R is for Rocket

Prologue

When I was a boy in the Midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them.

I guess every boy has done that.

When I wasn’t looking at the stars, I was running in my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or Time Machines.

I guess every boy has done that, too.

This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, because that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years.

Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the Future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the Years Ahead.

Nor have I forgotten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a Machine that travels back in Time to step on a butterfly.

This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small Illinois town and lived to see the Space Age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would.

I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the Past, run swiftly in the Present, and have high hopes for our Future.

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles March 28, 1962