Now and Forever Book

Ray Bradbury's "Now and Forever" is a bewitching book collecting together two hugely contrasting tales of the fantastic " Somewhere a Band is Playing" and "Leviathan '99". In "Somewhere a Band is Playing", journalist James Cardiff is enticed through poetry and his fascination with a mysterious and enigmatic young woman to the town of Summerton, a town where there are no children to be seen out playing and where the residents seem never to age. Intrigued by the secrets of Summerton, Cardiff sets out to undercover the town's mysteries before the seemingly inevitable arrival of destruction masked as progress to the community. While "Somewhere a Band is Playing" is a relatively low-key novella, Bradbury switches the action up a notch with "Leviathan '99", a reimagining of Herman Melville's Moby Dick as an interstellar adventure where the menace of the great whale is embodied into a world destroying comet. When astronaut Ishmael Jones joins the crew of the starship Cetus 7 he finds that he has placed his fate in the hands of a relentless madman. In the merciless void of space the crew face an enemy wielding the most impossibly fearsome weapon of all - time! Both of the stories that make up "Now and Forever" are truly enchanting works of imagination and positively shine with Bradbury's signature blend of humanity, fantasy, realism and speculation as to what the future may hold.