwrecked sailors with the significant difference that these sailors of the inky void of space are absolutely without hope. They were scattered into a dark sea and the ship, in a million pieces, went on like a meteor swam seeking a lost sun. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. The first concussion cut the ship up the side like a giant can opener. In the case of Bradbury’s Kaleidoscope, I can really say anything I want without that particular fear because the first paragraph contains the entire climax of the story: Sometimes I have the fear that I’m ruining some exciting climax with my little blurbs about these stories but then I tend to calculate that it’s unlikely anyone will read this and then run out and get the story.
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