Bradbury, Cover Star

Look who's on the cover of the February 1967 issue of Writer's Digest:

Ray Bradbury Miscellanea

A couple of Bradbury remembrances which I somehow managed to miss when they first appeared:

Maclean's magazine has a great little overview of the short stories Bradbury wrote for them, including photos of the page layouts from the original appearances in the 1950s:

And from Ontario's TVO website, Thom Ernst's report on a visit to meet Bradbury around 2006, updated as a brief obituary after Ray's passing:

To Fairyland By Rocket

Eric Rabkin once wrote an essay on Bradbury called "To Fairyland By Rocket". In that title alone, Rabkin encapsulates something fundamental about Bradbury's writing: the collision or co-existence of fantasy and science fiction.

Bradbury is quite clear on what he considers to be science fiction. Fahrenheit 451, he tells us, is SF precisely because it is possible. It is a warning about the future, extrapolating from the technologies and the culture prevalent at the time of writing the novel.

The Martian Chronicles, on the other hand, is in Bradbury's view pure fantasy. The reason? It is impossible. No way it could ever happen. Yes, it has allegorical properties, and in its re-casting of the American experience of the frontier it unveils some profound truths. But it isn't an extrapolation of a possible future, merely a fanciful presentation of a world that never was.

It is The Martian Chronicles above all which gives Rabkin the fuel for his discussion of how Bradbury uses off-the-shelf imagery from SF and places it in a world - all crystal pillars, masks and flame birds - which is straight out of a fairy story.

Another story which I have always considered to be part of this approach is "Here There Be Tygers", about an expedition to a planet which turns out to be a paradise that seems to grant any wish. Bradbury doesn't refer to wishes, instead presenting the story in terms of a planet that can somehow read thought, but a wish-fulfilment fantasy is what is at the heart of the story.

The "fairyland by rocket" aspect of the story is captured neatly in the artwork accompanying the story when it was reprinted in Amazing Stories in April-May 1953. The illustration by Tom O'Sullivan (below - click on image to enlarge) captures a facnciful moment of flight - probably the most memorable sequence of the story - while in the background is the standard 1950s SF rocket.

(The amusing blurb in the magazine more or less apologises for re-printing a story, which was due to the expected new Bradbury story not arriving in time.)

"Here There Be Tygers" was first published in an anthology called New Tales of Space and Time in 1951. It was later collected in two Bradbury volumes: R is for Rocket and the UK Day it Rained Forever.

Point of View

 Bradbury is known as much for his style as for his plots. One of the things that makes his short stories interesting is his willingness to try out new stylistic ideas and techniques.

While most of Bradbury's stories are written in the third person ("he did this", "she did that"), Bradbury quite often adopts the third person, writing as "I". Perhaps his most sustained writing in this mode is in the trilogy of mytery novels starting with Death is a Lonely Business (1985), whose narrator appears to be modelled closely on Bradbury himself.

Among Bradbury's stranger forays into the first person are those stories with a less familiar or less likely narrator. A Mermory of Murder (1984) includes a story narrated by a dead man.

And "I, Rocket" (1944) is narrated by a rocket ship.

Yes, a rocket ship.

Oddly, the story has never been collected in a Bradbury short story collection, although it has made the odd anthology appearance. Its first publication was in the pulp Amazing Stories in May 1944, where it was accompanied by an illustration by the artist Brody (below - click on the picture to enlarge).

The narrator of this story sees everything in terms that would make sense to a rocket ship, and will thank Metal where we might thank God. So much is straightforward and probably no better than you or I would come up with if asked to write a tale from the point of view of a machine.

What is more remarkable is Bradbury's adoption of numerous biological metaphors throughout the story. There is talk of the ship being built, but not really coming alive until "the slap on the back to give me strength and directed purpose," and reference to its birth period when "I was integrated, skeleton, skin and innards." Then there are people, who are variously referred to as blood cells and microbes:

The microbes within my body were in a small dosage; but virulent because they moved free, unchecked, unsuspected. Their names were Anton Larion and Leigh Belloc. I refer to them as bacteria simply because, like microscopic forms in a large body, their function was to poison and destroy me.

Not many writers can make you feel sympathy for a war-ravaged space hulk the way Bradbury does here.