"Frost and Fire" is a short story by Ray Bradbury and the fourteenth in his collection R is for Rocket . It was first published in Planet Stories (Fall, 1946) as "The Creatures That Time Forgot". The story is about short-lived humans on a planet similar to Mercury. [1]
Placed there by a past rocket ship that crashed, the people of the storied land are within sight of another rocket ship on a distant mountain plateau. The plot follows Sim, the protagonist of this story, and his apparently short life on a planet where people are cursed by radiation to live only eight days.
The people of this planet are also gifted with racial memory (they remember their ancestors' memories). However, they do not attempt to reach the sole remaining rocket ship due to the futility of attempting to reach it in one hour, which is the longest length of time between day and night (both deadly).
Sim is then moved by the memory of his ancestors to find and meet with scientists who make halting progress towards the goal of lengthening the world's decreased life span. Sim, motivated by his dwindling days, makes it his goal to extend his life and reach the distant rocket, despite the protests of his sister and other cave-dwellers.
Sim: A young man who is the protagonist of the story. He is intelligent, resourceful, and selfless. He is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his people.
Lyte: A young woman who is Sim's love interest. She is strong and independent, and she is willing to help Sim even though she knows that she will never see her family again.
Dark: Sim's sister who dissuades him from traveling to the rocket ship. She has a poor opinion of the scientists.
Nhoj: Sim's enemy who tries to kill him.
Dienc: A scientist who helps Sim. [2]
"Frost and Fire" was adapted as a graphic novel. It is the third in the DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel series, by Klaus Janson in 1985.
An independent short film Quest, based on "Frost and Fire" and directed by Elaine and Saul Bass, was released in 1983. [3]
In 2024 it was announced a live action feature film adaptation was in the works, with a screenplay written by Doug Simon. [4]
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who soon becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up novel, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war.
The Illustrated Man is a 1951 collection of 18 science fiction short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. A recurring theme throughout the stories is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people. It was nominated for the International Fantasy Award in 1952.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
Elfquest is a comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978. It is a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons. Several published volumes of prose fiction also share the same setting. Elfquest was one of the first comic book series to have a planned conclusion. Over the years Elfquest has been self-published by the Pinis through their own company Warp Graphics, then Marvel Comics, then the Pinis again, more recently DC Comics, and, since 2013, Dark Horse Comics. All issues of Elfquest published prior to 2014 are available online for free.
The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favourite. Prior to the publishing of the novel, Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologised in The Sentinel in 1983.
"Here There Be Tygers" is a short story by American writer Ray Bradbury, originally published in the anthology New Tales of Space and Time in 1951. It was later collected in Bradbury's short story collections R is for Rocket and The Golden Apples of the Sun. It deals with a rocket expedition sent to a planet to see whether or not its natural resources can be harvested for the human race. They discover a paradise which seems to provide for them whatever they desire even as they think of it. They ultimately decide to leave the planet and report that it is hostile and of no benefit to humans.
R Is for Rocket (1962) is a short story collection by American writer Ray Bradbury, compiled for Young Adult library sections. It contains fifteen stories from earlier Bradbury collections, and two previously uncollected stories.
S is for Space (1966) is a collection of science fiction short stories written by Ray Bradbury. It was compiled for the Young Adult sections of libraries.
"The Long Rain" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1950 - under a different title indicative of its ending - in the magazine Planet Stories, and then in the collection The Illustrated Man. The story tells of four men who have crashed on Venus, where it is always raining.
"The Exiles" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It was originally published as "The Mad Wizards of Mars" in Maclean's on September 15, 1949 and was reprinted, in revised form, the following year by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. First collected in The Illustrated Man (1951), it was later included in the collections R Is for Rocket (1962), Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003), A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) and A Pleasure to Burn. It was also published in "The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" (ISBN 0553206737).
Gerald McBoing-Boing is an American-Canadian Flash-animated children's television series based on the 1950 animated short film Gerald McBoing-Boing. It is produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment, with animation provided by Mercury Filmworks.
The Stories of Ray Bradbury is an anthology containing 100 short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published by Knopf in 1980. The hundred stories, written from 1943 to 1980, were selected by the author himself. Bradbury's work had previously been collected in various compilations, such as The Martian Chronicles and The October Country, but never in such a large volume or spanning such a long period of time.
Roman Frederick Starzl (1899–1976) was an American writer. He, and earlier, his father, owned the Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper of Le Mars, Iowa. Roman Frederick was also the father of physician Thomas E. Starzl. His writing is largely forgotten now, but he was called a "master" by the pioneer of space opera E. E. Smith. Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol, in The Hornets of Space, may have influenced Smith's Galactic Patrol. There is an extensive interview with Thomas Starzl about his father in Eric Leif Davin's Pioneers of Wonder.
Of Man and Manta is a trilogy of science fiction novels written by Piers Anthony. It consists of the three books: Omnivore (1968), Orn (1970), and 0X (1975).
The Martian Chronicles is a 1980 television three-episode miniseries based on Ray Bradbury's 1950 book The Martian Chronicles and dealing with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell. It was aired on NBC in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours. The series depicts Mars as having a "thin atmosphere" which humans can breathe, with water-filled canals and desert-like vegetation. The miniseries was directed by Michael Anderson and written by Richard Matheson.
The following is a list of works by Ray Bradbury.
Classic Stories 1: From The Golden Apples of the Sun and R is for Rocket is a semi-omnibus edition of two short story collections by Ray Bradbury: The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) and R is for Rocket (1962).
"The Rocket" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. It is also included in The Illustrated Man, a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury.
Suspended animation in fiction refers to the temporary cessation of life processes experienced by fictional characters, followed by their subsequent revival. This process is commonly employed as a plot device in science fiction narratives. It is frequently utilized to transport a character from the past to the future or to facilitate interstellar space travel, which necessitates an extended journey for months or years. In addition to accomplishing the character's primary objective in the future, they often encounter the unfamiliarity of a new world, which may bear only faint resemblance to their previous surroundings. On occasion, a character is portrayed as possessing skills or abilities that have become lost to society during their period of suspension, enabling them to assume a heroic role in their new temporal setting.
The conditions on this world allude to Mercury, where the days are extremely hot, the nights extremely cold, and humans live for only eight days.
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