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The fantasy-science fiction literary genre has seen its fortunes wax and wane over the past several decades. I think the last big "wax" was around 25 years ago, when the first "Star Wars" movie hit. I walked into a chain bookstore around that time and they seemed to have a whole wall --- the long one --- for science fiction. Most places still have a pretty decent section, but nothing like it really deserves. Some of the really classic writers, the guys without whom there wouldn't even be a genre, get short shrift as well. Where are the Murray Leinster books? The Fritz Leiber novels? Where's the Robert Heinlein section? The Philip K. Dick shelf? And where's the bookstore dedicated to Ray Bradbury?
Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago if Bradbury was still alive. I went ballistic. Like Al Capone, I'm a peaceful man. But I have my limits. Still alive? Bradbury is still writing! If his prose lately doesn't have the fire, the bite, of such stories as "Mars Id Heaven" or "The Small Assassin" or "Judgment Day" or novels like SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES or FAHRENHEIT 451, it's still better than 90 percent of the stuff out there, and besides, lemme ask you...do you do anything as well now as you did 50, 60 years, ago? Besides dribble?! It's entirely possible that if you enjoy reading it's because someone jammed a copy of a Bradbury book into your little hands, or a teacher read you a Bradbury story in high school. Still alive? He'll never die. I truly believe that, at the end of all that, is the last sound heard will be Louis Armstrong's trumpet and the last thing seen will be a sentence written by Bradbury. Hope I'm here to see if I'm right. Then again, maybe I don't want to know.
The foregoing rant will accordingly give you some vague idea of how I felt when I cracked the binding of BRADBURY: AN ILLUSTRATED LIFE. This labor of love by Jerry Weist is an absolutely indispensable compendium of Bradbury in the print and movie media, crammed into a coffeetable format book that despite its larger than regulation size can barely contain the universe of the imagination that Bradbury has been creating for your consideration and perusal for over six decades. Paperback covers, illustrations, reproductions of comic book adaptations, movie stills, advertisements --- I guarantee you that, no matter how huge a fan of Bradbury you are, there are sights in this book you've never seen before. There's an artist's adaptation of The Illustrated Man that scares the living sh...er, stuffing out of me every time I look at it, there's a shot of the cover of the pulp magazine that initially got Bradbury interested in the fantasy genre, covers of some of the fanzines he wrote for --- and published, even reproductions of some of the correspondence that occurred between Bradbury and William M. Gaines when EC Comics, which went on to publish Mad Magazine, adapted a couple of his stories without permission in a couple of their science fiction titles (it all ended well, by the way). If you can open this book the first, fiftieth, or five hundredth time without getting chills all over your body then you need to treat yourself to a neurological examination. Right now.
Not the least of this indispensable volume is Weist's accompanying text. Weist was first a fan of Bradbury's, and the relationship between the two blossomed into friendship through decades of correspondence. The marks of both fandom and friendship are present throughout BRADBURY: AN ILLUSTRATED LIFE. I approached this from the perspective of "Ah ha! I bet he left out (blank)" and I was wrong --- blessedly, happily wrong! --- on every count. Weist's account of Bradbury, his life, his work, slides in and out and among and between the illustrations, reproductions, and photographs which are the be-all and end-all of this breathtaking, breath-stealing work There is so much here that one marvels that it can be contained between binding, that it can be held in one's hands. And the price of admission would be a bargain, and worthwhile, at twice the price.
BRADBURY: AN ILLUSTRATED LIFE is one of those rarities, a book you'll spend hours at a time with, a spare few minutes, and ultimately a lifetime. If you give it to someone, they'll never forget you, and never open it without thinking of you. And if you get it...well, this will be the book you'll grab on your way out of your burning home, or when jumping off a sinking ship. No library that calls itself one should be without it.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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• For more about Ray Bradbury, please go to RayBradbury.com.
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