Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Esquire

As Ray Bradbury's literary reputation grew, he moved from the poorly paying pulp magazines to the more financially rewarding "slicks". This was a well trodden path for successful genre authors, and a path that would typically include writing for men's magazines. In Bradbury's case this meant Playboy and Esquire, among others.

He contributed six original short stories to Esquire between 1950 and 1955:

"The Dragon", "The Gift", "The Illustrated Man", "Interval in Sunlight", "The Last Night of the World", and "A Piece of Wood".

"The Last Night of the World" appeared in February 1951 - inside the cover pictured above. Shortly afterward, the story was collected in Bradbury's book The Illustrated Man, which is in fact the only Bradbury book it has appeared in. For some reason it was never selected for either of the two big short story compendiums (Bradbury Stories and The Stories of Ray Bradbury).

Esquire's website has the full text of "The Last Night of the World", and names it as one of twelve contributions Bradbury made to the magazine. Since there were only six original short stories, I am guessing that the remainder were either reprints or non-fiction articles.

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