Bradbury 13

Thirteen Ray Bradbury stories were dramatized as semi-modern radio plays. The quality is well done. The stories often end with a cliff that leaves you pondering. (And the "screaming lady" story that ends with everything neatly wound leaves you feeling odd that it was so neatly concluded.) Bradbury loves to use the colonization of Mars to comment on our current society. Earthlings freely disregard the Martians - even in cases when the Martians are merely assimilating earthlings from the past.

The dramatizations are top notch. The stories are "science fiction" in a very loose sense of the word. Bradbury spends a lot of time exploring space ships and the colonization of Mars. However, he is primarily telling human stories. Replace space with the oceans and Mars with the new world, and we have the same story in a historical setting. "Time Safari" is one of the few stories that would qualify as "science fiction" when removed from its surroundings. People travel in a time machine to hunt dinosaurs. However, they are careful to stay on the paths and only hunt a dinosaur that was about to die anyway. Even the smallest change from that many years ago could potentially have great ramifications in the future. (Though you have to wonder if even the mere alternate execution of the T-Rex could also have serious impacts.)