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Ray Bradbury PDF

187 Pages·1980·12.952 MB·English
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- " -~,----.. -. --.,-- ---, - ---, ---, - - --, - --, -- ~--. ~ - - ~-- .- -. --- - -" ,- -" --.. - -" - --" ,--- -~--, - -..,. --. ,.... ---, --,- - \ -. - \ - -----,------.,----.., r----- -~ -- "- -. ---~~-. - ----,, "- - --"-'1--,-- ---.. ~ ----,,-- ----'-\-, ----,--, -- -.---- --.- JO:::~~O:~ =-= -- - -- -- -- -----,- - - - ,- --- ----- - - - - - - - • --- - --. ~ -~~ ~ r i l l I I r i l d l . r RECOGNITIONS detective/suspense Bruce Cassiday, General Editor Rayntond Chandler By Jerry Speir P. D. Jantes By Nonna Siebenheller John D. MacDonald By David Geherin Ross MacDonald By Jerry Speir Dorothy L. Sayers By Dawson Gaillard Sons of Saln Spade: The Private Eye Novel in the 70s By David Geherin science fiction TOln Staicar, General Editor Isaac Asilnov By Jean Fiedler and Jiln Mele Ray Bradbury By Wayne L. Johnson Critical Encounters: Writers and Thelnes in Science Fiction Dick Riley, Editor Critical Encounters II: Writers and Thentes in Science Fiction Ton1 Staicar Editor The Fentinine Eye: Science Fiction and the WOHlen Who Write It Ton1 Staicar, Editor Frank Herbert By Tin10thy O'Reilly Ursula K. LeGuin By Barbara J. Bucknall Theodore Sturgeon By Lucy Menger Also of Interest The Bedside, Bathtub & Annchair COlnpanion to Agatha Christie Dick Riley and Pan1 McAllister, Editors Introduction by Julian Syn10ns Copyrigh t 1980 by Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc. © Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Johnson, Wayne L. 1942- Ray Bradbury. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Bradbury, Ray, 1920- -Criticism and interpretation. PS3503.R167Z72 813'.54 79-4825 ISBN 0-8044-2426-8 ISBN 0-8044-6318-2 (pbk.) Book Design by Marsha Picker Second Printing, 1982 for my mother and father contents preface ix 1 the writer and his work 1 2 medicines for melancholy "12 Magic • Horror • Death 3 the pandemonium shadow show 33 Monsters • Misfits • Madmen 4 future imperfect 49 Space Travel • Other Planets Time Travel The End of the World 5 machineries of joy and sorrow 67 Rockets • Time Machines • Robots Man vs. Machine • Orwellian Tales Fahrenheit 451 6 green town, illinois 89 Dandelion Wine • Something Wicked This Way Comes Other Green Town Stories ray bradbury Vill 7 mars 107 , The Martian Chronicles • Other Mars Stories 8 other themes 121 Love and the Circle of Time • Mexico • Ireland Homosexuals • Religion, • Blacks • China 9 other work 135 Film • Plays • Children's Books • Poetry 10 looking ahead 147 notes 151 bibliography 161 index 167 preface • This is a book abou.t a dreamer. Ray Bradbury is a writer with a particular skill at committing his dreams to paper and, in so doing, making them live for others. He dreams dreams of magic and transformation, good and evil, small-town America and the canals of Mars. His dreams are not only popular-they are durable. The great body of his work consists of short stories, which are notoriously difficult to publish and keep before the public eye. Yet his stories have stayed in print, in some cases for nearly three decades. The subjects that engage Bradbury's pen are many: magic, horror, and monsters; rockets, robots, time and space travel; growing up in a midwestern town in the 1920s, and growing old in an abandoned earth colony on another planet. Despite their varied themes, Bradbury's stories contain a sense of won der, often a sense of joy, and a lyrical and rhythmic touch that sets his work a part. x ray bradbury Using an analytical approach to such stories is to do a kind of violence to them, but between the dream and the finished story is a considerable amount of craftsmanship. The illustra tion of that craftsmanship, along with some elucidation of the writer's themes, hopefully will enrich the reader's understand ing and appreciation of one of the major artists in his field. The approach here is thematic: the various collections of Bradbury's stories have been "taken apart," and the stories regrouped and with one another in terms of ele compar~d ments and common themes. Generally speaking, Bradbury's handling of a given theme in an early story as compared to a later story is essentially the same. That is, his themes do not display a growth in emotional depth or logical complexity as time goes on. Instead, Bradbury treats his themes in what might be called a Baroque manner-changing the ornamentation, elTIotional tone, or relative prominence of the theme from story to story. In a way, this is like the variations on a theme in music. For example, "The Next in Line" and "The Life Work of Juan Diaz" both center around the mummies in the cemetery at Guanajuato in Mexico. The former is a horror story as well as a psychological study of a marital relationship. The latter describes a very different marital relationship and concludes on a note of whimsical irony. Both stories may be compared in terms of the mummies or in the larger context of Bradbury's visit to Mexico in 1945. But little understanding is added from a critical standpoint in knowing that "The Next in Line" was published in 1947 and "The Life work of Juan Diaz" in 1963. For the purposes of this study, then, the order in which the stories were written or published has been largely ignored. Readers wish ing to pursue a chronological study of a given theme or themes will want to consult the helpful chronology compiled by Wil liam F. Nolan for the 1973 Doubleday & Co., Inc. edition of The Martian Chronicles. As a practical matter, consideration here is limited prima rily to fiction available to the general reader. Though this

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