To commemorate Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday, the BBC recently produced several exceptional dramatic readings of Bradbury classics, including “Dark They Were and Golden Eyed,” “All Summer in a Day,” “The Fog Horn” and others. The good folks at the BBC asked me to lend commentary on the stories and on Bradbury’s contributuons to the literary canon. Here are my comments, sans the stories themselves, which can be found on the BBC website.

Listen: Bradbury on the BBC

“The Fog Horn”

Where To Find It: The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Stories of Ray Bradbury

First Published As: “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”: June 23, 1951 in Saturday Evening Post

Plot Synopsis: Mistaking the sad bellow of a coastal lighthouse’s fog horn for its lost mate, a sea monster lumbers to the surface hoping to find that it is not alone.

Anecdote: American film director John Huston read this story and promptly hired Ray Bradbury to write the screenplay adaptation for his 1956 film, Moby Dick. Huston stated in his 1980 autobiography, Open Book, that he “saw something of Melville’s elusive quality in [Bradbury’s] work.”

Critique: “The Fog Horn” is one of Bradbury’s personal favorites from his own work. Bradbury sites the paragraph description of the mythical creation of seaside fog horns as a prime example of prose poetry in his writing:

One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound
of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, ‘We need a voice that
is like to call across the water, to warn ships; I’ll make one. I’ll make
a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I’ll make a
voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an
empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with
no leaves. A sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold
shore. I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it. That
whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem
warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the
distant towns. I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll
call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of
eternity and the brightness of life.”

Bradbury elaborates further on the use of prose poetry in his work—specifically his close study of the French prose poem, the pensée—in Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews.

Two other features of “The Fog Horn” are worth highlighting. In his writings, Bradbury has often returned to his childhood memories, fears, and deep passions, mining youthful experiences for creative inspiration. With the “Fog Horn,” the author simply went back to his great boyhood love of dinosaurs and wrote a modern tale of loneliness and unrequited love through the heartbreak of an ancient sea monster. Lastly, “the Fog Horn” is a perfect example of the hallmarks of Bradbury’s style—rich in metaphor, layered in poetic melancholy, awash in the fantastic.

I was on the Chicago Fox News affiliate last night to talk about Listen to the Echoes. Here’s the link.

“The Veldt”

Where to Find It: The Illustrated Man, The Stories of Ray Bradbury

First Published: As “The World the Children Made,” September 23, 1950, Saturday Evening Post

Plot Synopsis: A husband and wife pamper their children by giving them a state-of-the-art nursery room, where dreams and fantasies come alive on the crystal walls. The room is a virtual-reality playroom and television of tomorrow. When the children become dependent on the new technology, their parents endeavor to wean them from it. But the children aren’t so willing to let go.

Backstory: Bradbury wrote the first draft of this story in two hours after typing the word “The Playroom” on the top of a blank page. He then envisioned what a children’s nursery of the future might look like. It was probably not coincidental that Bradbury was exploring themes of parenting gone awry—he and has wife had a one-month-old daughter at the time this story was created.

Critique: “The Veldt” is Bradbury’s first cautionary tale about the advent of television and the dangerous cultural implications of the evolving technology. When he wrote the story, in December 1949, TV was in its infancy; very few Americans, in fact, had televisions in their homes at the time. Bradbury would, just a few years later, examine the theme of a growing cultural dependency on technology and the proliferation of mass media in greater depth in Fahrenheit 451. “The Veldt” paved the way for 451. Dark, haunting, with a twisted ending, “The Veldt” is regularly selected for comprehensive world literature anthologies such as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Taut and expertly crafted, the story is one of Bradbury’s finest cautionary tales about the mishandling of technology.

Because I am Ray Bradbury’s biographer and because I teach the only college-level class in the United States dedicated to the man’s life and works (I am a professor at Columbia College Chicago, the largest, coolest and finest arts and communications school in America), people often ask, “Where should I begin when it comes to reading Bradbury?”

Everyman’s Library recently republished The Stories of Ray Bradbury containing 100 of Bradbury’s best short stories. Then there is the equally voluminous Bradbury Stories, published in 2003, containing yet another 100 more short fictional gems. (Bradbury dedicated this last book, in part to me—an incredible gift.)

Certainly, you cannot go wrong by reading either of these spectacular volumes. Bradbury is a master of the short story.  It is, in my estimation, his strongest creative form. His wife of 56 years, Marguerite, agreed with me. Yet reading 200 stories is an ambitious, and for many, unrealistic goal. And so, in the coming weeks, right here on this very blog, I intend on presenting to you, “The Essential Bradbury.” I will offer up a streamlined list of 25 of my own personal favorite short fictions by the master of miracles. These stories will embody all the trademarks of vintage Bradbury: the lyrical language; the fantastic, original, and memorable ideas; and endings that sometimes surprise, sometimes sadden, always instruct and entertain. This list will be entirely subjective. These are my favorites. They will reflect a wide range, from weird tales to social science fiction to quiet and contemplative tales of contemporary literature. These tales are pure and classic Bradbury—our modern mythologist.

(Photograph by Zen Sekizawa)

Since Listen to the Echoes was released a little over a month ago, many people have asked about the full-page photographs at the front of each chapter in the book. Here’s the story. Ray Bradbury is a pack-rat. A borderline hoarder. The man saves everything. His west Los Angeles home is museum of his life. Everything is there, from the many autographs he collected as a teenager in Hollywood; to the shelves and shelves of books gathered over a lifetime; to rooms overrun by toys. There are matchbooks going back to the 1940s. Political buttons for candidates he supported in the 1950s. Fan letters written to him throughout his career. Original, hand painted animation cels from a range of classic Disney films, given to Bradbury personally by Walt Disney himself. It’s all in the house.

I have asked Bradbury a few times, “Why do you hold on to everything?”

The answer: “Because all of these things around me are my metaphors.”

With this in mind, I had the idea to photograph some of these items for the book. Items that could connect to each chapter: Childhood, Hollywood, Politics, etc. I purposed this idea to the folks at Stop Smiling Books, the co-publisher of Listen to the Echoes, and they loved it.

Enter Zen Sekizawa, Los Angeles photog extraordinaire. Zen came over to Ray’s house with me in late November 2009, and again in early 2010, and we set about shooting just a few of the artifacts around the Bradbury domicile. Zen quickly envisioned the pictures as “Bradbury still-lifes.” They would be portraits of Bradbury without him in them.

In the coming weeks, I will post a few of the pictures on this blog with a brief description the backstory behind the photograph. For now, enjoy a slideshow of all of the photos (plus one unpublished bonus shot!) in all their colorful glory, right here.

When we launched the book a few weeks back at the Mystery and Imagnation Bookshop in Glendale, California, Zen Sekizawa joined me and Ray and Black Francis (the influential rock star who wrote the Foreword). A few lucky and enterprising fans asked Zen to sign copies of the very limited edition hardcover of Echoes. There aren’t many of them floating around out there. I noticed one signed by all four of us going for $300 on the Internet. Next time I’m in LA I’m going to have to ask Zen to sign mine.

Less than 36 hours after the party at the New York offices of The Paris Review, Ray Bradbury and I (along with several close friends), piled into the limousine to make the two and a half hour trek down the Los Angeles 405 Freeway to Comic Con. Ray and I have been attending the convention since 2003.

As usual, the convention was a zoo, a glorious geek fest, and an eruption of all things pop culture. After Ray’s longtime friend, Arnold Kunert, introduced us, I interviewed Ray on stage for 45 minutes before the standing-room-only audience. Wired.com ran a partial transcript (read it here). After the conversation, Ray and I signed copies of Listen to the Echoes.

(The exterior and interior of The Paris Review’s New York offices.)



The literati came out last Thursday night at the Tribeca offices of The Paris Review. The Review was gracious enough to throw a publication party for Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews. In their Spring issue, the lit mag published an excerpt of my new book.

(Weller and Paris Review editor Lorin Stein)



I’m immensely grateful to editor Loren Stein and his entire team of fine folks who put the party together and made it an event I’ll always remember. In some ways, it reminds me of the time Ray Bradbury visited New York in September 1946. Bradbury was just 26 years old, but had already earned the respect of some of Manhattan’s top writers and editors. George Davis, then the editor of Mademoiselle, hosted a party for Bradbury at his New York apartment. Charles Addams was there. Bradbury even danced with Carson McCullers.

Now, 64 years later, Bradbury was there in spirit as a crowd of more than 100 came out in the midst of a bona fide New York heat wave to celebrate the release of my new book. At each turn, I found myself engaged in fascinating conversations. Talking jazz with Village Voice critic Gary Giddins. Discussing book design with Print magazine editor-in-chief Aaron Kenedi. Making the rounds with my literary agent Judith Ehrlich. Hanging out with Kelly Burdick of Melville House, as well as publishers Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merans, along with the great guys at Stop Smiling Books, JC Gabel and James Hughes. I chatted up my all-time favorite rock band, the Wildhearts, with SPIN mag impresario Doug Brod, and hung out with former students like novelist David Peak and Annalemma magazine publisher Chris Heavener.

What an amazing night. A once in a lifetime Manhattan summer evening.

The next morning, a bit groggy and mighty grateful, it was off to JFK for a flight to Los Angeles. Onwards to the next adventure—the insanity that is Comic Con International.

The streets of New York are sweating. It’s that hot.

Last night at the incomparable McNally Jackson bookshop in SoHo was magical. The staff were over-the-top accommodating. They had to move bookshelves to accommodate the standing-room-only audience. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the event here.

Thanks to everyone who came out.

Taping a segment today for the NPR program Studio 360. Book release party tonight at the Paris Review office. Off tomorrow to SoCal for Comic Con.

This is the first letter from the man who would become Ray Bradbury’s lifelong literary agent, Don Congdon. The reason for the salutation “Dear Mr. Elliott”: Ray Bradbury wrote his early stories for quality literary magazines under a pseudonym, fearing his history writing for pulp fiction magazines might haunt him. When Congdon wrote this letter to Bradbury in late August 1945, he was working as an editor for Simon and Schuster. Two years later, Congdon would break away from the publishing house to become a literary agent. When he asked Bradbury in 1947 if he could represent him, Bradbury responded, “Only if it’s for a lifetime.”







Don Congdon (above) served as Ray Bradbury’s friend, confidante, and literary agent for sixty-two years—indeed, a lifetime. Congdon passed away November 30th, 2009. He was 91. In 2003, I interviewed him at length for my biography of Bradbury. Congdon was a legend in the publishing world, having represented everyone from Bradbury to William Styron to David Sedaris.