The Toy Maker — Raymond F. Jones

The Toy Maker is the ninth volume in a series of ten e-books containing the complete collection of short stories written by Raymond F. Jones. These stories span the years from 1941-1974, and this is the first time this entire collection has ever been made available. Notable stories in this volume are: Swimming Lesson, The Toy Maker, Rat Race, Portrait of Narcissus, The Gift of the Gods, The Touch of your Hand, and the Lions of Rome.
Not all of Jones' stories dwelt with space ships, and time travel. In Portrait of Narcissus, the story line lays emphasis on self love. When Hal tried to take her picture, her reaction was swift and almost violent. The result â€" his camera and lens lay shattered on the ground. One thing lead to another and he married Helen despite his sister's warnings that she was going to cost money. Her one fault â€" vanity; Helen was in love with herself. She loved to preen in front of the mirror, and in the end, Hal never saw it coming.
Two things to watch for as you read this collection of stories, as well as the other nine books: vocabulary and colloquialism. Jones writes with a vocabulary that is pertinent to the story being told, but which you will probably find baffling as they're words you've likely not encounter before. Hint: make a list of the words. Secondly, note the amusing colloquialism which was in vogue during the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Raymond F. Jones, 1915 â€" 1994 was a noted and prolific science-fiction writer, whose numerous short stories were featured in sci-fi magazines of the first half of the twentieth century; that golden era when radio was still king, and reading about futuristic space travel, alien invaders, and colonization of earth-like planets in distant galaxies was still adventurous, and entertaining, Now, for the first time ever, the complete library of Jones' short stories have been compiled into ten e-books containing seven stories each, with the exception of Noise Level with only five stories
Jones left the library of his short stories to his children, which consisted of original manuscripts submitted to publishers and copies of stories from the sci-fi magazine in which they originally appeared.
As the publisher of my father's short stories, I am astounded at the depth of the vocabulary he commanded and which readily spilled out onto the pages of his stories as though he had known the meaning and proper use of these words since grade school; words like Terpsichore to describe ballet dancing; coruscations to describe the blinding flashes of bright light when the big guns of a spaceship fire and cabalistic to describe the mysterious, esoteric and hidden meaning of hieroglyphic writings of long extinct civilizations.
Though he published his first science-fiction story while still in high school, and cranked out a few stories during the war year between 1941-1945, he began writing in earnest in 1946 after his venture in chicken ranching went belly-up. He cleaned out the cinder block chicken-coop he and my mother built, in Phoenix, Arizona, constructed a small office inside the building, equipped it with filing cabinets, a table made from a door, chairs and an antique, manual Underwood typewriter and began fantasizing about space travel. His studies in math, chemistry and archaeology at the University of Utah, his work for Western Electric as an equipment installer, a short lived stint working for the Bendix Radio Corporation in Maryland and his war time years working for the U.S. Weather Bureau in Phoenix served him well in his ability to write logical and plausible space-fiction stories during his long career as a sci-fi writer. The story for which he is most remembered is This Island Earth, which was made into a movie in 1953. Dad quit writing in the mid-70s as the market for science-fiction stories had all but dried up. He ended his writing career as a technical writer for Sperry-Univac in Salt Lake City, Utah now Unisys.
Richard Kimball Jones