Tree story

When I was a kid, I loved to sit in a certain notch in the tree in front of my house and read. No one could see me, unless they were looking.

I remember reading the Ray Bradbury story "Dark They Were, And Golden Eyed" up there for the first time, and having it fairly knock me out. Another Martian story, but not one collected in The Martian Chronicles, this tale of Earth settlers' gradual assimilation into Martian life is at once eerie and calming. How often do you read a story where a whole family changes species and it's a happy ending?

Bradbury wrote something like 126,000 short stories and I have failed to read most of them, but this one with its Martian landscape of "cinnamon sands and wine airs" sticks in my brain, its elegiac air not forced but rather comfortable.

Plus! RB did win the Peter Sellers lookalike contest he was on his way to when the above pic was snapped!