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The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (P.S.)

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Ray Bradbury's gift of total recall and a host of sources provided Sam Weller with the abundant factual and anecdotal materials that comprise this entertaining biography of the science fiction great. During his lifetime, Bradbury's brilliant and quirky A-1 personality dictated incessant interaction with acquaintances, associates, and professional connections. He channeled his ruminations into his art, and as he was a prolific writer, he probably never had a thought or experience that didn't eventually work its way into a story. Ergo, Weller avoids the jumble that so often overtakes a biography when the excitement of the subject's beginnings inevitably gives way to mundane facts (and in this case, they're ample) that relate to the oeuvre. Weller capably intersperses these details with appropriate tidbits all the way to the conclusion, and the result is a sympathetic, amusing depiction of the master of sci-fi that holds the reader to the end.

Seminal influences in Bradbury's early years in Waukegan, Illinois include Buck Rogers and Aunt Neva, who nurtured his imagination through the OZ books, Alice in Wonderland, and Poe. Radio, vaudeville magicians, and the pulps also fed his growing passion for fantasy. Weller paints Bradbury's later formative years against the backdrop of Los Angeles and Hollywood of the 30's and 40's, where his family had emigrated. Here, he saw movie stars at openings, and sneaked into the studios and back lots whenever he could. At that time, LA was to science fiction as Hollywood was to movies, and influential writers and contacts became accessible to the budding writer.

Name-dropping abounds, and the saga of screenwriting Moby Dick in Ireland for John Huston gives rise to some of the funnier anecdotes. Weller highlights Bradbury's genius to include his sensitivity and sentimentality in this portrait of one of the most popular American writers of the 20th century.

Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chronicles is a well researched, upbeat biography of Ray Bradbury. Weller's enthusiasm is both his strength, and, at times, his weakness. If you're looking for a general overview of Ray Bradbury's life and the things that led him to be a writer, this is an excellent starting place.

The strongest part of the biography is the description of Ray's family history and his early life in Waukegan, Illinois. Weller describes Ray's grandfather's history as a printer and his Aunt Neva's artistic interests as strong influences towards Ray's decision to become a writer. Equally detailed are Ray's teen years when his family moved back and forth from Illinois to Arizona, before finally settling in Los Angeles, California.

L.A. and Hollywood played a huge role in influencing Ray's decision to become a writer. During his teen years, he befriended George Burns and actress Ida Lupino, and he often hung out outside the gates of major studios like Paramount and MGM in order to get autographs from the stars. He was a fan of films and longed to be accepted into the film community.

Of particular interest to me were the years in Ray's life between high school and his early thirties. Weller does an excellent job of describing Ray's early connections in the local sci-fi community in Los Angeles, as well as Ray's trips to the World Science Fiction Convention. We learn how he got an agent and published his first few books.

Where the biography slips a little are the years following Ray's triumphant (though difficult) work with John Huston on the film version of Moby Dick. Weller gives us a general overview of the years between 1955-70, but he flashes forward and back whole decades at a time and the details are not at thorough as in the early part of the book. It makes understanding the sequence of how Ray went from selling a thousand books in 1953 to selling over a million by the early 1970s somewhat difficult to follow.

Weller briefly mentions Ray's two affairs in the 1970s, but always from a fan's perspective. I would have liked to have known a little bit more about Ray in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly as his associations and his reputation grew to international stature, and I wonder if a somewhat critical eye toward his work and life would have served the biography better.

At any rate, this is an excellent introduction to the life of Ray Bradbury. Particular attention was paid to detailing Ray's early life, teen years, and formative years in the business, and I highly recommend The Bradbury Chronicles to anyone interested in a general overview of Ray Bradbury's life and the paths he took to become a great American writer. And, as always, I hope this review is helpful to you!

Stacey Cochran
Author of CLAWS available for 80 Cents

For decades, Ray Bradbury has inspired a vast array of creative minds --- from writer Stephen King to film director Steven Spielberg, from rock guitarist Ace Frehley to astronaut Buzz Aldrin --- and now we get a very intimate look into the story behind the man. Sam Weller was given incredible access to Bradbury, his wife Marguerite, and many of his friends and family in an effort to compile this amazing look at the moments that built the framework of Bradbury's creativity.

Born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, Ray Bradbury was a child of a father touched by wanderlust and big dreams at a time when the Great Depression had a stranglehold on the country. From Illinois to Arizona to Hollywood, Bradbury's family searched for work. Moving to various areas of the country, he never lost his simple midwest roots, which can be seen in many of his stories as he returns time and again to simpler times in Illinois autumns.

As a young boy, Bradbury was inspired by the adventures of Buck Rogers, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and a multitude of other fantastical wonders in print and on film. Weller shows us a young man who devoured books and always found the means, even in the hardest of times, to make his way into the movie theater. From these creations he felt the pull toward his own imagination, the results of which has entertained generations of readers.

In 1932, Bradbury had an unexpected encounter with sideshow attraction Mr. Electrico. The magician confronted him during his performance and shouted to him "Live forever!" Though Bradbury will no doubt have to leave us (hopefully none too soon), in the end he will have left behind a literary legacy that will ensure Mr. Electrico's bold command holds true.

As a young man whose youth was touched by hardships and tragedies, including the deaths of two siblings, Bradbury persevered and showed millions of readers the beauty and mystery of things on Mars and beyond, as well as the great discoveries to be found right in front of their very eyes. His work is a beautiful blend of the fantastic and the real, and they have a common humanity that touches all who read them.

Sam Weller's biography of this fantastic man makes him all the more human, and the reader is able to see that the most outstanding and astonishing fantasies have their roots in the simplest moments of everyday life.

Sam Weller effectively tells the story of Ray Bradbury, the sensitive child-man behind all the wonderful stories; the man who wrote about space travellers, but who wouldn't get on a jet plane until he was many decades into his own life; the man who worked with directors and writers who didn't understand him or who took advantage of him; the man who worked with so many--some famous, some not so--who appreciated Bradbury's tremendous gifts, who became his friends and business partners, and who gave as much as they got. Weller isn't quite star struck--he presents Bradbury warts and all--his affairs, his bouts of drinking, his depressions, his want, at times, to be more of a child than a husband. But so much the better for all of his fans to know the true story. This is a well-written, honest book, and a must have for Bradbury fans.

Ray Weller's biography of Ray Bradbury, the prolific author of such seminal works of sci-fi and fantasy as The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes, grew out of an article he wrote in observance of Bradbury's 80th birthday year for Chicago Tribune magazine. In a disarming preface Weller recounts his meeting and immediate rapport with the author and his wife, and admits to being an unabashed fan. This is most apparent in Weller's reticence about the author's private life, in particular his longlasting but nevertheless troubled marriage. Nor is he critically evaluative of Bradbury's voluminous output, preferring to leave that to literary scholars. That still leaves a lot of worthwhile writing about a boy who grew up in small-town Illinois in frequent near-poverty and who never went to college. Bradbury's simple tastes and disdain for technology (he refused to fly in an airplane or use a computer for most of his life) seem at odds with his literary visions; neverthess, his gifts, ambition and discipline (for most of his life Bradbury has produced at least one short story every week) have led him to the place he occupies today as one of America's most well-known authors, credited by many other writers as a major influence on their work. The author's story has enough interest on its own that it works best when Weller steps back and simply tells it, particularly his frequently troubled relationships with luminaries in film and television such as John Huston (for whom Bradbury penned his most successful screenplay, "Moby Dick") and Rod Serling, whose "Twilight Zone" series frequently paid homage to, and possibly plagiarized, Bradbury's ideas while rejecting the author's own teleplays. When Weller attempts something more his own writing can be embarassingly naive and gushy: "Ray's speech...was fifteen minutes of love, joy and inspiration. That night, Ray Bradbury jumped off the cliff and built his wings on the way down." Such passages are happily few and far between in this by and large worthwhile book for Bradbury's many admirers.

The best biographies of artists make you want to go listen to their music/see their paintings/read their stories. This book sent me back to my bookshelves to re-read "Fahrenheit 451" and a bunch of the short stories (many of which I skipped as a kid because they weren't SF enough - now I see that Bradbury was more than an SF writer). I grew up in Los Angeles, so I heard Bradbury speak a dozen times while growing up. All the great anecdotes he tells are here (meeting Mr. Electrico, John Huston and "Moby Dick"). This biography is full of detail, a little insight, a charm. You see the evolution of many stories (this isn't just a "and then he wrote.." book, like some artistic biographies) but not really the man (maybe that's because Ray is pretty much the same today as he was at six!).

I picked this book up on the advice of a friend.....fantastic work! 20 pages in and I was hooked. As a casual Bradbury fan, I had no idea of the depth of his talent or the sheer magnitude of his influence on the worlds of both science fiction and literature in general. If you replace the "he's" with "I's", this would be the definitive Bradbury autobiography. Sam Weller has opened up Ray Bradbury's world in a way that makes the common man want to, if not live there, at least buy a time-share so we can visit again and again! Well done, Sam!

Excellent reading, not just for Ray Bradbury fans, but for all fans of fantasy and fiction, as well as for aspiring authors!

Good book; great service. We would use this vendor for future such purchases and we would also recommend them to friends.

Sam Weller pays homage to Ray Bradbury with the same type of nostalgia that this great `teller of tales' used throughout his career. It's this same sentimentality, this same savoring, this adoring love, which made Bradbury's stories more human and literary, that Weller uses to bring the American Icon to life. It's as if Weller fanned the flames of a bon-fire and turned the blaze into a fully raging sun. Yet, instead of burning the skin off the man to look objectively at his bones, Weller puts the skin on Bradbury so that we realize he is human and should be treated as such. The last chapter, either because it was the end of the story or because of the matter it pertained to had me tearing up. Perhaps I'm a sentimentalist, but whatever, this was a great biography, not solely because of Ray Bradbury, but because Weller told it like Bradbury would have wanted it told. I savored every instance within the dust jacket and would recommend it to anyone.