Marionettes, Inc.

In Marionettes, Inc., Ray Bradbury offers his devoted readers something both special and unexpected: a unified view of one small corner of a varied fictional universe. In five stories (one of them original to this collection, plus a rare, previously unpublished screen treatment), Bradbury explores the concept of Robotics and examines its impact on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.Several of these tales, including "Changeling" and "Punishment Without Crime," are set in a world in which the eponymous company, Marionettes, Inc., has successfully created incredibly detailed replicas of existing men and women. When these surrogate "people" take their place in the real, often messy realm of human relationships, the results are sometimes tragic, sometimes ironic, and always surprising. But the true heart of this resonant collection is the classic novella, "I Sing the Body Electric." In this quintessential Bradbury story, an "electric Grandma" enters the lives of a grieving, newly motherless family, and slowly restores their capacity for wonder and joy. Like the very best of Bradbury's fiction, it is a magical, deeply felt account of hope, growth, survival, and change, and a moving meditation on what it really means to be human.