The Bradbury Chronicles

by Sam Weller

  “I realized I had at last written a really fine story. The first in ten years of writing. And not only was it a fine story, but it was some sort of hybrid, something verging on the new. Not a traditional ghost story at all, but a story about love, time, remembrance, and drowning,” Ray explained.

  It was anything but a typical “weird tale.” With “The Lake,” Ray had turned inward and explored his childhood memories of Waukegan, Illinois, and in doing so, he inadvertently mined a tale of “autobiographical fantasy” that was at once lyrical, sentimental, and haunting. Ray had, at long last, discovered his distinctive voice.

  “The Lake” told of a twelve-year-old boy whose golden-haired girlfriend drowned in the waters of Lake Michigan. Her body was never found. Years later, the boy, grown up and married, returns to the town and strolls the beach on a late-summer day and finds closure when the little girl from his past appears from the depths.

  The themes of the story would one day become classic Bradbury motifs—nostalgia, loneliness, lost love, and death. And the story’s lyrical tone would resonate throughout his career:

  It was September. In the last days when things are sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely with only about six people on it. The kids quit bouncing the ball because somehow the wind made them sad, too, whistling the way it did, and the kids sat down and felt autumn come along the endless shore.

  All of the hot dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Schabold’s feet, down by the water curve.

  Sand blew up in curtains on the sidewalks, and the merry-go-round was hidden with canvas, all of the horses frozen in mid-air on their brass poles, showing teeth, galloping on. With only the wind for music, slipping through canvas.

  Over the years, Ray has told conflicting versions of the childhood memory that spawned what he has repeatedly called his “first great story.” In a 1961 interview, he said, “I came upon the recollection of a girl I knew who drowned when I was eight or nine. I remember hearing about it and not believing that this could have happened to someone I knew. She was a girl with long golden hair. I never really knew her very well. I don’t remember her name now; but, suddenly, she was gone, and she had drowned. I think they found her body several days later, and I was at the lakeshore with my mother when I heard the news. I must have been seven or eight or nine; and then, in playing with my typewriter, when I was twenty-two or twenty-three, I put down these words: ‘The Lake.’”

  In the 2001 reissue of Dark Carnival, Ray recounted the story differently: “When I was around eight I was down at Lake Michigan. I was playing with a little girl making sand castles, and she went into the water and never came out. When you’re eight years old and that happens, what a mystery that is! Well, she never came out—they never found her. So that mystery stayed with me, an encounter with death.”

  In recent years, Ray was certain the second rendition of the story was the true origin of “The Lake.” He insisted on this. But in the end, whether he just knew of the girl or he was actually with her when she disappeared, Ray had conjured his own childhood fears, found a memory, and morphed it into a tale of the dark fantastic. This was a formula that, once identified, would prove successful for him time and again. His elation with this accomplishment was tempered, however, when he received notice to report to the draft board office for a physical. Uncle Sam wanted him.

  Ray appeared on July 16, 1942, for his physical. He stripped down to his underwear and lined up apprehensively next to the other young men. When it came time for his eye exam, the doctor directed Ray to remove his round, wire-rimmed spectacles and to cover one eye.

  “Read that chart,” the physician said, pointing to an eye exam chart hanging on a wall.

  “What chart?” Ray asked.

  “That chart,” the doctor said, pointing again at the poster with the standard pyramid of letters.

  “I don’t see a chart,” Ray responded.

  Ray was, of course, as good as blind without his glasses, so the physician listed him as “4-F”—physically ineligible. He would not be sent off to battle or be devoured by the big, black bulldog of his dreams. He would be left to, as he put it, “live for his country.”

  While Ray was quietly elated by the news, at least one of his friends was incensed. Robert Heinlein, a graduate of the naval academy and a former officer who could no longer serve because he had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, felt that Ray was betraying his country, that he was a coward. Heinlein believed that this, if any, was the time to heed the call to arms. If Ray couldn’t serve because of his health, fine. He could somehow volunteer. During the war, Heinlein moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as a civilian at the naval yard. He was also able to persuade his friends and fellow science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp to join him. But perhaps Heinlein sensed that Ray did not believe in war; Ray was a pacifist, while Heinlein felt there was no higher calling than to defend the honor of one’s country. As a result, Heinlein cut Ray off, and they didn’t speak again for decades.

  Like many young men who were ineligible for the draft, Ray did, in fact, find another way to contribute to the war effort. He began working for the American Red Cross, writing promotional materials. He wrote advertising copy as well as radio spots encouraging blood donation. Robert Heinlein had left Los Angeles by then, and had no way of knowing that Ray had, indeed, done his duty for God and country.

  The day after Ray’s appearance at the draft office for his physical, Julius Schwartz sold Bradbury’s short story “Promotion to Satellite”—another attempt at a traditional science fiction tale—to Thrilling Wonder Stories. Ray was again dabbling in the science-heavy realm of writers influenced by editor John W. Campbell, notably Asimov and Heinlein.

  Even though Ray had found his voice with “The Lake,” he had returned to writing imitative pulp stories (it would take two years for “The Lake” to be published). “Did I learn a hard, fast, or even an easy lesson from ‘The Lake’? I did not. I went back to writing the old-fashioned ghost story,” mused Ray. It would take some time for him to fully understand what he had accomplished in writing “The Lake.”

  But soon after, he wrote another story that strongly suggested his writing was indeed maturing. The story, “The Wind,” was a gothic, paranoid tale of a man convinced that the howling winds he hears at night mean to kill him. Again, the story began with a noun; Ray had written the words “the wind,” and it prompted him to recall the chilling sound of the prairie winds of his Illinois childhood. “The Wind” was what longtime Bradbury friend, researcher, and author William F. Nolan called the first “classic” Bradbury story. Ray was beginning to decipher what it was that he had subconsciously accomplished with “The Lake.”

  At the end of 1942, “The Wind” sold to Weird Tales. After this and the other two sales of his stories in 1942, Ray was feeling more assured and, confident that he could make a living as a writer, finally quit his job as a newspaper salesman. His instincts were correct. The following year, 1943, Ray sold twelve stories, including what would become the Bradbury dark fantasy classics, “The Crowd” and “The Emissary,” as well as his first quality science fiction stories, “King of the Gray Spaces” and “I, Rocket.” Along the way he was earning a name and a following for himself in the pulp magazines. On these publications’ covers, his name appeared next to those of his heroes and mentors, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, and August Derleth. Derleth, the Arkham House publisher, was himself a well-regarded writer for Weird Tales, and Ray had been corresponding on and off with Derleth since 1939. The pen-pal friendship would soon yield big dividends.


  ON DECEMBER 31, 1943, Ray joined the throng of Angelenos for the downtown New Year’s Eve celebration. Pershing Square was packed with people waiting for midnight to arrive. Ray spotted a group of police officers as they slowly made their way through the thick crowd, stopping young men and questioning them. Ever curious, Ray went over to investigate. The police were asking for draft cards and when Ray approached them, they asked for his. “My heart sank right there,” recalled Ray. Two days earlier he had lost his card, which proved that he was, indeed, registered. When Ray couldn’t produce his card, the officers escorted him to a patrol car, and he was driven to a local police station, where he was transferred to a paddy wagon that would take him downtown for booking. When Ray climbed in the back of the paddy wagon, it was crowded with mostly drunken and disorderly men. As the vehicle pulled way, Ray sat in the back in complete fear; he had been arrested. During the trip, an altercation ensued between two drunks, and arms and legs flailed about in the tight confines of the police wagon. Punches landed with terrific thuds and young, innocent Ray Bradbury looked on in terror from just a few feet away. He crouched on the floor with his knees tucked up in a fetal position and closed his eyes. “I kept thinking,” Ray said, “that this is the last night of my life.”

  He survived nonetheless and was brought to a police station, where he was booked, photographed, and fingerprinted (this was the only time Ray was ever arrested). He was allowed the customary phone call, and reached his brother, Skip, who reassured him that everything would be okay and that he would come down to the jail.

  Ray was escorted to a large cell, where, as he remembered, at least another hundred men were being held. All eyes fell upon the fresh-faced kid who stood five feet ten inches tall, but felt at that moment smaller than ever before. It would take some time for the police to verify that Ray was registered for the draft: It was a Friday night and nothing could be done until Monday morning, when the draft board reopened. Ray would have to spend the weekend behind bars.

  The jail cell was cold. Tin-sheeting bunk beds lined the walls, three tiers high. Ray found a top bunk and climbed up near a heat duct and tried to stay warm. What if the draft board had lost his records, he wondered. What then? Would he be locked away for years?

  “In the middle of the night,” said Ray, “I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came back there was a big black guy up on my bunk and his head was swathed in bloody bandages from a fight he had been in the night before. It was like Muhammad Ali sitting up there. I looked up at him and all the people in the jail cell were watching me.

  “Sir,” Ray said. “You’re sitting on my bunk.”

  The big man sitting in the darkness slowly looked down at the wholesome kid standing below. “This blanket and this bunk got your name on it?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” said Ray, his voice a mouse squeak.

  “This tin here on this bunk, got your name on it?”

  Ray looked around. All the inmates were watching him.

  “No, sir,” Ray said.

  “Then it ain’t your bunk, is it?” the man asked.

  And again, in his terrified voice, Ray said: “No, sir.”

  Ray later found another bed without a heat duct, away from immediate trouble. But his jailhouse nightmare was far from over. By sheer coincidence, as Ray recalled, there was a man in the cell by the name of “Ray Bradley.” This man with the unfortunately similar name was servicing willing inmates under their blankets. Ever naïve, Ray was mortified. “I thought the guards outside would hear there was someone in the cell named Ray Bradley in there relieving all these people!”

  Ray spent the weekend in terror. Skip came and assured him that he would be let out as soon as the draft board offices opened and the FBI could find proof of his registration. “By Sunday morning,” Ray said, “I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.” A church choir visited the jailhouse that morning—followers of the popular female evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. They rolled in an organ and gathered around it. “The six people in the choir asked for requests,” said Ray, “and I said, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’” He had no idea why he requested that. The Bradbury family had never been particularly religious, and were a Christmas- and Easter-only family. The choir and the organ kicked into the first bars of the hymn:

  Onward, Christian Soldiers,

  Marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus,

  Going on before!

  Ray, frightened and feeling alone, listened and cried. “The next morning, Monday, my draft board was open and the FBI checked me out and I got out of jail. But never again. Never again.”

  THROUGHOUT 1943 and 1944, Ray cemented a reputation as a different sort of science fiction and fantasy scribe. His stories were untraditional, even for these untraditional genres; they were profoundly human, filled with poetic prose, and high on crystalline imagery. By now Ray had become a regular contributor to the pulps. “The Lake” was finally published in the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales, and it boosted his popularity more so.

  In 1944, still writing a story a week, he sold twenty-two tales. Writer and publisher August Derleth took notice. Derleth, who was planning an anthology of weird fiction, approached Ray for a story. Ray was ecstatic about the offer. If it came to fruition, it would be his first story published in book form. Initially, Derleth and Ray thought they would use the story “There Was an Old Woman,” first published in the July 1944 issue of Weird Tales. But instead they chose “The Lake.” They both knew it was Ray’s best.

  Following in Leigh Brackett’s footsteps, Ray also began writing for the detective pulps, particularly Dime Detective, edited by Ryerson Johnson. Johnson purchased a number of Ray’s stories in 1944. “He encouraged me and promoted my stories in his magazines a couple of issues ahead to tell readers that he had my stories coming up. He’s one of the few editors who ever did that,” Ray said. Decades later, Ray considered most of these stories to be generally mediocre. But he was publishing more and more, writing every day, and improving greatly.

  Plans for August Derleth’s collection of short stories, Who Knocks?, were firmed up; it would include “The Lake.” Corresponding with Derleth, Ray pondered a professional name change:

  It might be wise, since I hope to make the better markets eventually, to change my name now. I was baptized Ray; my mother didn’t think to give me the longer form of the name. Perhaps one of the names listed below would sound more appropriate:

  Ray Douglas Bradbury

  Douglas Bradbury

  R. D. Bradbury

  I’d like your opinion. Of the three listed above, my preference is for the first. It seems to be a good compromise between pomposity and flippancy. I hope you agree; if not, tell me, and I’ll mull the matter around some more.

  In the end, it was decided that Ray would keep the byline he had been using in the pages of the pulps. Ray Bradbury would remain Ray Bradbury. Ray’s letter to Derleth also indicated that, even at this early stage of his career, he had his sights firmly set on breaking out of the pulps and into the literary market.

  His career was gaining momentum. Over the course of 1944, nineteen Bradbury stories appeared in print. Some of these tales, “The Lake,” “There Was an Old Woman,” and “The Jar,” would become Bradbury classics. At twenty-four, he had developed a following of pulp magazine readers across the country, and would soon be published in a book by fan-favorite Arkham House publishers (though he was still living at home, still sharing a bed with Skip). At this time, the editors of Weird Tales were pressuring him to conform to the conventions of genre fiction. As Ray remembered it, editor Dorothy McIlwraith (who replaced the ailing Farnsworth Wright in May 1940) had grown weary of his poetic tales of ghosts and ghouls, and suggested he write more traditional tales of the macabre. He was writing too many tales rooted in his childhood. Ever the nonconformist, Ray refused to alter his stories.

  Although he was publishing regularly, it wasn’t enough for him. He was in a hurry to make his mark on literary history,
and he was frustrated that he was not achieving this kind of success quickly enough. Ray knew that his friend Grant Beach had been seeing a psychiatrist, and asked Grant if he could pay a visit to his therapist. It was twenty dollars for a forty-five-minute visit—twice what Ray had earned in a week as a newspaper salesman. “I saved up my money and I went to see the doctor,” Ray recalled. “In his office, I sat across from him and he asked, ‘What is it that you want to find out about yourself? What do you want?’”

  Ray was quiet for a moment. He knew what he wanted. And so he blurted it out: “I want to be the greatest writer who has ever lived.”

  The psychiatrist gently laughed. “Well then,” he said, “you’re going to have to wait a while, aren’t you?”

  The psychiatrist suggested that Ray pull out the Encyclopaedia Britannica and read about the lives of history’s famous writers. Some of them got ahead very quickly, he explained to Ray, while others took ten or fifteen years. “But read their lives,” Ray remembered him saying. “Read their lives and you’ll understand what writing is, and what fame is, and all about getting established.”

  It wasn’t advice that rattled the Earth to its core, but Ray heeded it. He went to the library and began reading up on the lives of famous writers. And in doing so, it made him want to secure his own immortality even more.

  Trying to help his friend reach greatness, Grant Beach suggested that Ray was far better than the pulps and recommended that he send his story to the “slicks,” as they were called, high-quality magazines such as Mademoiselle, American Mercury, and The New Yorker. Ray was hesitant. Although he was confident in his ability, he had submitted to many of these publications while he was in high school and had been summarily rejected by every one of them. But Grant was persuasive. After all, Ray had helped him; he had assisted Grant in converting his garage into a pottery studio, which Grant christened “Tortilla Flats,” in a nod to the recent John Steinbeck novel, and Grant’s ceramic art was selling to respected galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now Grant wanted to return the favor. But Ray’s name had been plastered across the cover of so many pulp magazines in recent months that he worried he would be pigeonholed. In high school, many of his fellow writing classmates hadn’t understood or respected his inclination toward genre fiction. Now he was concerned that the editors of the fine New York literary magazines would do the same. He had gained a reputation as “The Poet of the Pulps.” The big question was: Could he now break free?