This February marks 57 years since Ray Bradbury published his short story collection The Machineries of Joy. A mixture of the bizarre and everyday, these twenty stories are a mirror of the author’s own joys: his love of small town life and large dinosaurs, his capacious curiosity, and his steadfast insistence on embracing the things we love despite the obstacles.
In the title piece, two priests debate the value of exploring the unknown universe. “Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar,” first published as “Come Into My Cellar” in the 1962 October issue of Galaxy Science Fiction and later the basis for Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ disquieting adaptation, “Special Delivery,” follows young boys who respond to the allure of mail order science projects and unknowingly begin spawning space invaders in the cellars of suburbia. Two other stories revisit the Mexican customs illuminated in The Halloween Tree while the often forgotten “The Illustrated Woman” entwines the fantastic, the frightening, and the truly human in classic Bradbury style.
Watch “Special Delivery” on Peacock