Three hundred years after his death, William Lantry awakes from his coffin. One thing is very clear to him - this sterile world without superstition, fear, or imagination must be destroyed.

It’s going to be so much fun! All of the kids in the neighborhood are playing a super fun game - Invasion!

In this short story first published by Ray Bradbury in the 1951 "Illustrated Man" collection, the game of "Invasion" has been sweeping the country. Children all across the nation pretend to have been enlisted by alien invaders, their job to overthrow their parents, and help their newfound friends take over the Earth. To Mrs. Morris, it's harmless fun — but to her daughter Mink, it's far from just a game.

Asleep in Armageddon delves into the recesses of human imagination as Ray Bradbury crafts a mesmerizing narrative set against a backdrop of impending cataclysm. In this thought-provoking short story, Bradbury explores the complex interplay between dreams and reality, challenging conventional notions of existence. As the world hurtles toward an uncertain fate, the protagonist grapples with the surreal landscape of their own subconscious, blurring the lines between nightmare and actuality. Bradbury's poetic prose and evocative imagery converge in this tale, creating a vivid exploration of the human psyche in the face of existential turmoil.

This is one of the few Bradbury short stories that has never been reprinted since its appearance in the Spring 1948 issue of PLANET STORIES. It's about an old man named Nibley who has a unique, almost supernatural ability to calculate the orbits of objects in motion. That's a valuable ability to have for navigating in space, of course, but science has passed Nibley by and all rockets now have radar computators to handle such navigation. But then an accident happens and the fate of the entire Earth colony on Jupiter relies on getting a supply ship through the Asteroid Belt without its instruments, with only a dying old man to guide the way.

An adolescent boy stands patiently in the back of the long line of children waiting to sit on the lap of their local Santa Claus. Why is he there? What does he intend? What mysterious hopes does he hold for this holiday season? The answer arrives following a cryptic interaction between the two, when the reality of the boy's awareness and the goals of the man in the red suit become clear.

The Playground was part of the first hardcover edition of Ray Bradbury's legendary work Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. In the story, Charles Underhill is a widower who will do anything to protect his young son Jim from the horrors of the playground - a playground which he and the boy pass by daily and the tumult of which, the activity, brings back to Charles the anguish of his own childhood.

Emil Barton literally missed his rocketship when the Mars colonists were brought back to Earth at the start of the nuclear war. After a lifetime alone on the Red Planet - literally the only inhabitant of the terraformed world - Barton gets an unwelcome phone call on his 80th birthday. It's himself, calling from sixty years in the past.

This thrilling tale by Ray Bradbury, winner of the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Emmy and Hugo awards, takes place on a treacherous world that a group of colonists have been forced to land on. In order to escape from this planet with a scorching sun during the day, freezing temperatures by night, and a life-sucking radiation that makes all life vey short, young Sim must cross a section of this mad world, reach their broken ship, and repair it, before the elements, or some of his fellow colonists, kill him.

They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois—and they are not like other Midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids. Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the far-flung branches of this odd and remarkable family.