The Dragon (short story)

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"The Dragon"
Short story by Ray Bradbury
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy
Publication
Published in	Esquire
Publication type	Periodical
Media type	Print (Magazine)
Publication date	August 1955

The Dragon
dust-jacket from the first edition
Author	Ray Bradbury
Illustrator	Ken Snyder
Cover artist	Ken Snyder
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy short story
Publisher	Footsteps Press
Publication date	1988
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	15 pp

"The Dragon" is a short story by American writer Ray Bradbury, originally published in 1948 in the magazine Esquire. A limited edition (352 copies, signed and numbered or lettered) of the story was published by Footsteps Press in 1988. It appears in A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), R is for Rocket (1962), Classic Stories 1 (1990), and Bradbury Stories (2003).

Plot

[edit]

The story concerns two knights who have a mission to slay a dragon. They describe the dragon as huge, fire-breathing, and horrific, having only one eye. They charge the dragon but fail, presumably dying in the attempt.

The "dragon" is then revealed to be a steam train, and its single eye is the train's headlight. The operators discuss the encounter but continue on without attempting to find the knights.

Sources

[edit]

Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd. p. 264.
Brown, Charles N.; William G. Contento. "The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1998)". Retrieved 2007-12-12.

External links

[edit]

The Dragon title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

v t e Ray Bradbury
Bibliography (Short fiction)
Novels	The Martian Chronicles (1950) Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Dandelion Wine (1957) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) The Halloween Tree (1972) Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) From the Dust Returned (2001) Let's All Kill Constance (2002) Farewell Summer (2006)
Short stories	"Hollerbochen's Dilemma" (1938) "The Scythe" (1943) "I, Rocket" (1944) "The Lake" (1944) "Frost and Fire" (1946) "The Million Year Picnic" (1946) "The Small Assassin" (1946) "I See You Never" (1947) "Fever Dream" (1948) "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948) "The Long Years" (1948) "Mars Is Heaven!" (1948) "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949) "The Exiles" (1949) "Marionettes, Inc." (1949) "The Long Rain" (1950) "The Rocket" (1950) "There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) "The Veldt" (1950) "Ylla" (1950) "Embroidery" (1951) "The Fog Horn" (1951) "Here There Be Tygers" (1951) "The Pedestrian" (1951) "The April Witch" (1952) "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) "The Wilderness" (1952) "The Flying Machine" (1953) "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953) "The Meadow" (1953) "The Murderer" (1953) "Sun and Shadow" (1953) "All Summer in a Day" (1954) "The Dragon" (1955) "The Aqueduct" (1979) "Banshee" (1984) "The Toynbee Convector" (1984) "Is That You, Herb?" (2003)
Collections	Dark Carnival (1947) The Illustrated Man (1951) The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) The October Country (1955) A Medicine for Melancholy (1959) The Day It Rained Forever (1959) The Small Assassin (1962) R Is for Rocket (1962) The Machineries of Joy (1964) The Vintage Bradbury (1965) S Is for Space (1966) Twice 22 (1966) I Sing the Body Electric! (1969) Ray Bradbury (1975) Long After Midnight (1976) The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979) The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980) The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1980) Dinosaur Tales (1983) A Memory of Murder (1984) The Toynbee Convector (1988) Classic Stories 1 (1990) Classic Stories 2 (1990) The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991) Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991) Quicker Than the Eye (1996) Driving Blind (1997) Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001) One More for the Road (2002) Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003) The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004) A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007) Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007) A Pleasure to Burn (2010) The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury (2011, 2014)
Plays	The Meadow (1947) The Flying Machine: A One-Act Play for Three Men (1953) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972) Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975) The Martian Chronicles (1986) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1986) Fahrenheit 451 (1986) Dandelion Wine (1988) The Veldt (1988)
Adaptations	It Came from Outer Space (1953) Moby Dick (1956 screenplay) "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962) The Autumn People (1965) Tomorrow Midnight (1966) Fahrenheit 451 (1966) The Picasso Summer (1969) The Illustrated Man (1969) The Martian Chronicles (1980 miniseries) The Electric Grandmother (1982) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) Bradbury 13 (radio series, 1983–84) Fahrenheit 451 (1984) "The Burning Man" (1985) The Veldt (1987) The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV series, 1985–86, 1988-1992) The Halloween Tree (1993) Dandelion Wine (1997) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998) A Sound of Thunder (2005) Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis (2008) The Whispers (2015) Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
Miscellaneous	Futuria Fantasia (1939–1940) The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978) Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) It Came from Outer Space (2003 book)
Characters	Guy Montag
Related	Bettina F. Bradbury (daughter) Spaceship Earth Ray Bradbury Center Bradbury Landing Ray Bradbury Award Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury Dandelion crater

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