Ray Bradbury, “Ray Bradbury,” and “RAY BRADBURY”

367 BOOKS IN REVIEW misunderstandings but Clarke concludes that it has ultimately benefitted both parties, since the quest for truth and the desire to answer questions lie at the heart of both. There are some absences in the book, such as the sf output of Canadian writer and devout Catholic Derwin Mak or Emmanuel Pic’s La Station solitaire [The Solitary Station, 2012], about a priest abducted by aliens (Pic is a priest and psychologist), but Clarke is to be congratulated for delving into the relatively unexplored territory of sf and Catholicism and furnishing a readable and instructive volume that should interest anyone interested in the spiritual and philosophical questions evoked by sf.—Paul Scott, University of Kansas Ray Bradbury, “Ray Bradbury,” and “RAY BRADBURY.” Jonathan R. Eller. Bradbury Beyond Apollo. U of Illinois P, 2020. xii+347 pp. $40 hc. This volume completes the biography that began with Becoming Ray Bradbury (2013) and continued with Ray Bradbury Unbound (2014). It covers the period between 1971 and 2012, from the triumph of the Apollo space program to Bradbury’s death. Based on documentary research, contacts with the people who have authoritative information about major aspects of Bradbury’s career, and Eller’s many conversations with Bradbury himself, it is certain to be our generation’s definitive life of Bradbury. That said, note that the book is focused on Bradbury’s public life; family relations and personal issues are mentioned but not explored. Instead, Eller makes the justifiable decision to share as much information as he can about Bradbury’s last years as a beloved writer and public figure. Disappointment shadows discussion of that first subject. Early in his career, when he was a young, uncertain writer with a wealth of hopes and fears to work through, Bradbury was driven to produce a cascade of stories that stretched the range of sf. Readers of Astounding might not exactly have welcomed subversive stories such as “Mars is Heaven!” (first published in Planet Stories, of all places, in 1948), but they could not deny their emotional power. By the time of Bradbury Beyond Apolllo, Bradbury was a much older writer, with his uncertainties comfortably subdued. In addition, he had chosen to direct most of his creative energy into dramatic performances, writing stage and screen plays. Consequently, as Eller remarks, “it remained to be seen how he could break out of the growing perception among his friends and publishers that his storytelling powers were now feeding lesser works in other genres” (50). His earlier books continued to sell steadily. Nevertheless, although The Halloween Tree was popular as a book (1972) and an animated television film (1993) and The Ray Bradbury Theater ran on television for four years (198586 ,1988-92), Bradbury’s last years are notable for story collections that mixed earlier works with more recent, less substantial pieces; for volumes of amiable, rather self-indulgent poetry; and for the trio of surrealist, autobiographical mystery novels, beginning with Death is a Lonely Business (1985), in which a Young Writer must come to terms with his fears and desires. Readers can find pleasures in these books, but as Eller describes the contents of one mingled collection, the older stories “served to fill the gaps 368 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) in Bradbury’s storytelling history from a time when he was at the top of his game” (268). Much of Bradbury Beyond Apollo, however, is about the ripples of positive influence from those early stories. When Bradbury was at the top of his game, he helped show other writers that emotion was not simply an enemy of rational thought that must be subdued (as it appears to be in in Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll” [Astounding 1940], for example). Rather, it is a vital force in human life, sometimes dangerous but sometimes nourishing. He helped encourage the writing of a larger, deeper sf. Among his readers, Bradbury did not offer detailed arguments in favor of space exploration but rather encouraged a childlike yearning for more. But the voracious readers of those early stories did not need a technological argument; the magazine stories that were assembled into The Martian Chronicles (1950), for example, infected...

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