“Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury is story #30 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Zero Hour” was first published in Planet Stories (Fall 1947). The most famous place to read it is in Bradbury’s classic, The Illustrated Man.
I thought as I was reading “Zero Hour” this morning, “Hey, here’s a Bradbury story I haven’t read before!” Yesterday, I bought Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales for $1.99 for the Kindle edition so I’d have his stories on my phone. That worked out well since I decided to read “Zero Hour” at 5:30am this morning while I was still in my sleeping chair. I love having a library that’s always with me.
But when I checked ISFDB.org I realized I’ve read it at least two times before. I read The Illustrated Man in 1969 when the movie version came out. I might have read it again when I bought The Illustrated Man on audio. And I read it when I read The Great SF Stories 9 (1947). Two definite times, maybe a third.
So, why didn’t I remember reading it this morning? It’s a wonderful story. “Zero Hour” has a very similar ending to “The Veldt” which is also in The Illustrated Man, and that’s a story I always remember. Maybe “The Veldt” just hogged those neurons allocated to Bradbury.
“Zero Hour” is about a little girl, Mink, under 10, who her mother thinks has an imaginary friend — a Martian. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, Mrs. Morris, watching Mink and her friends play outside. Mrs. Morris interviews Mink about the game when Mink comes in for lunch. It’s called “Invasion.” Mrs. Morris learns from Mink that only kids under 10 can play because older kids are too critical. Bradbury has often written about the enchanting time of childhood when believing was real.
I don’t want to say any more, because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of reading this wonderful little story.
I’ve always admired Ray Bradbury, especially when I was young. However, I never considered him a regular science fiction writer. He was always a horse of a different color. Bradbury’s sense of science is on the magic side of the spectrum. Ray Bradbury is closer to L. Frank Baum than Robert A. Heinlein. Bradbury seemed old even when he was young.
Ray Bradbury was born nostalgic. Mentally, he seemed to live in the 1930s or earlier. Even though he became famous for writing about rockets and space travel, it was from a nostalgic perspective, and not from being futuristic.
“Zero Hour” is a beautiful story about childhood and motherhood. It may have Martians invading Earth, it may have children who kill their parents, and it may have futuristic gadgets, but it’s really a view of Norman Rockwell’s America in the 1930s. Buck Rogers shaped his future, not Heinlein. Sure, “Zero Hour” has the twisted humorous horror of Charles Adams and Gahan Wilson, but essentially it’s a story about being a child of wonder.
My guess is I didn’t remember “Zero Hour” because Bradbury was prolific and many of his stories were similar in theme, so they blur together. However, after reading “Zero Hour” I wanted to read the other 99 Bradbury stories in that collection.
James Wallace Harris, 7/13/23
Classics of Science Fiction 
As I’m fairly sure you realise, Bradbury Stories is the “wrong” collection for his best work. He compiled two giant retrospectives, each with exactly 100 stories: The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) and Bradbury Stories (2003). The great thing for the reader who wants a basic Bradbury library without buying an armful of books, is that there is no overlap whatsoever between those two books. So for two books, you get 200 stories.
Predictably enough, the earlier book is much stronger than the later one, although a handful of gems that had been left out of the 1980 book are in the 2003 one. The 2003 book seems to have been compiled in a rather loosey-goosey way. For example, his first significant SF story, “R Is for Rocket”, unaccountably failed to find a place in either book, despite the fact that leftovers abound in the second book. Another oddity is that the second mega-collection came out in 2003, and yet it contains no stories from his 1997 and 2002 collections (with one exception that isn’t really an exception, but I won’t elaborate). The impression I get is that Bradbury compiled the contents in the late 90s, that publication was delayed for some reason, and that he didn’t bother to update his selections later, after two more regular collections had appeared.
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I didn’t know any of that. I just checked my Kindle library and I also own The Stories of Ray Bradbury. So I’m covered.
I just checked my Audible library and I have several books. The largest collection I have is Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories. It has 32 stories. How doe it rate? Audible also has A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories. How does it rate? Another big collection is I Sing the Body Electric.
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Anything with “And Other Stories” appended isn’t the original TOC, but a repackage which includes most, but not all, of the stories in the original collection, plus a few that weren’t in the original collection.
Golden Apples + includes most of the stories from The Golden Apples … plus most of the stories from R Is for Rocket.
A Medicine + has most of the stories from A Medicine for Melancholy plus most of the stories from S Is for Space.
Now here’s the cute part: The missing stories from each of the above two books are in the other book! So those two titles actually contain four original collections, with duplicates eliminated.
Then, of course, there is I Sing the Body Electric. If, as I assume, you have the “and Other Stories” version, it’s the same situation again: It has most of the stories from ISTBE, plus about half the stories from Long After Midnight. But this time, there is no other collection that includes the “missing” stories!
The only Bradbury books that are entirely or mostly SF are The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451. Golden Apples has essential SF stories, but over 50% of that one is not SF.
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I agree about nostalgia and wonder being threads in the tapestry of Ray Bradbury. “Dandelion Wine” checks off those boxes, and it’s a delightful collection of tales.
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Ray Bradbury had one of the most unique talents for writing horror stories. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Zero Hour.
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