The Bradbury Chronicles

by Sam Weller

  RAY HAD begun to lecture sporadically at colleges and universities in April 1948. After he received the O. Henry Memorial Award for his shorted story “Powerhouse,” the University of Southern California chapter of the Epsilon Phi English honorary fraternity invited Ray to speak. He soon learned that his public-speaking acumen mirrored that of his writing process. He quickly learned he should trust his instincts and neither overthink nor overprepare his lectures. “There were 150 people in a big auditorium. It was the biggest crowd I’d ever talked to. Of course, I prepared too much with notes, and I looked up in the middle of lecturing and saw that I put everyone to sleep,” confessed Ray. “So I yelled at them. I said, ‘Attention!’ And I threw my lecture on the floor and jumped on it. And then I looked at them and said, ‘To continue!’ From then on, I was free from the stupid manacles of lecturing.”

  When Ray began to speak extemporaneously, to speak from his subconscious, he discovered that his real character shone. He was loud and effusive, a bit prone to hyperbole, but when he made an overstatement, it was from the heart. He recommended to all the young writers in the audience that they not slant their writing for publications but, rather, that they remain true to themselves. “If the story is good,” he said that night, “there will be a market for it.” With his lecture notes scattered like fallen leaves about the floor, Ray inspired the audience in a wicked amalgam of preacher at the pulpit, professor at the lectern, half-time coach in the locker room on the day of the big game. That night, Ray had discovered how to give a lecture, with passion and honesty.

  More offers followed from colleges and universities throughout California. In 1949, he participated in a lecture series hosted by the English department at USC. One of the other guests on the program was English author and playwright Christopher Isherwood. Sometime in late spring of 1950, after Ray had returned from New York City, he was in a Santa Monica, California, bookshop when he recognized a familiar face: Christopher Isherwood.

  As Ray was wont to do, he was in the shop on that fine spring day to see if it carried copies of his new book, The Martian Chronicles. When Dark Carnival had first come out, Ray often perused bookshop inventories. If the shop had the book in stock, he made certain the copies were at eye level to catch customer attention. “They would often have my books low on the shelf and I would take them out and put them on top,” said Ray, chuckling. “Then, when I left, they’d take my books and put them down below again.”

  After spotting Isherwood, Ray grabbed a copy of The Martian Chronicles, autographed it, and rushed up to him. Isherwood, a quiet and elegant man, had been through the routine before—a respected author being bushwhacked by an earnest young writer pushing his hack novel. A “not again” look washed across Isherwood’s face. Ray handed him the book, told Isherwood who he was, and said, “I hope you like it.” Ray had a suspicion that Isherwood, like so many literary intellectuals, was prejudiced against science fiction, but Isherwood was gracious. He thanked Ray, and the two men parted.

  A few days later, the telephone rang at 33 South Venice Boulevard. It was Christopher Isherwood calling.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” he asked Ray.

  “What?” Ray asked.

  “You’ve written a fine book.”

  Isherwood had just been named to a new post as a critic for Tomorrow magazine, and he gleefully told Ray Bradbury that the first book he’d like to review was The Martian Chronicles. The issue would run later that year, in the autumn. It was a resounding seal of approval from a respected intellectual, and it would mark the beginning of a friendship between the two. They were an unlikely pair: a well-regarded aesthete and a young teller of tales who had made a name for himself in, of all places, the pages of Weird Tales.

  Neva Bradbury, now living in Seattle, Washington, wrote Ray on August 21, 1950, after reading The Martian Chronicles: “My nephew—you awe me. I read you and my great feeling of pride detracts from the story, I am so aware of it—and I must read and re-read portions over and over. At times I have cried, not from the sadness of the story, but because I am so proud of you. I think, perhaps, my dear, that you may live as one of our great writers, in the future.”

  SHORTLY AFTER Ray had signed his contract for the two books with Doubleday in 1949, the book to follow The Martian Chronicles changed in scope. While the initial intention had been to take Ray’s short story “The Creatures That Time Forgot” (later retitled and published as “Frost and Fire”) and turn it into a short, fifty-thousand-word novel, this idea was quickly scrapped. As a writer who preferred creating in quick spurts of inspiration, Ray was hesitant to take on the longer novel form. He forever maintained that the initial first-draft writing process was reliant on gut instinct rather than on intellectual thought. “In quickness is truth,” he wrote in the 1987 essay “Run Fast, Stand Still, or The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or New Ghosts from Old Minds.” “The faster you blurt,” Ray continued, “the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.”

  The novel form was a much different beast from the short story. While Ray very often wrote first drafts of short stories in a matter of hours, novels took months, even years to complete. And so, the ever-agreeable Walter Bradbury allowed Ray to alter his contract and to submit a collection of science fiction short stories instead of the novel. Walter Bradbury was delighted by The Martian Chronicles and wanted to keep his young author happy. The due date for the manuscript of the new book was February 1950; Ray asked for and received a six-month extension. The Martian Chronicles had been released in May, and his new book was now due in August.

  Ray was more than contented with Doubleday, and had fostered a trusting and comfortable working relationship with his editor, yet there was one aspect of this new partnership with the New York publishing firm that troubled him: the dreaded label. The Martian Chronicles had been released as part of Doubleday’s new science fiction line; on its cover was emblazoned the colophon “Doubleday Science Fiction.” Ray didn’t like it. While he had loved the genre since childhood, and he felt that it was the best form a writer could use to act as social critic, he also recognized that the genre was stigmatized. Ray feared his new book would be prejudged and pigeonholed. Snobbery could prevent his work from ever receiving the attention it deserved.

  Ray continued to work in the garage at his parents’ house, while Maggie cared for Susan in the cracker-box apartment by the sea. The new collection, The Illustrated Man, was shaping up, comprising largely the stories that Ray had been writing and publishing since the publication of Dark Carnival. Fourteen of the eighteen short stories that would ultimately make up the new book were published in either pulp magazines, literary journals, or mainstream magazines between 1947 and 1950. Don Congdon and Ray pushed hard to sell the stories prior to the book’s publication, as the magazines didn’t pay as much for second serial (post-book) rights.

  Since finishing Dark Carnival, Ray had continued to produce a short story a week and had quickly amassed an impressive stockpile of science fiction stories to choose from. Early on in the assembly of his new collection, he had determined to use stories such as “The Veldt,” “Kaleidoscope,” “The Rocket Man,” “The Other Foot,” “The Highway,” among others. He was also seriously considering the inclusion of the longer novellas “Pillar of Fire,” “The Creatures That Time Forgot,” and “The Fire Man.” It is this last tale that would soon be expanded into Fahrenheit 451. But Walter Bradbury warned Ray against using these tales. “I think it’s better to keep the stories down to more or less uniform length,” he suggested.

  As Ray rapidly assembled stories for The Illustrated Man, he was writing other remarkable tales that didn’t fit the science fiction motif of his new book. One such story was “The Fog Horn.” It is one of Ray Bradbury’s most well-known and beloved short stories, born on a night when Ray and Maggie were strolling along the
beach not far from their apartment. Ray was fond of telling the origins behind “The Fog Horn,” because it clearly answered the one question he was asked most often over the years: Where do you get your ideas?

  Venice, California, once a proud tourist destination—a kitschy fusion of Coney Island amusement and ersatz Italian street scene—was in complete disrepair. In 1946, the City of Los Angeles opted out of its lease with the owner of the Venice pier, choosing to let the beachfront return to its original sun, sand, and surf incarnation; the days of the penny arcades and thrill rides were over. The old Venice pier was torn down, leaving the structural remnants strewn and scattered amidst drifting sand and the slow-rolling waves of the Pacific.

  “I was walking with Maggie one night on the beach as the fog rolled in,” recalled Ray, “and looked out and saw the old roller coaster lying over on its side with its bones in the sand and the water, and the wind blowing over its skeleton. I looked at it and said to Maggie, ‘I wonder what that dinosaur is doing lying on the beach.’”

  A few nights later, Ray woke in the middle of the night and heard the sad bellow of a foghorn far out in Santa Monica Bay. As he sat up in bed in the pale blue moonlight, it suddenly dawned on him. “I had the answer,” Ray said. “The dinosaur, hearing the foghorn blowing and thinking it was another dinosaur after it had waited for a million years or more, came swimming into the bay and when he found out it was only a lighthouse and a foghorn calling, he died on the shore of a broken heart. That’s why the dinosaur came in and is lying on the sand there.”

  Once he had the idea, Ray wrote “The Fog Horn” in short order. But it wasn’t a good fit for his forthcoming book of far-traveling, socially conscious science fiction, so he held on to it for inclusion in the later collection, 1953’s The Golden Apples of the Sun.

  Just as The Martian Chronicles had shown a considerable growth spurt both stylistically and thematically from the stories in Dark Carnival, the tales Ray selected for The Illustrated Man were top-shelf Bradbury. The language was poetic, the stories steeped in metaphor, the themes transcendent. While the stories he had assembled for this new book were all tales of the far-fantastic—science fiction fairy tales that displayed a soaring imagination—Ray was again addressing contemporary social and political issues about which he cared deeply in 1950: civil rights, the threat of atomic war, the misuse of technology. Yet while the themes were relevant for 1950, the continuing relevance of The Illustrated Man shows that, as with The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury had struck a chord among readers; his tales spoke to the common American popular culture experience.

  In “The Veldt,” a husband and wife pamper their children by giving them a state-of-the-art nursery, where dreams and fantasies come alive on the crystal walls, floor, and ceiling of an automated playroom-cum-television of tomorrow. When the children become dependent on the new technology, the parents endeavor to wean them from it. But the children aren’t so willing to let go. “The Veldt,” written at the dawn of the television age, was at once dark and tragic, while at the same time a satirical commentary on the potentially dangerous power of TV and parents who use it as a babysitter. Ironically in “The Veldt,” Ray, often lambasted by science fiction purists for inaccurate technology, had envisioned what would ultimately become virtual reality.

  In “Kaleidoscope,” a rocket explodes in deep space, catapulting its crew out of the destroyed vessel and off into the void. As the astronauts drift apart in the vacuum of outer space, they continue to communicate with each other over their spacesuit radios, each man coming to terms with his own fate.

  In “The Other Foot,” African Americans have colonized Mars. After the Earth is destroyed by atomic war, a small number of white survivors arrive by rocket on the Red Planet, and the colonists must decide what to do with the newcomers. In this science-fictional tale of role reversal, Ray asks if centuries of racial intolerance, injustice, and hatred continue to persist in a new planetary milieu.

  As ever, Don Congdon was steadfastly working on Ray’s behalf. Along with Maggie, Congdon was Ray’s most loyal partner. He was a thorough editor, working to help shape Ray’s stories. Congdon was also a tremendous personal influence. When he got a crew cut, so did Ray. Congdon was an avowed liberal Democrat and his political leanings certainly reinforced Ray’s own beliefs. He also knew that Ray had a keen ability to pitch stories; when Ray would make his periodic trips to New York, Congdon would take Ray to magazine offices to meet editors. It was an unusual sales strategy, eschewing the traditional manuscript and cover letter submission. But Congdon knew full well that Ray’s infectious energy and enthusiasm would often sell his own stories.

  As Ray put his new short-story collection together, Congdon sold “The Illustrated Man,” a tragic tale of a carnival freak, to Esquire. In 1948, Ray had envisioned it as a title story for a collection of short stories. But when he took this idea to his editor in 1950, Walter Bradbury wasn’t quite sold on the idea. The editor felt the story didn’t fit with the science fiction motif of the rest of the collection. However, Walter Bradbury liked the title and the two men agreed to consider it as a name for Ray’s new collection. Another possibility was taken from a recently penned short story, “Perhaps We Are Going Away.”

  As Ray worked on the new book of short stories, the Bradburys were experiencing growing pains. The apartment in Venice was too small, so Ray and Maggie began searching for a house, and found one they loved in a rolling, quiet nook of West Los Angeles. It was a white single-story tract home, located at 10750 Clarkson Road, and had three bedrooms and one bathroom. It had a putting-green backyard and a detached garage—a perfect office space for Ray. Ray and Maggie borrowed the down-payment money from their parents and bought the home for twelve thousand dollars. They moved in on August 3, 1950.

  A few weeks later, Christopher Isherwood’s review ran in the premiere issue of Tomorrow magazine and it was a glowing tribute. Until then, The Martian Chronicles had received only a smattering of reviews, and none from the powerhouse publications. Now this high praise from a highbrow critic signaled that perhaps there would be a paradigm shift in the way the intelligentsia handled genre fiction. Ray certainly hoped this was the case.

  “Poe’s name comes up,” wrote Isherwood on Bradbury, “almost inevitably in any discussion of Mr. Bradbury’s work; not because he is an imitator (though he is certainly a disciple) but because he already deserves to be measured against the greatest master of his particular genre.”

  It was perhaps the most important and salient distinction in Isherwood’s review that vindicated Ray from the trappings of the science-fictional pigeonhole. Isherwood stated in no uncertain terms that Bradbury transcended genre: “His brilliant, shameless fantasy makes, and needs, no excuses for its wild jumps from the possible to the impossible. His interest in machines seems to be limited to their symbolic and aesthetic aspects. I doubt if he could pilot a rocket ship, much less design one.”

  As The Illustrated Man neared publication, a final element was added to the book. “Somewhere along the line,” said Ray, “Walter Bradbury said, ‘We’ve disguised The Martian Chronicles as a novel, do you think we can somehow do the same thing with The Illustrated Man?’” Ray thought long and hard about his editor’s words. While Walter Bradbury had passed on the eponymous short story “The Illustrated Man,” Ray had an inkling of how it might loosely tie his entire new story collection together. Just before sending his editor the manuscript, Ray devised a clever narrative frame that incorporated the character of the illustrated man, even though it had been decided that the story by the same name would not be included in the book. Ray wrote a haunting prologue for his new collection of short stories that began with a young man—the story’s narrator—walking the back roads of Wisconsin. It is a hot and humid summer day, late in the afternoon, when the narrator meets another wanderer—a former carnival freak, out of work and out of luck. He is an “illustrated man,” a sideshow spectacle bearing tattoos from head to toe. And, ironically, that is why
this tragic figure cannot find work. His tattoos are somehow different: They come alive at night, swirling in colorful smears of water-colored fright, predicting dark and dreadful futures.

  As Ray wrote the prologue story, each tattoo on the body of the illustrated man represented a short story in the book. It was a stroke of creative inspiration. Ray wrote a few more interludes between the first few stories in the collection, setting the tone, showing the tattoos changing shape, blurring, becoming different visions of the future. Ray ended the book with an epilogue in which the narrator, lying beside a campfire with his fellow drifter, at long last peers at “that empty space upon the illustrated man’s back, that area of jumbled colors and shapes.” The book ends with one more vision of the future—the final tattoo morphs and bleeds into a coherent work of skin art. It shows the illustrated man strangling the narrator.

  Ray turned in the manuscript for The Illustrated Man on August 19, 1950, and continued to correspond with Walter Bradbury as they polished the book for publication early the following year. Ray had won a small victory in convincing his editor to remove the words “science fiction” from the cover of the new book, but he still wasn’t satisfied. Walter Bradbury wanted the Doubleday Science Fiction logo at least to appear on the book’s title page, and Ray rebelled. It was a symbolic battle for Ray Bradbury, a quiet struggle against being tagged a genre writer that he had been fighting since his high school days. Ray wrote to Walter Bradbury on September 29, 1950, asking him once more to remove the science fiction tag altogether.

  … May I ask now, very humbly, that we remove it from the title page also? I think we could have gotten more reviews from the big people on CHRONICLES if it hadn’t been for that science-fiction label.... Can’t we do something about this, please, Brad? Must the light remain under the bushel-basket? I realize your financial position on books of short stories, but there’s no reason one kind of advertising won’t work on book-store-managers, and another, devoid of the s-f shadow for the general public and the critics. My name is known well enough among s-f readers now so they’ll investigate the book, with or without a special label, don’t you agree? You have been a good friend to me on so many details, and I hate to plagge [sic] you again about this, but the Isherwood review only brings it to the surface once more. If he likes the book, then why wouldn’t the reviewers at Atlantic, Harper’s, SRL, and the other big sources? Haven’t we lost at least a thousand sales, to put it mildly, by not getting the CHRONICLES to certain reviewers without the s-f label? I have admired [Aldous] Huxley for years, but never heard him referred to as a science-fiction writer. Or George Orwell. I do not mean to sound conceited, but I only want a certain amount of recognition among people I admire and look up to....