MY FRIEND, MR MOUNDSHROUD...

 

Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU?

 

And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back: I think you know, boy, I think you know. 

 

Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? 

 

Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

 

And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

 

And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

 

Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly. 

 

Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand. 

 

Click. Tom’s front door went shut. 

 

His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark.

 

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972

 

 

[Illustration: 'Mr. Carapace Clavicle Moundshround' by Joseph 'Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992)]

A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Today would have been the 104th birthday of legendary fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, with whom I was fortunate to have a 38-year friendship from 1974 until his too-early death in 2012. Whenever I visited Ray at his home in Los Angeles, I always made a point of pausing in front of this oil painting hanging on his sitting-room wall. 

 

Entitled ‘The Carnival’, was painted in 1952 by Joseph ‘Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992). Long before Ray was sufficiently established in his career to purchase the original canvas, he had spotted a lithograph of the picture in the window of a Beverly Hills gallery. 

 

‘The Carnival’ presents an enigmatic vision of a crowded, flag-and-banner-bedecked train which is either coming out of nowhere (bound for a destination equally unknown) or is, otherwise, reversing towards the abrupt and perilous end of both railroad-track and viaduct. For Ray, it seemed to chime with some of the bizarre and fantastical themes that he had explored in his 1947 debut collection of short stories, Dark Carnival.

 

The result was the first of many meetings between two men with minds wide open to the eloquent and extravagant possibilities of an unfettered imagination. For Joe, it was the beginning of his collaboration with Ray: illustrating, decorating or providing evocative jacket-art for a succession of books beginning, in 1953, with The Golden Apples of the Sun and including such story collections as The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy and the novels, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Halloween Tree.

 

Joe's carnival train also, unquestionably, contributed to the shaping of Ray's book Something Wicked This Way Comes in which Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its entourage of monsters and misfits, arrives by locomotive, under the cover of night, in a sleepy American town to disrupt the fates and fortunes of the local residents and, in particular, the destinies of two young boys.

 

I'm sharing this haunting image today with grateful, affectionate memories of my many encounters and long years of correspondence with Uncle Ray and with respect and admiration for his creative collaboration with the talented Mr. Mugnaini.

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

 

Here's great piece of great art by Al Feldstein (1925-2014) for Weird Fantasy Vol. 1, # 17 (January 1953) featuring dinosaurs, a spacecraft and the name of a man familiar with both: Ray Bradbury! 

 

In fact, the Bradbury story included in this issue, 'There Will Come Soft Rains', had nothing to do with either space-travel or prehistoric life, because Weird Fantasy covers were invariably generic, featuring images guaranteed to catch the eye and raise the pulse of the potential reader: rockets, robots, aliens, monsters, dinosaurs and (wherever and whenever possible) scantily-dressed females in peril! 

 

Nevertheless, this could so easily have been an image for Bradbury's legendary dino-saga, 'A Sound of Thunder'. 

 

And, anyway, I just love it!

A LETTER FROM MARS

 

Fifty years ago, today, RAY BRADBURY, visionary American writer of fantasy and sci-fi classics – think The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 – sat down at his typewriter in Beverly Hills and replied to a fan-letter from a 25-year-old guy in Britain who had sent him some provoking questions about a mutual idol – Walt Disney...

 

 

 

 

 

This remarkable letter was to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship that would last for almost 40 years and only ended with Ray’s death in 2012. 

 

Only a few days before he died, I received – by email, via his daughter, Zee, who latterly served as his amanuensis – a final missive…

 

 

**********************************

 

Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for your wonderful note; it's always great to hear from you.

 

Zee read your email to me and I cannot believe what you and David have to go through. [We had to vacate our flat for a year during repairs to the building] 

 

Of course, now that you've had to dig through all your treasures, perhaps we should get you two here to take care of this out-of-control homestead of mine!!!! I love this old house of mine and even if I didn't, I think I'd be stuck here because there's just so much stuff.

 

I'm glad to hear of your new book and I do hope you'll send me a copy of it when it comes out.

 

I think Zee told you that I had been in the hospital, but this old Martian is doing fine, so don't you worry.

 

I send you and David much love,

 

Ray

 

**********************************

 

My discovery, in my early teens, of the extraordinary worlds of Ray Bradbury was a fiery baptism in the waters of metaphor and simile, in the rip-tide of allusions and illusions, in the great wave of allegory and analogy. 

 

His books were like gathering the Golden Apples of the Sun; getting drunk on Dandelion Wine in the shade of the Halloween Tree in the October Country; or finding a prescription for a Medicine for Melancholy whenever Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

Our correspondence and, later, our meetings in London, California and Florida, were treasured like the rarest and richest gifts stolen from a dragon-horde or from seemingly commonplace pebbles and shells found shimmering along new-washed shoreline in the first light of dawn.

 

To engage with Ray on any topic of conversation was nothing short of thrilling: invigorating, enlightening, challenging and inspiring. Never more so than when talk turned to shared passions and obsessions. 

 

Cue a topic; any one: Disney (especially Fantasia and the wonders of Disneyland); dinosaurs and robots; Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol; comic books (Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars and the ‘pulp poets’ of the ‘fifties); cinematic classics (The Phantom of the Opera, Citizen Kane and La Strada); the monsters of moviedom (from King Kong to the beasts of Ray Harryhausen); Hollywood’s funny men (Stan and Ollie, Buster Keaton and Chaplin); artists (especially Piranesi, Eyvind Earle and, his own frequent illustrator, Joe Mugnani) and then more Disney and so much more of anything and everything.

 

Ray became my mentor and critic, my goad and guide, source of inspiration and spur to my imagination; but he was also ever the challenger to my preconceptions and debunker of my hypocrisies. We talked about joys and sorrows, origins and destinations, risings and fallings, dreams and nightmare, realities and masquerades, every shade of love, hate and whatever lay between. 

 

Our thirty-eight years of friendship was, as I grew up and he grew older, a love-affair of ponderings and speculations. I miss him as much today, as I did twelve years ago, when that ‘Old Martian’ (as he called himself in his last email) set off on his last great exploration of the Great Unknown that, again and again, he celebrated throughout his life…

LETERS FROM THE MARTIAN CHRONICLER

 

I am very honoured to be among recipients of letters included in Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury, edited by Jonathan R. Eller; recipients such as Grahame Greene, Arthur C. Clark, Federico Fellini, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, Francois Truffaut and Bertrand Russell.

 

I first exchanged letters with Ray in 1974 and we continued to write to one another and, later meet up in London and L.A., until his death 38 years later. That first letter of Ray's, in response to an enquiry from a supremely confident 25-year-old admirer, was a small but exquisite masterpiece: a fireworks display of words, thoughts and images: an explosion of stimulating ideas, questions and challenges. Over twice my age and an international literary superstar, he replied as if to an equal with such vigorous engagement and indulgent charm that, however unlikely it seems to me now, could only ever be read as an invitation to begin a friendship...

 

What I couldn't have known was that it would be a friendship would bring me, across nearly four decades, letters, notes, postcards and doodles, an annual Christmas poem (and, no surprise, zany Halloween greetings); articles, cuttings and clippings; play-scripts and hand-bills; signed books and an endorsement for the cover one of my books – and an opportunity to dramatise The Illustrated Man and more than half-a-dozen of his short stories for radio.

 

The letter itself and two of my mine to Ray (which I hadn't seen since I wrote them!) are chiefly concerned with a conversation about Walt Disney's use in his theme-parks of 'Audio-Animatronic' technology – or, to put it in non-Disney speak, 'robots'! It seems that, half-a-century ago, we were already debating the pros and cons of what we would now refer to as 'AI': Ray, obviously and unashamedly 'pro'; me anxiously, 'con'. 

 

In a few months time it will be fifty years since that wonderful letter arrived and almost twelve years since Ray's death and yet I remain as moved and eternally grateful to have received it, not just for the content, but for all the memories of which it was but the first...

FAREWELL TO OCTOBER

To mark the passing of the month of October and to welcome November's relentless autumnal onslaught, here are Joe Mugnaini's stunning cover illustrations for Ray Bradbury's books (above) The October Country and (below) The Halloween Tree.

 

THE ART OF THE COMIC-BOOK (2)

[Click images to enlarge]

Today's cover-art is from Volume One, Number 1 of Fantastic magazine (Summer 1952). The spectacular, outrageously startling front cover is the work of Barry Phillips and L. R. Summers and is suffused with a wondrous eye-catching luridness.

The pages within contained stories by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov (neither requiring introduction here) alongside other writers including Walter M. Miller, Jr., later author of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) and – as is boldly announced on the cover – 'A Classic Novel by Raymond Chandler'. This novel was the previously serialised Professor Bingo's Snuff and is accompanied by illustrations from cover co-artist, L. R. Summers.

The back cover features (courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) 'Danger on the Stairs', a decidedly disturbing image by the French surrealist painter Pierre Roy (1880–1950) about whom, I think, I may shortly be blogging further...

 

Fantastic, Volume One, Number 1. 

Contents: Walter M. Miller, Jr., ('Six And Ten Are Johnny'); Sam Martinez ('For Heaven's Sake'); Paul W. Fairman ('Someday They'll Give Us Guns'); H. B. Hickey ('Full Circle'); Louise Lee Outlaw ('The Runaway'); Kris Neville ('The Opal Necklace'); Ray Bradbury ('The Smile'); H. L. Gold ('And Three To Get Ready'); Isaac Asimov ('What If') and Raymond Chandler's Professor Bingo's Snuff, illustrated by L. R. Summers and introduced with the following announcement: 

We don't need to tell you who Raymond Chandler is, or what he has written. The man who, back in the Thirties, almost single-handedly lifted detective fiction out of the post-Van Dine doldrums, has a secure and lofty place in American literature. More than anyone he brought the hard boiled 'private eyes' story to popularity – and kept it there despite the swarm of imitators who have done their worst to wreck the genre. To our knowledge, Professor Bingo's Snuff is Mr. Chandler's second – and longest – fantasy. It will not at all surprise you that his talent brings added luster to the field.

The story had been earlier published as a three-installments serialisation in Park East, June-July 1951, and in: Go, June-July 1951. 

The story's protagonist, Joe Pettigrew, grows tired of his wife Gladys cheating on him with their lodger Porter Green. With the help of some magical snuff which he buys from Professor Bingo he becomes invisible. Next Pettigrew creates the perfect 'locked-room murder'. However, the police have serious doubts and in the end shoot Pettigrew when he tries to escape. 

 

TIME TO GATHER AROUND THE HALLOWEEN TREE

In only a few years, Halloween in Britain has gone from being a totally American and utterly un-British (and therefore inexplicable) holiday to being up there in the UK marketing and merchandising league with Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day.

 

Even though our stores are now annually full of Halloween paraphernalia, there is precious little cultural knowledge in Britain about the Catholic feasts of All Hallows (or All Saints) and All Souls celebrated on 1st and 2nd November,  or of the European traditions, superstitions and amusements that preceded them on October 31, known as All Hallows’ Eve – or Hallowe'en…

 

 

Those who would like to understand more about the origins and multi-faceted accretions that comprise the dark festival of the turning year can look them up in on-line or on-shelf encyclopedias...

But, if you'll take my advice, you'll, instead, hitch a ride with the mysterious Mr Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud in The Halloween Tree.

First published in 1972, this is an autumnal conjuring trick by that literary magician, the late Ray Bradbury, with haunting tombstone-black-and-white illustrations by Joe Mugnaini.

The cadaverous Moundshroud leads a group of youngsters on a frantic time-travelling jaunt through the “deep, dark, long, wild history of Halloween,” beginning within the shadow of the Halloween Tree…

The pumpkins on the Tree were not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced in it. Each face was different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose. Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way.

There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of fresh-cut eyes…

 

 

By wing and kite and broomstick they fly on the winds of lost centuries from the darkness of the cave before the discovery of fire, via the rituals of Druid England with its scythe-wielding October God of the Dead, to the gargoyle-encrusted towers of Notre Dame; from the bone-and-mummy-dust tombs of Ancient Egypt through the Grecian Isles to the City of Rome and away to South America and the candles and sugar skeletons of El Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead...

 

It is a journey that memorably explains how light and darkness, faith and fear have shaped a festival now more widely celebrated than understood…

So, maybe when the little terrors come around knocking our knockers tonight, we should slip a copy of Mr Bradbury's classic into their Trick or Treat bags – then they might know why they were doing what they were doing and, if nothing else, at least it wouldn't rot their teeth!

Re-reading The Halloween Tree is an annual invitation to allow a bony finger to stir and prod among the leaf-mould and mummy-dust of my memories...

I travel back in time thirty-seven years...

It is 1980 and, after six years of corresponding with Ray Bradbury, we meet for the very first time when I interview him at the offices of his London publishers.

The book that I take with me on that occasion to ask him to inscribe is the first UK edition of The Halloween Tree...

 

 

Six years later, I am in Los Angeles and we meet for lunch in a restaurant on Rodeo Drive. Ray is there first and has has a Halloween treat awaiting me.

Under the napkin by my plate is a book...

 

 

It is an American edition of the The Halloween Tree with a new, macabre cover design It is inscribed with a golden Halloween Tree drawing by the author, studded with grinning pumpkin lantern stickers!

 

No wonder this book has always been special to me...

In 2006 came another gift from Ray Bradbury: an e-mail in which he recounted a short history of how the Halloween Tree came to be planted and how it grew and put forth its unique autumnal fruits...

The Halloween Tree came about because I had lunch with [legendary Bugs Bunny animator] Chuck Jones forty years ago; he had just become a new friend.

The night before, an animated [Peanuts] film - The Great Pumpkin - had been on TV. My children disliked it so much that they ran over and kicked the TV set, along with me, because the whole idea of the Great Pumpkin supposedly arriving and then not arriving was incorrect to me. It was like shooting Santa Claus on the way down the chimney!

Chuck Jones and I agreed that we didn't like The Great Pumpkin, though we did admire Charlie Schultz, the cartoonist, very much. Then Chuck said, "Why don't we do a really good film on Halloween?" I said, "I think we could. Let me go home and bring something."

So I went home and brought Chuck a large painting of a Halloween Tree that I had painted down in the basement with my daughters a few years before.

 

Chuck took one look at it and said, "My God, that's the genealogy of the holiday. Will you write a screenplay on this?" I said, "Yes, hire me!" So Chuck Jones and MGM hired me to write a TV script called The Halloween Tree.

Several months down the road, MGM decided to turn its back on animation, so they closed their unit and fired Chuck and me. I had nothing to do then so I took the script and wrote the novel of The Halloween Tree.

Later I wrote a second script for the final animated film, which was done by Hanna-Barbera a few years later, for which I received an Emmy Award for the script.

About three years ago I produced Something Wicked This Way Comes at a theater in Santa Monica and on Halloween night my biographer, Sam Weller, drove me to the play and then home again at around 10:30 at night and on the way, in four different yards we saw that people had placed pumpkins, real ones or papier mache, lit with candles in trees in their front yards.

Now, there are Halloween Trees beginning to appear all over the United States and I realized that with my story and that picture that I painted down in the basement with my daughters more than forty years ago, I've changed the history of Halloween in the entire country.

I've discussed this with the Disney people and suggested that they invite me to Disneyland on Halloween night and put up a tree full of papier mache pumpkins and have me there to turn on the whole thing. They would make themselves and me part of the future history of Halloween because no trees existed forty years ago – they began to appear only after my book and my film.

The Disney people haven't reacted so far because, I believe, the notice is very short. If we don't do it this year I'm hoping that Disney will invite me out next Halloween and initiate the birth of the Halloween Tree and the history of the holiday.

It's been an interesting experience for me and it thrills me to think that 100 years from now there will be Halloween trees all across our world...

 

 

Happily, from 2007 onward, Disney have honoured Ray and his Halloween Tree in Disneyland.

And here's what it looks like...

 

 

A few Halloweens ago, I acquired a new reminder of Ray and his Halloween Tree: a signed artist's print by Joe Mugnaini, bought in 2015 from the sale of Ray's estate.

I love the stunning design: the sweep of Moundshroud's great bat wings, the cadaverous features, the way in which he powers his way across the inky crosshatched night sky blistered with stars...

 

 

Devotees of the book may be surprised to notice that Moundshroud is flying from right to left, when in the published book, he flies in the opposite direction.

Alas, too late now to ask either Joe or Ray why the orientation of the picture was altered, although one answer might be that, in the book, having him fly towards the right-hand page-turning made more sense as it carried the reader towards the next part of the story...

Well, that, at any rate, is my theory!

Inevitably then, tonight, my thoughts will turn to my late, dear friend.

'Trick or Treat, Ray? ––– What do you say?'

You can read more about Ray Bradbury and his books in my profile of him The Bradbury Machine.

You will also find many pages of information about the author and his work on the excellent internet site, Bradbury Media.

And, if you haven't heard it already, here's a radio programme I made in 1998 featuring an interview with Ray – Encountering the Illustrated Man...

Some parts of this post first appeared on blogs from a few years ago.

A MEMORY OF EPCOT – FORTY YEARS ON...

 

This is the story of something memorable that happened 40 years ago, today…

The invitation was rather grand…

It was also unexpected.

Of course, I knew the event was happening and I also knew that my friend, the science fantasy writer Ray Bradbury, was going to be there…

Incidentally, I love the proprietorial way in which Ray refers to Spaceship Earth as his building! With justification, of course, for he had helped create the journey through a history of communications that was recounted to guests riding its interior.

I was in Florida, making a BBC radio documentary about the soon-to-opened EPCOT Center. Earlier in 1982, I had spent a couple of weeks filming in both Florida and Los Angeles for another EPCOT-centric documentary – this time for BBC TV's 'Everyman' series.

The plan had been that I and my producer, Norman Stone, would return with a crew to film the finished project when the park debuted in the October. In the intervening months, however, the BBC ran out of programme funding and were unable to send us all back to Orlando to capture the opening ceremony and the necessary wrap-up interviews with our contributors.

Disney offered to fly us out and take care of us, but since such a gesture might be thought to compromise the independent editorial voice of the BBC, the Corporation declined. Norman, it was decreed, would have to make the trip alone and work with a US film crew.

Then, while in Florida during EPCOT's preview weeks, making my radio programme (separate division, separate funding), Disney in true fairy-godmotherly fashion waved a magic wand by telling me that I was going to be invited to the opening events as their guest and the BBC, with an example of dubious (but gratefully accepted) reasoning, argued that whilst it would have been unacceptable for Disney to fly me out to cover the opening, if – 'as a guest' who just happened to be there anyway – I chanced to meet up with Norman and his US film crew and was able to record a few interviews (unpaid, of course!) then honour would be satisfied.

And that is what happened.

Which is why, on 22 October 1982 – against all expectations – Ray and I found ourselves chatting in the shadow of his wonderful, iridescent Spaceship Earth and I came away with a now treasured souvenir of the occasion...

Later that evening EPCOT was closed to the public for the black-tie Spaceship Earth Gala Party. The press contingent (of which we were, nominally, a part) were not invited to this posh bash, but were, instead, bused off to enjoy an evening at the well-known Orlando night-spot, Rosie O'Grady's Good Time Emporium –– except, that is, for Norman and I…

Through the generosity of the friendships we had made with the folks at Disney Imagineering, we were handed that posh invitation at the top of this blog…

There was champagne and food and there was music from some of the all-time greatest American dance-bands: all of which meant that the celebrity guests had more than enough to occupy them during the evening without actually riding Spaceship Earth which, for most of the evening, had empty cars spiraling up through its geodesic structure. That was when Norman and I bumped into Ray and his daughter, the late Bettina Bradbury.

Two meetings in one day –– wonderful!

"Have you been on Spaceship Earth?" Ray asked excitedly.

Well, yes, of course we had – a couple of times, in fact.

Ray looked totally crestfallen.

"Damn!" he said, "I was going to ask you to ride it with me."

There wasn't a moment's hesitation from Norman and I!

"Of course we'd love to ride it with YOU!" we exclaimed.

And we did. No one else. Just us. Ray and Bettina in the front seats, Norman and I, in our hired tuxedos, behind.

There was the official narration (by The Outer Limits 'Control Voice', Vic Perrin) coming out of car's speaker system, while Ray provided his own unique commentary over the top – adding detail and explanation about why he had chosen this or that moment in the history of communication to be part of the Spaceship Earth story.

Unforgettable!

When a few days later, while waiting at Orlando airport for my flight home, I picked up a copy of Time magazine and was astonished to see a photo of Ray sitting in an airplane. How could this possibly be? Everybody knew that Ray never flew: the man who had envisioned the age of space travel, the man who had written The Martian Chronicles was afraid of flying! And yet, there he was – on a plane!

What had happened was that his cross-country train had been cancelled. Needing desperately to return home to work, he acquiesced to his aviophobia, telling his Disney hosts to buy him an air ticket, give him three double martinis and “pour him on the plane.”

Which they did, as witnessed to in Time magazine with its photo of an air-hostess helping Ray buckle his seat belt and the witty accompanying story:

TIME Monday November 8, 1982

People by E Graydon Carter 

Flushed of face, a little white in the knuckles and after a send-off of what appeared to be one tee many martoonies, Science Fiction Novelist Ray Bradbury, 62 (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles), nervously strapped himself into his seat.

The master of intergalactic fiction was embarking on his first airplane flight. (He doesn't even drive, a rare feat for someone from Los Angeles.) Bradbury, who set out by train and limousine, was returning home from Orlando, Fla., where he had taken part in the opening ceremonies of Disney's new Epcot Center.

After over 40 years of earth-bound travel, how did he like it aloft? "The stewardesses petted and smoothed my feathers," he said happily. Will he go up again? "No, not often." 

Fast forward to last year’s sale of Ray’s estate at auction. There, among the myriad lots, was a piece of cartoon art commemorating that memorable event with a depiction of Ray enjoying one of those "tee many martoonis" in company with Mickey Mouse!

The auctioneers were unable to give more than the briefest of descriptions. The artist’s signature was, they noted, indecipherable… But not to anyone who knew their Disney names!

The signature reads: ‘X Atencio’.

 

 

Veteran Disney artist and Imagineer, Francis Xavier Atencio (left) had designed the ‘Spoonful of Sugar’ nursery sequence in Mary Poppins with its cavorting toys, clothes and furniture; had animated on Fantasia and the acclaimed 3D cartoon, Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom; was one of those responsible for Disney’s brief dalliance with stop-motion animation in the experimental short, Noah’s Ark, and title sequences for, among other movies, The Parent Trap and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.

Atencio, whose company ID badge simply read ‘X’, went on to do legendary theme-park work for Disney Imagineering: helping to design the Disneyland Railroad's Primeval World diorama and writing the scripts for two famed attractions: Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, for which he also penned the lyrics to their respective theme songs, 'Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)' and 'Grim Grinning Ghosts'.

The surrounding mount is inscribed and signed by some of the senior members of Imagineering team responsible for the creation of EPCOT Center, including Marty Sklar, John Hench, Randy Bright and Pat Scanlon – all of whom had appeared in my BBC documentary and all now, sadly, passed on to the great theme park in the sky... 

 

It was Marty Sklar who had given me the title for my programme – ‘Waltopia’, which had been Marty's playful suggestion to Walt Disney as an alternative name for Walt Disney World.

With so many personal associations, I decided I really ought to give Ray and Mickey a new permanent home! So I did...

[A version of this story was first posted on this blog on 22 October 2015]

A BRADBURYIAN BIRTHDAY

 

Remembering the 102nd anniversary of the birth of this great conjuror of words and imagery without whom we might never have tasted Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy or The Golden Apples of the Sun; might never have been drenched on The Day It Rained Forever; might never have ridden The Toynbee Convector or met The Illustrated Man; might never have witnessed the launching of The Silver Locusts, learned of the dangers of Fahrenheit 451 or been warned that Something Wicked This Way Comes...

 

[Portrait of Ray Bradbury (from the BS&DW collection) by Barnaby Conrad, Jr. (1922 – 2013) was an American artist, author, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter and boxer!]

 

MY FAVOURITE MARTIAN

Today, 22 August 2020, is the 100th anniversary of the birthday of RAY BRADBURY, one of the all-time greatest writers of fantasy fiction and a personal friend for almost forty years.

 

Portrait of Ray Bradbury by Barnaby Conrad

[Sibley-Weeks collection]

 

To mark this significant day, I’m posting a link to the full, raw, unedited recording of an interview I had with Ray in November 1988, taped in the Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, California. I was there covering a publicity junket to mark Mickey Mouse’s 60^th birthday and as I didn’t have the time to go over to Ray, he got a cab and came down to visit me.

 

The recording begins mid-conversation with talk about a new edition of Alice in Wonderland illustrated with Victorian lantern slides that I had recently edited and introduced, a copy of which I had carried with me to give to Ray.

 

 

In exchange, he gave me a copy of his newly published story collection, The Toynbee Convector –– with a unforgettable inscription!

 

 

 

 

 

Although I had many meeting with Ray over the years, very few of them were recorded – this being one the longest and, I think, most revealing…

 

Follow this LINK to SOUNDCLOUD to hear BRADBURY 100