I Sing the Body Electric! is a 1969 collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. The book takes its name from an included short story of the same title, which in turn took the title from a poem by Walt Whitman published in his collection Leaves of Grass.

Contents

The collection includes these stories:

I Sing the Body Electric! and Other Stories

In 1998, Avon Books published ''I Sing the Body Electric! and Other Stories, which includes all the stories from the original collection as well as the following stories from Long After Midnight'':

Reception

Joanna Russ noted that Bradbury "presents almost everything either in lyrical catalogue or dramatically, and while the lyrical catalogues sometimes fall flat, the dramatic dialogue hardly ever does. This gives his work tremendous immediate presence." She also said, "This is third-rate Bradbury, mostly. It is silly. It totally perverts the quotation from Whitman which it uses in its title. It is very good". The New York Times also received Body Electric favorably, saying "Whatever the premise, the author retains an enthusiasm for both the natural world and the supernatural that sends a tingle of excitement through even the flimsiest conceit."

Adaptations

The title story, "I Sing the Body Electric!", was adapted from a 1962 Twilight Zone episode of the same name, which Bradbury had written. It was later adapted as a 1982 television movie, The Electric Grandmother, starring Maureen Stapleton. Lana Del Rey also titled her song "Body Electric", in which one of the lyrics reads "I sing the body electric" as an homage to the collection of short stories.