by Sam Weller
What do I ask of Doubleday, in the light of all this? A blueprint of my future, set down in detail, jointly, by you people …
While Ray felt that Seldes wanted him to remain at Doubleday, he believed the other decision makers at the New York publishing house did not. He felt they did not understand or care about the value of the nascent Space Age. They were being myopic and could not connect Ray on a marketing level to the new race against the Russians to break the bonds of Earth’s atmosphere, to challenge the laws of Mother Nature, to explore the great unknown. Ray Bradbury saw himself, perhaps immodestly, as a spokesperson for this new era.
Ray consulted with his one great confidant, Don Congdon. “In all his years as an agent,” Ray said in a 2004 interview, “he never steered me wrong.” After discussions with Congdon and Maggie, Ray wrote Seldes with a decision.
After eleven years, I think it is time for me to leave Doubleday and to try to find a new publisher who will see me and this fantastic and exciting new Space Age with the same high-spirits in which I approach it. I feel very much like a person who, throwing confetti, serpentines, and my hat to the sky, finds he is the lone celebrant at a party. I need a whole company of people to celebrate and be really excited with me about an age I believe is the greatest man ever lived in.
And with that, Ray Bradbury left the publishing house that he had joined, with just one book to his credit, in 1949.
A new novel was fast taking shape, its origins, like a lot of Bradbury tales, going back several years. Ray was crafting a classic tale of good versus evil, a story, he said, that he “wanted to take place almost entirely at night, in the shadows.” The book was Something Wicked This Way Comes.
As with many Bradbury tales, the inspiration for Something Wicked This Way Comes dated back to Ray’s formative years in Waukegan, Illinois. Mining his childhood was a time-tested technique for generating stories. The concept for this new novel was no different. It began with Ray’s recollections of running with his brother, Skip, near the shoreline of Lake Michigan. They loved to watch as the circuses and carnivals came into town; before dawn locomotives and trucks lumbered down the streets toward the lake and, more than once, the brothers witnessed the arrival of these night caravans.
“We used to run down Washington Street,” recalled Skip, “clear down to almost the beach, and we used to watch the trains come in and the men would unload the elephants and the zebras and the other animals. Sometimes we’d do chores, help carry things or unload things, and we’d get free tickets.”
Sometime in the mid-1940s, Ray began writing about late-night freight trains, trucks, and dusty canvas tents pitched before sunrise. It was an enigmatic world of magic, amusement rides, and freak show characters lurking in the shadows; a world of flashing lights, moaning calliopes, and sweet-smelling candy and popcorn. It was a world that Ray Bradbury loved.
As Ray recalled, he had initially planned a short story for his first collection, Dark Carnival, titled “Carnival,” but it was cut from the final manuscript of the book. Even before the collection Dark Carnival was published by Arkham House, Ray had conceptualized a novel titled Dark Carnival, about a carousel that sent its riders back in time. The story fragments of Something Wicked This Way Comes were taking shape more than fifteen years before the book would finally be published.
The wicked carnival concept appeared again, in the 1948 Weird Tales short story “Black Ferris,” the last story Julius Schwartz sold for Ray. “Black Ferris” followed a sinister carnival worker riding a Ferris wheel backward in time to become a boy once more—a little boy with malicious intentions who could later climb back on the amusement ride, run it forward, and return to adulthood and anonymity, safe from his youthful indiscretions.
The primordial fragments of Something Wicked This Way Comes continued to coalesce when, in 1952, Ray spied Joe Mugnaini’s rendition of a shadowy Renaissance circus train in a Beverly Hills gallery. The two men discussed turning the evil carnival concept into an illustrated book, but it never came to fruition.
In 1954, as Don Congdon was selling more Bradbury story rights to the growing television market, producer Sam Goldwyn Jr. purchased “Black Ferris” for six hundred dollars. The episode aired as a series pilot for the NBC television program Sneak Preview on July 10, 1956, under the less foreboding title “Merry-Go-Round.” But before the program aired, Ray read the teleplay that Goldwyn had contracted out to another writer, and became inspired. He suggested to Goldwyn that the concept had legs, that he could easily expand it into a feature-length screenplay. Purely on spec, for no money, Ray drafted a script titled Long After Midnight, about an evil carnival rolling into a small American town. As with his Mars stories of the 1940s, which evolved into The Martian Chronicles; as with the “five ladyfinger firecracker” short stories that set the stage for Fahrenheit 451, the various pieces of Ray’s carnival premise were coming together. He was unconsciously bringing Something Wicked This Way Comes to life.
The final, major catalyst for the novel occurred during the summer of 1955 when Ray and Maggie attended a preview of a new Gene Kelly film, Invitation to the Dance. Ray had met the actor through writer Sy Gomberg, who was working at Universal as Ray was writing It Came from Outer Space. Ray was an avid Kelly fan and considered Singin’ in the Rain among the greatest films ever made. Likewise, Kelly was a Bradbury fan and had asked Gomberg to arrange a meeting. By 1955, Ray and Kelly, though not friends, were good acquaintances, and Kelly invited Ray and Maggie to a preview of Invitation to the Dance at the MGM Studios in Culver City, which was a few miles from their house. Ray found the film flawed, but its ending reminded him of the unrequited love themes in the Lon Chaney films he had loved as a boy.
After watching the picture, Ray left, inspired. He and Maggie waited at a nearby bus stop for the trip home, but the bus never arrived. They decided to walk, and along the way, Ray talked excitedly about working with Gene Kelly, writing a screenplay for him. Maggie suggested to Ray that when they arrived home, he head straight downstairs to his filing cabinets. Certainly there was a story buried in there that Ray could adapt into a Gene Kelly vehicle. When Maggie said this, Ray knew right away what story that was—his screenplay Dark Carnival.
The next day, Ray sent the script to Gene Kelly, who was enthusiastic about the idea of working together. He liked the script as both a potential acting and directing project. “Gene was moving more into directing at that stage,” recalled Ray. Realizing that the script was too “off-trail” for a Hollywood studio, Kelly decided to find financial backing for the film overseas; he flew to Europe. The renowned actor, director, and dancer promised Ray that he would get back to him in short order. In a few weeks, he would know whether he could secure the funds to produce the motion picture. By September 1955, Kelly returned stateside without the financial backing to produce Ray’s carnival concept. He was disappointed and apologetic. “I was flattered that Gene even tried,” said Ray.
Of course, the genesis of Something Wicked This Way Comes evolved, even though Kelly failed to find funding to make the film. By the late 1950s, the idea had developed from “The Black Ferris” short story into the feature-length script Dark Carnival, and at this point Ray set out to turn it into a novel. Early on, he wrote the book in the first person. It told the story of two boys living in a small Illinois town who are the only ones to comprehend that a recently arrived carnival is more than it appears.
Along with the other misgivings Ray and Congdon had about Doubleday, editor Tim Seldes had expressed only lukewarm interest in Ray’s new book. It was the final step in pushing Ray to leave. After Ray parted company with Doubleday in 1960, Congdon began shopping Something Wicked This Way Comes to new publishers. It took him no time to interest Simon & Schuster, the company he was with when he first met Ray Bradbury. By the end of 1960, Ray Bradbury had signed on with Simon & Schuster to publish his next book. While Ballantine Books (publisher of Fahrenheit 451 and The October Country) had always been supportive, they didn’t have the fina
ncial muscle to market Ray that Simon & Schuster did. His new editor was Bob Gottlieb, and from the beginning, Ray felt renewed. His editor was energetic, and the publishing house showed excitement at the notion of bringing Ray Bradbury to a much larger, more mainstream audience.
On the home front, he and Maggie enrolled in an evening adult education course at the University of California. Two nights a week, they went to the Westwood campus to study the history of Renaissance arts, politics, and culture. Their appreciation of the Renaissance era had been fueled by their friendship with Bernard Berenson. Ray and Maggie, in their spare time, loved nothing more than to pontificate about these subjects, and during these years and the decades to come, despite Ray’s grueling work schedule or any personal matter between them, the two would indulge in these kinds of activities, whether it was an evening course or a European trip, always enriching themselves.
Meanwhile, Ray’s relationship with Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone continued to spiral ever downward. The third and final teleplay Ray wrote for the series, “I Sing the Body Electric!,” had actually sold and gone into production. The story followed a family of children who had recently lost their mother, and their father, looking to find a surrogate, purchases a robotic grandmother.
“I was very excited about it,” Ray said in a 1972 interview. “I asked Mr. Serling if I could count on it being filmed exactly as I had written it, as had always been the case with Hitchcock, and he assured me that it would be.”
But when Ray watched the episode the night it aired on May 18, 1962, he found that Rod Serling had not kept his word. “They cut out the most important part of the story,” said Ray. “The moment of truth in the story when the grandmother tells them that she is a robot.”
Ray was livid, but he said nothing to Serling. Trying to move beyond the negativity, he turned his attention to his forthcoming novel. At least he had that to celebrate. Simon & Schuster published Something Wicked This Way Comes in September 1962. With its origins as a screenplay, this new book reflected the influence of cinema on his writing. Something Wicked This Way Comes was a tale of good versus evil, encompassing themes of age and mortality, told through a cinematic narrative. And just as the book’s structure and gothic descriptions showed Ray’s love of film, the very premise of an evil carnival arriving at the end of October, carrying with it the mysterious “autumn people,” highlighted Ray’s lifelong love affair with circuses and carnivals.
In an unpublished Paris Review interview, Ray summed up the popular culture influences on his life: “A conglomerate heap of trash, that’s what I am,” he said with a laugh. “But it burns with a high flame.”
22. THE AMERICAN JOURNEY
His gift of provocative thought on the human condition through the medium of science fiction stands as a beacon of light for writers of the genre. No wonder Gene Roddenberry held him in such high regard … and named a Starship the USS Bradbury in his honor.
—NICHELLE NICHOLS, original Star Trek cast member
“IN 1962, two men appeared at the front door,” said Ray. “I answered the door and they introduced themselves. They represented the United States Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, which was beginning to be built and was going to open in two years. They said, ‘Mr. Bradbury, we’re here to give you a fifty-million-dollar building.’ I said, ‘Come in, come in!’”
It was yet another full-circle opportunity for Ray Bradbury, who had wandered the pavilions of the Chicago World’s Fair as a boy. It also portended a new, burgeoning role for Ray—as cultural consultant for the rocket age. In 1933 and again in 1934, when he was just a boy, Ray had visited the Century of Progress World’s Fair along the lakefront in Chicago. During these trips, a lifelong, passionate interest in architecture developed. “[I] walked among the cities of the future,” he said, “with all the wonderful colors and shapes and sizes and when it came time to go home that night … I didn’t want to leave. My mother and father had to drag me out of the fair and they were taking me away from the buildings of the future. So I went home and I started to build those buildings in the backyard. Very dreadful cardboard cutouts. But I began to make outlines for cities of the future when I was fourteen. And I began to write. Because I discovered a remarkable and terrible thing about the Chicago World’s Fair, that after two years, they were going to tear most of it down, and I thought—how stupid, not to leave the future up and build toward it. So, since they were going to tear down the future, I began to write about it.”
In the summer of 1939, when Ray visited the New York World’s Fair and saw its marvelous constructions, he found his “beliefs in architecture and the buildings of the future reaffirmed again.” It was the night of July 4, 1939, and World War Two would soon begin. “I was afraid for the future,” he recalled. “I was afraid that none of us would live to inhabit those buildings.”
Now, in 1962, two men stood in the foyer of the Bradbury house in Cheviot Hills with a firm offer. They wanted Ray to serve as a consultant for the United States government exhibit at the upcoming World’s Fair, to be held in New York. In just under thirty years, Ray had gone from little boy, awestruck by world’s fairs, to American icon, consultant for world’s fairs.
Ray had also become an unwitting armchair astronaut. Prior to his leaving Doubleday in 1960, he had agreed to assemble two collections of his previously published tales of fantasy and science fiction that would appeal to the young adult market. They would serve as “greatest hits” packages for kids. The majority of the stories, given the new cultural interest in all things outer space, would be Ray’s fanciful tales of rocket ships and space travel, with a few dinosaur tales and childhood memoir yarns thrown in for good measure. The first of this two-book agreement, R Is for Rocket, was released in October 1962. The timing of the book was perfect, arriving just as the space race between America and the Soviet Union was heating up. The second book—Ray’s last with Doubleday—was another “Best of” collection, entitled S Is for Space. It would be published later, in August 1966. Both books, it is worth noting, were targeted to the juvenile market but, as a result of the strength of the stories, reached a much broader audience.
Even as R Is for Rocket was being readied for publication, Ray wrote an acclaimed essay for Life magazine about the Space Age, titled “Cry the Cosmos.” Ray had become an unofficial spokesperson for this new, exciting era of space exploration.
Meanwhile, the power brokers planning the U.S. Pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair had read Ray’s introduction, “The Ardent Blasphemers,” to a new edition of the Jules Verne classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In the piece, Ray compared two mad sea captains, Herman Melville’s Ahab (about whom Ray knew a thing or two) and Jules Verne’s Nemo. Within the essay, said Ray, “I described the history of the United States in terms of a certain kind of wildness and blasphemy.” Because of this introduction, Ray was asked to write a short program for the top floor of the U.S. Pavilion. He readily accepted the assignment, agreeing to write the script for the educational display, about the history of the United States, titled The American Journey. Spectators were carried along a moving platform through the darkened pavilion, past movie screens of various sizes. The story was told through film, with Ray’s narrative, and augmented by three-dimensional props. The American Journey was accompanied by a recording of a full symphony orchestra. The entire thing was a big, bold precursor to Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center, and Ray had envisioned it all: the visuals, music cues, the narration.
Ray was venturing into yet another province of popular Americana, but he didn’t stop there. He began working in the world of animated films. Writer George Clayton Johnson, a friend of Ray’s who was just beginning as a writer for The Twilight Zone, had read Ray’s short story “Icarus Montgolfier Wright,” about humankind’s dream of flight. The story was first published in the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy in May 1956, and collected shortly thereafter in A Medicine for Melancholy. Johnson approached Ray with the idea of adapting the story into a short an
imated film. Ray loved the idea, Johnson wrote the script, and Ray polished it.
Ray and Johnson shopped the short screenplay and quickly got backing from Format Films, an animation studio run by Joel Engel, formally of Disney, along with his partner Herb Klynn, an animation pioneer who had worked on Mr. Magoo and Madeline, among others. Ray tapped his longtime friend and illustrator Joe Mugnaini to work on the art. Mugnaini, working pro bono, spent a year animating the twenty-minute film, creating hundreds of colorful watercolor paintings.
Meanwhile, Johnson had written a teleplay for The Twilight Zone, which he titled “Nothing in the Dark.” Once again, Ray felt that the story smacked of one of his own tales, “Death and the Maiden,” which had run in the March 1960 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ray’s work with Johnson on Icarus Montgolfier Wright had concluded, but he was convinced that Johnson had adapted “Death and the Maiden” without giving him proper credit. Both stories dealt with Death disguising himself and paying a call on a suspicious woman. According to Ray, Johnson denied any plagiarism charges; their friendship, not surprisingly, was irrevocably damaged. In an interview for Gordon F. Sander’s 1992 biography of Rod Serling, Rod Serling: The Rise and Fall of Television’s Last Angry Man, Johnson acknowledged the author’s profound influence on him and The Twilight Zone series, going so far as to admit stealing from Bradbury.
“I think that a lot of Bradbury was used in The Twilight Zone,” Johnson said. “A lot of his most unique and most Bradburian ideas were common property. The field was so heavily marked by Bradbury there was no way Serling could walk across it without stepping in some of Bradbury’s footprints. I stole from Bradbury.... We all stole from him. Bradbury was the seminal influence.”