Waukegan Mural

Bradbury's home town of Waukegan, Illinois, has a brand new mural representing the town's history. The mural is on Le Opera on Genesee Street. Among the historic figures and events depicted are Ray Bradbury, Jack Benny, the Genesee Theatre, the Carnegie Library, the old and current lighthouses, and Waukegan children in silhouette - looking to the future, according to the Lake County News-Sun.

The News-Sun also has a photo gallery showing different views of the mural. The local community has been invited to come up with a name for the mural.

Arthur Slade's DUST

A while back I believe I mentioned Arthur Slade's novel Dust, which has been compared to Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and Stephen King's Needful Things.

I haven't read Dust yet, but I have browsed the opening chapters and find it quite appealing. In fact, I was fortunate to spot that, for a while, it was available as a free download in Kindle format, which is how I came by it. (The freebie was short-lived, although it's still quite cheap as an e-book: check out the pricing at Amazon and Amazon UK.)

On his own website, Arthur Slade has posted an appreciation of Bradbury's work, which ends with a reproduction of a letter from Bradbury. Bradbury wrote to him to thank him for dedicating Dust to him. Read more here.

1974 Interview

I don't know how I managed to miss this until now, but here's a 1974 interview with Ray Bradbury. It's from a series called Day at Night, hosted by James Day, and comes from CUNY TV. CUNY uploaded this and other archive material to YouTube.

That Was October...

Of all months, October is the one most associated with Ray Bradbury. He wrote The October Country and The Halloween Tree, and set Something Wicked This Way Comes in the month of October. As a consequence, there are more references to Bradbury on the web at this time of year than at any other time. Now it's over(!), here's a few notable pieces which appeared recently:

Claire Thompson uses The Halloween Tree as a way into a fascinating discussion of how Americans (and, presumably, the rest of us) can evaluate their neighbourhoods. With its discussion of trick-or-treating and "walkability", it taps into more than one of Bradbury's recurring concerns.

The blog Too Much Horror Fiction gives a detailed appreciation of both Dark Carnival and The October 
 Country, with some good illustrations

The Lake County Sun-Times has a photo-gallery report on this year's Waukegan Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival.