I don't think number of novels is anything remotely resembling an indicator of a writer's skill and/or importance.  Some pulp writers could and did pound out a novel a week when they were really fired up and needed the money badly.  Bradbury has written primarily short stories because that's simply how his mind works; his ideas simply work themselves out best in short story form.  I haven't paid much attention to his work since the mid-1960s, but he's still writing up a storm, and I think has done several novels fairly recently.  (Something Wicked This Way Comes, one of his best-known novels, actually is his own novelization of his unfilmed script based on "Black Ferris.")

   Incidentally, Bradbury got over his reluctance to fly many years ago.  He was in Florida doing college lectures (I think it was), then had to be back in California in a matter of hours.  So he downed enough drinks to give him courage to fly, and boarded the plane.  He's flown many times since then, but hasn't had to get drunk to do so.   The guy whose reluctance to fly has always given me a bit of a pause is Stanley Kubrick--and he had a pilot's license, flew small planes a lot when he was a Look photographer.  I figure he knew something about flying the rest of us didn't, but maybe should.

 
A lot of people seem to think that you have to rank everything you like--books, movies, food, fabric, shirts, condoms, cars, vacation spots, toothpaste, ice cream, candy, etc.--on a scale from the best individual choice down in increments to the worst individual choice.  It seems like society almost DEMANDS that we have a top choice, a number one, in every category of interest. The idea that you don't really have to organize your choices in hierarchical ways seems to be a very unfamiliar idea to a lot of people.  I used to think that way myself, but I recovered. 

Last Edited By: Bill Warren Aug 11 10 6:31 PM. Edited 2 times.