Blog-o-ween 2022: Ray Bradbury

If there is a single writer that we can associate with autumn, October, and Halloween, then it surely has to be Ray Bradbury. All of Bradbury's fiction -- even his science fiction, oddly enough -- gives the reader the feel of cool nights and green lawns, sere leaves and wet sidewalks, a pining for the past and a hope for the future. All of his fiction is map of and a way to small town America, that good, imaginary place where no one locks their doors, neighbors help each other out, and extended familis live under the same roof.

That is the safe Bradbury, the Bradbury taught in schools and included in Reader's Digest. But there is another Bradbury. One whose work gives us the flip side of the small town America coin. The nights in this other town are darker, its shadows longer, the people you meet on its sidewalks are stranger and more grotesque. This is the Bradbury of the "Dark Carnival" and the "October Country."

Born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury spent much of his time at the local Carnegie library devouring books by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. He read comic books, listened to radio shows, and attended the movies whenever he could. In 1934, his family settled in Los Angeles, CA, after years of moving back and forth between Waukegan and Tucson, AZ. Bradbury roller skated through the City of Angels seeing and meeting stars like Norma Shearer, Ronald Colman, George Burns, and Mae West. He wrote stories and fanzines during his youth, then at the age of 24 he became a full-time writer with the sale of his first solo story, "The Lake."

And the rest, as they say, is history.

For tonight's Ray Bradbury radio experience, we are going to go back to the Orwellian year 1984. On 30 October of that ignominious year, ABC Radio broadcasted a ninety-minute show based on a few of the stories from The October Country. Best of all, the show was broadcast live and performed in front of an audience! The voice work of Robert Brown, Barrie Ingham, June Lockhart, Lynn Redgrave, Casey Kasem, Jean Kasem, Gary Owens, Danny Cooksey, Frank Welker, and Marvin Miller bring the stories "Emissary", "There Was An Old Woman", "The Next in Line" and "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone" to life via an overarching tale of an older TV producer trying to stay relevant. He believes that filming the stories of horror writer Dudley Stone is his ticket back to the top.