The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl

"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl"

Author	Ray Bradbury
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	crime short story
Published in	Detective Book Magazine
Publication type	magazine
Media type	Print
Publication date	November 1948

"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" is a short story by Ray Bradbury. It was first published in Detective Book Magazine in November 1948 (cover date: Winter) as "Touch and Go". The story was re-titled and published as "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" in EQMM in January 1953. (Cover image: "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine January 1953" (jpg). American Mercury. Retrieved 18 October 2012. )

Plot summary

Mr. Acton begins the story standing over the body of Mr. Huxley, whom he has just killed. While attempting to cover up his tracks, he has flashbacks of his encounters with Mr. Huxley, with whom he is having an altercation over a woman. These flashbacks reveal to the murderer that there are more and more of his fingerprints all over the man's house, because he thought that he had touched so many different objects. His frenzy to remove all of the evidence distracts him from his actual objective, to get away with the crime, and he is eventually caught after polishing the entire house.

References

Contento, William G. "Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition". Retrieved 2007-03-26.

Publication history

The story was included in the several of Bradbury's short story collections:

The Golden Apples of the Sun, 1953
The Vintage Bradbury, 1965
Twice 22, 1966
A Song Of Thunder and Other Stories, 2005

Adaptations in other media

This story was adapted to the EC comic book Crime SuspenStories #17 (April–May 1953) as "Touch and Go" by Johnny Craig. ("comics.org" (html). Retrieved 18 February 2013. ) It was adapted as an episode of the television series Ray Bradbury Theater (January 23, 1988) as "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" with Michael Ironside and Robert Vaughn.

External links

The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Ray Bradbury (works)

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	"The Scythe" (1943) "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 Autumn People (1965) The Vintage Bradbury (1965) Tomorrow Midnight (1966) 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 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) The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV series, 1985-86, 1988-92) 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)

Miscellaneous	The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978) Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) It Came from Outer Space (2003 book)

Related	Spaceship Earth Bradbury Landing Bradbury Award Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury (2010 music video)

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