Remembering the years he plugged without even encouragement knowing that he is the possessor of one of the world’s largest collections of rejection slips and knowing, too, just how poor some of his early stuff was, one can’t help but feel just a tiny bit glad that he’s made the grade at last. Science Fiction Times, the most respected review zine of its era, noted the occasion: “Another new author who has continued to rise lately is Ray Bradbury.

With its unique storyline and emotional depth, “I, Rocket” drew immediate notice to itself and its author. It was also the first time an editor had considered one of his stories important enough to feature the title on the cover.” It was his first sale to Amazing Stories, and the longest science fiction story he had written up to that time. ‘I, Rocket’ was on several counts a milestone in the writing career of Ray Douglas Bradbury. His reputation was predominantly confined to Weird Tales… Despite the undeniable promise displayed by his published work he had received virtually no important critical acceptance either in or out of the science fiction world. Until then, Moskowitz writes, “Ray Bradbury had sold a few science fiction stories elsewhere, but they had made little impact. Hence, the author’s title he isn’t being metaphorical.Īccording to science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz, it is also the story that established Bradbury’s reputation within the science fiction community. It is also the first story ever written in which the viewpoint character and first-person narrator is a fully conscious, intelligent and aware spaceship. “I, Rocket” is exactly the kind of story science fiction readers had come to expect from Ray Bradbury: it was set on a spaceship or another planet, but with the emphasis on the human experience rather than the mechanical or the scientific. Bradbury was no newcomer, having sold his first story to Super Science Stories in 1941, and having written over one hundred stories for journals like Other Worlds, Weird Tales, Planet Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and, of course, Amazing Stories, before the first literary critic ever heard of him.

Science fiction fans knew better, of course. When Ray Bradbury’s now celebrated book, The Martian Chronicles, was published in 1950, he became an overnight success-at least, to literary critics and the general public who were just discovering him.

The rocket ray bradbury