Quoting Ray Bradbury and Shakespeare? Country music?
Tag: Ray Bradbury
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10DEC2025 – Ray Bradbury
Bradbury is nearly sui generis amongst the 40’s/50’s/early 60’s SciFi Writers. His stuff often feels more like Lovecraft or Clark Aston Smith. My first “adult” scifi (not juvies like Tom Swift Jr. or young children scifi like Spaceship in the Apple Tree) were two of his collections. They were R is for Rocket and S is for Space that my 5th grade reading teacher found for me in the school library. I recently got a new audible version of his Martian Chronicles and although the technology doesn’t really make sense (maybe not even then) the stories themselves are beautiful and elegant in a fashion that the Asimov/Clark/Heinlein stories usually didn’t try for. Bradbury makes a lovely palette cleanser among other SciFi. Some moderns try at his style but honestly most of them are pale imitations like art students copying a Rembrandt or one of the pre Raphaelites.
Short Fiction Collected
I have an old beat up collection of Ray Bradbury’s short fiction. It’s called “The Stories of Ray Bradbury.” It was published in 1980 and contains about a hundred of his stories. These stories appeared earlier in a number of short story collections that came out over the years that Bradbury was writing. And he also wrote after this collection came out so there’s nothing original or definitive about this collection but it contains most of the short stories that his reputation was based on. And because it is such a large selection (almost nine hundred pages in a 9.5 X 6.5 hardcover volume), there are great stories and poor ones. There is fantasy, horror, something like science fiction and even nondescript fiction. And because it was written over the course of about forty years it changes. The emphasis, the stylistic touches, the topics all change. But the voice is always recognizably Bradbury. For the most part he is interested in the people. The science is not the story. In fact, most of the time it’s just the excuse for poking and prodding the people and watching them react. It’s a pleasure to walk through this old volume and relive old stories and find out how I’ve changed over the years. Have my preferences changed? Yes. But my likes and dislikes have mostly remained the same. Possibly I’m a little bit more sensitive to the quality of the prose rather than the surprise in the ending.
It’s interesting to consider that science fiction short stories have been declared a dead field. No one buys the stories either in book collections or in magazines (paper or electronic). And that strikes me as a sad situation. So many of these short stories contain wonderful ideas and characters and images that stir the imagination. But somehow, they no longer have any value in the present world. Can that be the permanent state of literature? I guess it could be. Capitalism is ruled by the law of supply and demand. So, there’s no demand for short stories.
Well, that’s too bad. Maybe the future will include a manner for artists to exhibit their works for people similar to how musicians currently perform concerts. A live presentation where the audience listens to the story or watches a video presentation of it in a format that can’t be pirated and therefore has value as a single use experience. All that’s left is the memory of the story. Of course, that’s what movies were but now they’ve also lost their value. So maybe not. But I find a book of short stories to be a treasure trove. A hundred stories and maybe fifty are very good and ten are wonderful. That’s a pretty impressive collection. I think any prolific author would be satisfied with that track record.
One thing that Bradbury liked to do was string together some of his short stories into a larger framework. He did this with turning his Green Town stories into “Dandelion Wine” and his dark carnival stories into “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” And what that shows me is these short stories can be the seeds for longer fiction. But if no one reads them and rates them how will these seeds ever sprout. Oh well.
Exaggerations of the Simple Stuff of Human Life
Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says:
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
And Macbeth enters. What a marvelous scene. Witches, bloody ghosts and a demigod truly drained of his humanity. A horror story in a stage play. And then Ray Bradbury takes that line, “Something wicked this way comes” and makes it the title of his own American ghost story; the story of a haunted carnival. Now what does Macbeth have to do with Bradbury? Well, in both cases we have basically good people seduced by the devil. Whether it’s Shakespeare’s witches or Bradbury’s Mr. Dark it is the story of men succumbing to the devil’s promise for their heart’s desire in exchange for their souls.
Macbeth wants the Scottish crown. Bradbury’s Green Town denizens want various things. Tom Fury and Mr. Crosetti succumb to lust. Mr. Tetley wants money. Miss Foley and Charles Halloway want their youth back. Jim Nightshade wants to be older so he can indulge his various negative desires. And for these things they risk becoming permanent prisoners of Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger’s haunted carnival travelling the American continent in search of more souls to consume.
What a marvelous conceit. An ancient locomotive from the Civil War era, arrives in small towns in the middle of the night and sniffs out the spiritually wounded inhabitants and lures them into the haunted attractions of the show. If they wander into the house of mirrors, they will see their heart’s desire or their greatest fear. Or they can follow the barker’s lure and enter the tent where the belly dancers expose their bodies for a silver dime. And those that disappear are no longer recognizable as themselves and so cannot be rescued by any police force.
And redemption can only be had in Bradbury’s story if the devil is laughed out of town. Laughter and happiness are the only cures for this evil. The secret is to realize that life is not a tragedy. Even at its worst, it is better than the alternative which is nothingness. Pain and sadness and even death are a human story and in fact the only certainty in this world. But it’s also still better than never existing. Because no matter how sad and awful our existence, it’s still ours. We get to feel it and react to it and maybe win a few rounds before we’re finally cornered and beaten by death.
So, the ride’s the thing. That’s the lesson that Charles Halloway learns by the end of the story. Even though he’s old and overwhelmed with trying to be the father of a young boy, that overwhelming challenge is his greatest opportunity to squeeze every bit of meaning and gusto out of what remains of his life. And the boys get to see that fears and desires are exaggerations of the simple stuff of human life. Lust and greed and fear are just the ingredients of life taken out of balance from their normal proportions and occasions.
I wonder who will take this theme up next? Maybe I will, someday.
31AUG2025 – And Then, Quite Suddenly, Summer Was Over
Bradbury understood summer to a boy.
“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.
He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.
“Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!”
“Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.”
“No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear…
So thinking, he slept.
And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
The yearly ritual continues.
31AUG2024 – And Then, Quite Suddenly, Summer Was Over
Bradbury understood summer to a boy.
“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.
He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.
“Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!”
“Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.”
“No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear…
So thinking, he slept.
And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
The yearly ritual continues.
31AUG2023 – And Then, Quite Suddenly, Summer Was Over
Bradbury understood summer to a boy.
“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.
He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.
“Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!”
“Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.”
“No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear…
So thinking, he slept.
And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
The yearly ritual continues.
Horror Then and Now
My longtime readers know that I indulge myself in the run-up to Halloween with book and movie reviews that concur with my preferences for that holiday. A couple of years ago I wrote reviews for all the Universal Classic Monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s. I usually take the season as an excuse to reread Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and watch the movie for good measure.
But last year I reviewed Psycho and this year I intend to review the Thomas Harris novels that include the character Hannibal Lecter. Many years ago, a friend gave me his copy of Red Dragon and I found it to be one of the most unsettling things I had ever read. And although the violence and insanity were pretty extreme by the standards of that happier time, the thing about the book that truly frightened me was the plausibility of the killer’s method for stalking his victims and the impossibility of protecting your family from someone who was determined to kill in that fashion. I guess it was the fact that I had a young family at that time and the idea that I might be powerless to save them that horrified me. And that is when I first became aware that true horror always has a human face. It won’t be a normal human but it will look out of a face that is attached to a driver’s license and a cellphone and a bank account.
So, there is a difference between the good old days and the bad new days. We stopped trying to gently scare children and now we horrify adults by showing them what’s really out there. I’ll be the first to admit that watching Frankenstein or Dracula doesn’t actually involve any fear for anyone over the age of ten. It was natural that movie makers and writers would escalate the violence and cart out the gore to tempt adult thrill-seekers, mostly in their teenage years, to spend their entertainment dollars on the latest fright fest. Back in the 1970s Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the poster child for exploitation movies aimed at frightening audiences out of their seats. Since then every year has upped the ante until lately the content has gotten so bad that the real name for what this represents has been designated. These movies are portraying torture through grisly dismemberment.
I consider that a distinction can be made between these gore fests that are almost bereft of meaningful characters and plot and crime drama like “Silence of the Lambs” which while it does include the description of horrible violence and depravity is not focused on flinging gore across the screen to delight the demented. It tells the story of people. This includes the victims, the police and even the murderer. We supposedly learn a little about what drives some of these characters to become monsters.
I’m not a devotee of crime drama or fiction. As I said I was given the Red Dragon book long ago and because of it I went to see the Silence of the Lambs when it came out. Out of a sense of curiosity I read the rest of the Lecter books and saw the movies and tv series. I don’t think the later books were as good as the first two but I will review them all for general interest purposes.
But I have all the Universal Monster movies on DVD and I intend to watch them all with my younger grandsons as soon as the lockdown ends. They’re the correct age and they’ll get a kick out of them. And truth be told, so will I.
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 35 – I Sing the Body Electric
Mr. Rogers is a recently widowed man with three lonely young children, Tom, Anne and Karen. The children’s aunt tells Rogers that they need a mother not a babysitter but he doesn’t have an answer for that. Tom shows his father an advertisement in a science magazine that announces robot grandmothers. The family goes to the factory and learn that they can design a grandmother to look and sound exactly as they want her. All are excited by the idea except for Anne who is angry at her mother for abandoning her (by dying). Their electronic grandma proves to be lovable, wise and fun. Everybody in the house is charmed by her except Anne who runs angrily out the door to escape.
When Grandma catches up to Anne, she tells her that she doesn’t want to have anyone else leave her. Grandma tells Anne that she’ll never leave but the girl doesn’t believe her and runs into the street. A speeding truck is on a collision course for Anne when Grandma shoves her out of the way and is struck instead. Mr. Rogers is there to carry his daughter out of the street where she cries hysterically. The truck driver is panicked when he sees Grandma sprawled in front of his truck but suddenly her programming resets and she gets up none the worse for her collision.
When Anne sees that her Grandma is indestructible a great fear leaves her and she embraces the robot. Then we see the life of the children and their robot grandma and all the happiness she shares with them. When finally, all three children have reached college age Grandma tells them she is returning to the factory to receive a new assignment or maybe e disassembled for parts. She tells them that at some point she would be in a room with the other grandmas sharing wisdom. And finally, she said that maybe in a few hundred years of service she would be granted the dream of becoming really alive. Then the children tell her that she already is really alive now. Then she tells them to go upstairs so she can leave without any sad goodbyes.
Serling got Ray Bradbury to adapt his short story for television. But both versions are very strange. It is a very original concept but it’s odd. For originality I’ll give it a B+ but it won’t click for all tastes.
My Annual Halloween Celebration
Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid and in my heart of hearts I haven’t really progressed far from that. I guess I’m not a progressive. So here is the advantage to being in business for more than a year. The calendar allows you to recycle stuff you did last year. I did movie reviews of the Universal Classic Monster Movies and a few other related films last year and I’ll recycle them around for the Halloween season. And I’ll add some additional films to avoid the label of laziness. I’ll also try to find some other Halloween content. I guess Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is sort of the quintessential American story for this time of year. But there are all kinds of other stuff out there from Poe to (yikes) Lovecraft to even that lefty doofus Stephen King. So stay tuned and I’ll start cycling those in.