Becoming Ray Bradbury

Images

The voice of the imagination. Bradbury transformed Hannes Bok’s whimsical tempura figure into the character Kuahdo, Leif’s guide through the lost island of the unpublished “Lorelei” (July 1938). This surviving typescript page reveals how Lorelei emerges as a master metaphor for the imagination. Author’s revisions and a caricature of Leif appear in the final paragraph. Bradbury’s stencil of Kuahdo (inset) became the cover art for the first number of Futuria Fantasia (Summer 1939). From the Albright Collection; courtesy of Ray Bradbury and Donn Albright. Photo1_Elle.indd 1 6/27/11 2:50 PM Bradbury’s outlines for a two-volume anthology of stories selected from the pages of Weird Tales, c. summer 1939. Duplicated entries for C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” and for Robert Bloch’s “Return to the Sabbath” indicate the tentative nature of the project. With the exception of “Shambleau” (1933), the stories listed here represent Bradbury’s favorite originals or reprints from January 1935 to April 1939 issues of Weird Tales. The proposed imprint (“A science-circle publication”), the illustrations, and the pricing are speculative, Photo1_Elle.indd 2 6/27/11 2:50 PM but suggest a joint venture with LASFL support. Forry Ackerman owned both pages for many years. The outlines represent one of the earliest titled book projects planned by Bradbury, but there is no evidence that the proposal moved beyond this early stage of brainstorming. From the Albright and Miller Collections; courtesy of Ray Bradbury, Donn Albright, and Greg Miller. Photo1_Elle.indd 3 6/27/11 2:50 PM Caricaturist and still life artist Fritz Zillig produced this profile of Bradbury on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles around 1940. Photo1_Elle.indd 4 6/27/11 2:50 PM The one-hundredth meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fiction League occurred in 1940, just as the organization refashioned itself as the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS). A center closeup from one of the photographs taken that evening isolates Bradbury at front right; to his left are Jack Williamson, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Walt Doughtery, and Robert Heinlein. From the left, the back row includes Forry Ackerman, Edmond Hamilton, prozine editor Charlie Hornig, and fan Vic Clark. In the background is a Robert Fuqua painting. Courtesy of Ray Bradbury, Donn Albright, and the LASFS. Photo1_Elle.indd 5 6/27/11 2:50 PM A posed photo (top) with Ray Bradbury (R) and Julius Schwartz reviewing a story, Los Angeles, summer 1941. Schwartz and Edmond Hamilton had driven on to Los Angeles after the 3rd World Science Fiction Convention in Denver and settled into a hotel near Bradbury’s newspaper corner at Norton and Olympic. Schwartz was now Bradbury’s agent and critiqued a few of his story drafts before heading back to New York. Below: Edmond Hamilton and Bradbury (L), summer 1941, each clowning with examples of the other’s work; Hamilton endures a Bradbury typescript, while Bradbury holds a copy of Captain Future, a hero pulp built largely around Hamilton’s serial prose, at arm’s length. Throughout the 1940s, Hamilton’s reading advice and command of mainstream literary traditions extended Bradbury’s reading passions deeper into British and American poetry and prose. Photographs from the Albright Collection; courtesy of Ray Bradbury and Donn Albright. Photo1_Elle.indd 6 6/27/11 2:50 PM This sidewalk sketch of Bradbury was created by the Olvera Street artist Bennett Wade around 1941. Bradbury and his friends often enjoyed the performers and artisans of this downtown area during the late 1930s and on through the war years. From the Albright Collection; reproduced by permission of Donn Albright and Ray Bradbury. Photo1_Elle.indd 7 6/27/11 2:50 PM July 9, 1943: the earliest known page from a Martian Chronicles story-chapter, composed prior to Bradbury’s development of the larger Chronicles concept. No other pages have been located, but “Family Outing” eventually reached print in the Summer 1946 issue of Planet Stories as “The Million Year Picnic.” During the summer of 1949, Bradbury revised this tale into the final story chapter of The Martian Chronicles (1950); in the process, he made a half-dozen substantive revisions to the opening page and greatly expanded the fourth paragraph. From the Albright Collection; courtesy of Ray Bradbury and...