Bantam and Ballantine

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's mass-market paperback anthology Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, published by Bantam, and his contract with Ballantine for three science fiction novellas. Timeless Stories, which reached bookstores in time for the fall 1952 publishing season, was Bradbury's first achievement as a literary editor. Featuring works by twenty-five authors, the anthology reflected a more optimistic aspect of the myths Bradbury was developing to negotiate modernity as a writer. Most of the selections played into a more fundamental Bradbury strategy—his long-standing goal of extending fantasy into the literary mainstream by including “authors who rarely write fantasy.” Bradbury wanted to define fantasy by guarding against the dangers that lurked just beyond its margins. This chapter first considers how Bradbury's editorship of Timeless Stories had forced him to articulate his sense of authorship in a way he had never done before. It then looks at Bradbury's Ballantine book contract for his three novellas.