Ray Bradbury

187 Pages·1980·12.952 MB·English

by  Wayne L. Johnson

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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