In 1974, I wrote a fan letter to a man whom I considered not just one of the greatest science-fantasy writers ever, but one of the greatest writers ever, period. Amazingly, Ray Bradbury (for it was he) replied – not a brief, cursory note of acknowledgment, but (despite his opening comment) at length!
This letter is one of my most treasured possessions and, as I read it now, I can still remember the thrill which which I read it then...
It was the beginning of thirty-six years of correspondence (enough to fill four large folders) that has continued, latterly, via e-mail and fax. Here's just one of many personally decorated envelopes that contained a Bradbury missive...
We met first in London, but, subsequent visits, have taken place at the Disney Studio in Burbank, Disneyland in Anaheim, EPCOT in Walt Disney World, Florida and at Ray's book-and-memorabilia-crammed home...
Me and Ray in 1995
Photo: Malcolm Prince
If Ray Bradbury had only ever written
The Martian Chronicles – his dream of the lives of those who journey to and live on the Red Planet – he would have secured a place in literary history, but he also wrote that sublime portrait of childhood (that is also a compelling psychological thriller),
Something Wicked This Way Comes and his dystopian nightmare of an era where books are burned,
Fahrenheit 451 as well as dozens of novels and collections of short stories and verses.
I believe some of my very best radio work was done in dramatising some of those stories for two BBC Radio 4 series entitled
Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre which had personal introductions by the author on how he came to write them.
When I asked Ray which book – like the characters in
F451 – he would commit to memory if the literary arsonists ever came to power, he told me, it would be Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol. That is why, when I wrote a book about Dickens' classic, I asked him for a testimonial for the wrapper. He did me proud...
Today gives me a chance – in addition to wishing my friend and hero a very happy 90th birthday – to say "Thank you!" to a writer of extraordinary vision. From the moment, on a hot July day in my teens, that I read my first Bradbury story ('The Fog Horn') in my first Bradbury book (The Golden Apples of the Sun) he seized my imagination, shook it awake and hauled it screaming with terror and delight into other worlds that I had only previously visited in my dreams.
From that summer day on, I became a different person to the one I
might have been because of his gift for seeing the miraculous in the mundane and the tremendous possibilities in the trivial and his unerring talent for prising open the thoughts and emotions of an astonishing range of beings - humans, aliens, robots, puppets and dinosaurs - and giving us an empathetic understanding of their hopes and fears.
The first British edition of Dark Carnival (1948)
with dust-wrapper design by Michael Ayrton
Ray recounts a story from his own childhood of visiting one of the side-show attractions at a carnival where Mr Electrico touched the boy with the fizz and crackle of the electric power that he let run through his body as part of his act and told him to
live for ever! With one book (that was the first of many) Ray did just that to me!
Older and wiser, I now know that living for ever is not (at the moment) a biological option, but we can live forever through the chain-reaction by which we pass on our genes or, for those of us who are childless, our enthusiasms, passions and whatever other influences, great or small, rub off on everyone with whom we interact.
As for Ray, he will live as long as books (in whatever form they take) are read – and not burnt. Selfishly, I also hope we will have the man himself around for a good few more years yet!
