by
Seb
Kirby
Halloween in a good opportunity to
remember Ray Bradbury. Though he’s been thought of more as a
science fiction writer in recent years, right from the start and throughout his
writing career, Ray Bradbury was interested in the macabre, the bizarre and
the unusual, all seen through the lens of his uplifting poetic imagination.
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| Ray Bradbury Attribution: photo by Alan Light |
The true story he recounts in the
Introduction to Volume 1 of his collected short stories sets the scene. He
takes us back to 1932 when, as a twelve year old, he met a remarkable performer
who was part of a ‘seedy, two-bit’ carnival that came to town:
‘Mr Electrico sat in his electric chair,
being fired with ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power. Reaching out
into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks
leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads
of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on
both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightening jumped into me, Mr
Electrico cried: “Live forever!”’
Making excuses to go back there the next
two nights, the twelve year old got to know the entertainer who told him he was
a defrocked Presbyterian minister out of Cairo, Illinois. Then, Mr Electrico
came up with the really surprising news. They had met before, he said, on the
battlefield of the Ardennes in 1918. “And
here you are, born again, in a new body, with a new name. Welcome back!”
Ray Bradbury concludes that he had been
uplifted by not one but two gifts from Mr Electrico – the gift of having lived
once before (and of being told about it) …and the gift of trying somehow to
live forever. He continues: ‘A few weeks
later I started writing my first short stories about the planet Mars. From that
time to this, I have never stopped. God bless Mr Electrico, the catalyst,
wherever he is.’
As a young boy myself not much older than
Ray Bradbury was then, I began reading his stories. His science fiction stories
came later for me; what captured my imagination first was the macabre mystery
of the stories in ‘The October Country’, ‘I Sing The Body Electric!’ and the
story that turned into a novel, ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’. In these
stories he draws on the surreal imagination set off by that carnival encounter
back in 1932, producing quirky, challenging encounters that stretch the
imagination. But this is a forgiving horror. As in all of his writing there is
an optimism that rises despite the most difficult of odds and cuts through the
darkness.
So, have a good Halloween! Banish those monsters! Ray Bradbury will be with you every step of
the way.
Sadly, Ray Bradbury failed in one thing –
he didn’t find a way of living forever as Mr Electrico had demanded. He died
last year, aged 91. But he lives on in his wonderful stories, written in that
clear, inspirational voice that is a model to so many authors today.
Here he is, talking about his writing and
his hope of inspiring others.
