Charles Yu

Charles Yu is the author of the new short story collection Sorry Please Thank You and the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

He is also a contributor to the Bradbury tribute volume Shadow Show, with his short story "Earth (a Gift Shop)", which is influenced by Bradbury's classic story "There Will Come Soft Rains".

In a recent interview, Yu spoke about his involvement with Shadow Show, and about Bradbury's fiction:

I was asked to submit something for the anthology by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, who put together the anthology. I was seriously daunted by the list of contributors they had rounded up, and I still am. Deciding what to write was very nerve-wracking – I kept thinking, “Ray Bradbury is going to read this story.” That’s a lot of pressure! And I heard from Sam that Mr. Bradbury did read it (at least I think he did), and enjoyed it. That was a quite a feeling. Pride and relief. Pri-lief. It’s like being in-shamed, but the opposite.
Oh, and yes, I love The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes. In terms of stories, “The Veldt” is one of my favorites, but there are so many.

You can read the full interview at Wired.

Shadow Show Reviewed

The most perceptive review yet of the tribute volume Shadow Show appeared this week in the Los Angeles Review of Books. SF and fantasy scholar Gary K. Wolfe - whose best known essay on Bradbury established the "frontier myth" reading of The Martian Chronicles - has written a lengthy review which not only evaluates the book itself but uses it as an opportunity to gauge Bradbury's literary influence.

Wolfe writes:

Few would consider [Harlan] Ellison and Bradbury as close siblings in any literary or stylistic sense, but [...] there’s some of the genetic material of those old pulp classics in both writers.

But such are the mysteries of literary DNA. Those old retroviruses can express themselves in unexpected ways generations later, and Bradbury was a carrier. He may have read Eudora Welty and Willa Cather and imported some of their stylistic grace into genre fiction, but by the same token he passed along some of the imaginative energy of Brackett or Henry Kuttner to the writers who followed him.

Wolfe then explores each story in the anthology in turn, considering the extent and nature of Bradbury's influence. One of his key points is that nearly every contributor to the book refers in their afterword  to discovering Bradbury at an early age, and nearly every one references Bradbury stories that were originally published prior to 1962. That was the year Something Wicked This Way Comes was published, and it seems to mark a changeover point at which Bradbury switched from "becoming Ray Bradbury" to "being Ray Bradbury", Wolfe observes, consciously echoing Jon Eller's recent biographical volume Becoming Ray Bradbury.

Shadow Show has received a lot of reviews, but many of them have been cursory and lacking in awareness of what the book truly demonstrates. Wolfe, I think, has got it spot on. I haven't read all the stories in the book yet, but his review prompts me to get on with it!

Gary K. Wolfe's full review can be read here.

Tributes Continue

As the headline says: the tributes continue. Comic-Con took place last week, and featured a well attended tribute panel which included Margaret Atwood, Sam Weller, Marc Scott Zicree and others. There are plenty of accounts of this panel on the web, such as this one.

Zicree talks more about Bradbury in this BBC radio interview.

Fans in Pittsburgh staged their own tribute by reading Bradbury stories.

Other tributes inevitably come wrapped up in reviews of the new tribute volume Shadow Show.

Gloria McMillan of Arizona University has put out a call for papers inviting scholars to contribute to a proposed book with the working title The Tucson Bradbury Chronicles: Mars is The West. This essay volume will take as its starting point the fact that the young Ray Bradbury lived for a while in Arizona, but will explore Bradbury's engagement with the western US in broad terms. Such academic volumes are often a long time in development, so it may be some time before anything comes of this, but I will post more information when it becomes available.

Shadow Show and F451

Shadow Show, the short story anthology in honour of Ray Bradbury is now out. I have a copy, but haven't had time to read it properly yet, just dip in here and there. Eventually I will get round to reviewing it. Meanwhile, there are other reviews out there to help you decide whether it is for you. This one from Ryan Britt at Tor.com gives a good overview from someone who has actually read it. The book was never intended to be a memorial to Bradbury, having been planned for months or years prior to Ray's recent death - but it looks as if it will serve as timely commemoration of the man and his writing. Those who don't know the history of the volume might be surprised to see that there is an introduction by Bradbury himself.

Journalist and political commentator Paul Street has written a long article relating Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to our modern world. Much of what he writes is familiar: Bradbury's apparent prescience in his use of immersive TV systems, loss of literacy and increasing personal isolation through (for example) personal earphones. However, he makes a number of less familiar extrapolations, and manages to link in Facebook and other "evils" of the modern world. You may not agree with everything he writes, but it's a good piece. Read it here.

Shadow Show

Mort Castle, co-editor of the forthcoming Bradbury tribute volume, recently posted some more information about Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury:

Editor Sam Weller and I (and Ray!) are pleased with what people are saying about Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury. The book will be released July 17 in the William Morrow edition and around that time in the Gauntlet Press/Borderlands editions.

"Great new tales of imagination in the Bradbury tradition." -- Hugh Hefner

“There is no more fitting tribute to my friend Ray Bradbury than a compilation of wonderful short stories!  Ray is a champion of libraries and one of America’s most inventive teller of tales.   I cherish many happy times engrossed in his stories.  This anthology reflects the high imagination, visionary ideas, and fantastic writing that Ray is loved and known for around the world.”--Laura Bush

"Ray Bradbury is without a doubt, one of this, or any century's greatest and most imaginative writers.  SHADOW SHOW, a book of truly great stories, is the perfect tribute to America's master storyteller." --Stan Lee

"SHADOW SHOW is a treasure-trove for Ray Bradbury enthusiasts as for all readers who are drawn to richly imaginative, deftly plotted, startlingly original and unsettling short fiction.  No one who knows their darkly fantastic fiction would be surprised to see such renowned names here as Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Audrey Niffenegger, and Kelly Link; but it is something of a surprise to see Dave Eggers, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Dan Chaon, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Julia Keller  in this gathering, all of them Ray Bradbury admirers, and all so gifted.  The tributes to Ray Bradbury that follow each of the stories are particularly interesting, often heartwarming and inspiring." --Joyce Carol Oates

The information appeared on the Shocklines message board.

Bradbury and Ellison

On Monday, Harlan Ellison mentioned on his website that he has completed a story called "Weariness", and sold it to an upcoming Ray Bradbury tribute book called Live Forever! along with an 1100-word afterword. I don't think I have heard of this book before (if I have, I've forgotten all about it). Shortly thereafter Robert Morales, evidently the editor of said volume, wrote that "the afterword about you and Bradbury [...] is so staggeringly SWEET and funny and poignantly saturated with history".

The image on the left, from 1973, is one of the few online photos to show Bradbury and Ellison together, and is taken from the Los Angeles Science Fiction Fantasy Society website. Bradbury is in the back row, second from left, partially obscured by Ellison.

Random thought: one of the (many) things that connect Ellison and Bradbury is Los Angeles' famous Bradbury Building. Though not named after Ray, the Bradbury Building is featured prominently in the opening credits to The Ray Bradbury Theatre, as Ray (actually a body double!) is shown arriving at his office...which was actually in a totally different building elsewhere in LA:





The Bradbury Building also stars in "Demon with a Glass Hand", an episode of The Outer Limits written by Harlan Ellison. When writing the script, Ellison personally researched a key scene in which his protagonist races an elevator. He hurt his leg in the process, as the final leap to hit the ground before the elevator was rather a long jump. Robert Culp (or perhaps a stunt double) replicates the jump in the finished episode.

There are some good photos of the Bradbury Building today on the Bladezone website, as part of a Blade Runner-themed tour of LA.

Another connection between Bradbury and Ellison is that they are both recipients of the J.Lloyd Eaton Award: Bradbury was the first, in 2008; Ellison is the fourth, and will receive his award at next month's Eaton Conference in Riverside, California.