A LETTER FROM MARS

 

Fifty years ago, today, RAY BRADBURY, visionary American writer of fantasy and sci-fi classics – think The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 – sat down at his typewriter in Beverly Hills and replied to a fan-letter from a 25-year-old guy in Britain who had sent him some provoking questions about a mutual idol – Walt Disney...

 

 

 

 

 

This remarkable letter was to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship that would last for almost 40 years and only ended with Ray’s death in 2012. 

 

Only a few days before he died, I received – by email, via his daughter, Zee, who latterly served as his amanuensis – a final missive…

 

 

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Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for your wonderful note; it's always great to hear from you.

 

Zee read your email to me and I cannot believe what you and David have to go through. [We had to vacate our flat for a year during repairs to the building] 

 

Of course, now that you've had to dig through all your treasures, perhaps we should get you two here to take care of this out-of-control homestead of mine!!!! I love this old house of mine and even if I didn't, I think I'd be stuck here because there's just so much stuff.

 

I'm glad to hear of your new book and I do hope you'll send me a copy of it when it comes out.

 

I think Zee told you that I had been in the hospital, but this old Martian is doing fine, so don't you worry.

 

I send you and David much love,

 

Ray

 

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My discovery, in my early teens, of the extraordinary worlds of Ray Bradbury was a fiery baptism in the waters of metaphor and simile, in the rip-tide of allusions and illusions, in the great wave of allegory and analogy. 

 

His books were like gathering the Golden Apples of the Sun; getting drunk on Dandelion Wine in the shade of the Halloween Tree in the October Country; or finding a prescription for a Medicine for Melancholy whenever Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

Our correspondence and, later, our meetings in London, California and Florida, were treasured like the rarest and richest gifts stolen from a dragon-horde or from seemingly commonplace pebbles and shells found shimmering along new-washed shoreline in the first light of dawn.

 

To engage with Ray on any topic of conversation was nothing short of thrilling: invigorating, enlightening, challenging and inspiring. Never more so than when talk turned to shared passions and obsessions. 

 

Cue a topic; any one: Disney (especially Fantasia and the wonders of Disneyland); dinosaurs and robots; Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol; comic books (Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars and the ‘pulp poets’ of the ‘fifties); cinematic classics (The Phantom of the Opera, Citizen Kane and La Strada); the monsters of moviedom (from King Kong to the beasts of Ray Harryhausen); Hollywood’s funny men (Stan and Ollie, Buster Keaton and Chaplin); artists (especially Piranesi, Eyvind Earle and, his own frequent illustrator, Joe Mugnani) and then more Disney and so much more of anything and everything.

 

Ray became my mentor and critic, my goad and guide, source of inspiration and spur to my imagination; but he was also ever the challenger to my preconceptions and debunker of my hypocrisies. We talked about joys and sorrows, origins and destinations, risings and fallings, dreams and nightmare, realities and masquerades, every shade of love, hate and whatever lay between. 

 

Our thirty-eight years of friendship was, as I grew up and he grew older, a love-affair of ponderings and speculations. I miss him as much today, as I did twelve years ago, when that ‘Old Martian’ (as he called himself in his last email) set off on his last great exploration of the Great Unknown that, again and again, he celebrated throughout his life…

LETERS FROM THE MARTIAN CHRONICLER

 

I am very honoured to be among recipients of letters included in Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury, edited by Jonathan R. Eller; recipients such as Grahame Greene, Arthur C. Clark, Federico Fellini, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, Francois Truffaut and Bertrand Russell.

 

I first exchanged letters with Ray in 1974 and we continued to write to one another and, later meet up in London and L.A., until his death 38 years later. That first letter of Ray's, in response to an enquiry from a supremely confident 25-year-old admirer, was a small but exquisite masterpiece: a fireworks display of words, thoughts and images: an explosion of stimulating ideas, questions and challenges. Over twice my age and an international literary superstar, he replied as if to an equal with such vigorous engagement and indulgent charm that, however unlikely it seems to me now, could only ever be read as an invitation to begin a friendship...

 

What I couldn't have known was that it would be a friendship would bring me, across nearly four decades, letters, notes, postcards and doodles, an annual Christmas poem (and, no surprise, zany Halloween greetings); articles, cuttings and clippings; play-scripts and hand-bills; signed books and an endorsement for the cover one of my books – and an opportunity to dramatise The Illustrated Man and more than half-a-dozen of his short stories for radio.

 

The letter itself and two of my mine to Ray (which I hadn't seen since I wrote them!) are chiefly concerned with a conversation about Walt Disney's use in his theme-parks of 'Audio-Animatronic' technology – or, to put it in non-Disney speak, 'robots'! It seems that, half-a-century ago, we were already debating the pros and cons of what we would now refer to as 'AI': Ray, obviously and unashamedly 'pro'; me anxiously, 'con'. 

 

In a few months time it will be fifty years since that wonderful letter arrived and almost twelve years since Ray's death and yet I remain as moved and eternally grateful to have received it, not just for the content, but for all the memories of which it was but the first...

REMEMBERING RAY

Today would have been the 94th birthday of my late literary hero, Ray Bradbury.

I'm remembering my friendship with Ray with a cartoon I made for his birthday back in 1983. The brontosaur kid is reading Ray's book, Dinosaur Tales...

And here's Ray's letter in response...

Click image to enlarge

Just one of so many happy memories... but how weird it feels to think that, at the time when we had this exchange of communications, Ray was two years younger than I am now...

BRADBURY AT THE BEEB: 'THE FRUIT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOWL'

Forty years ago, today, I received the following letter (which many of my readers will have seen) from science-fantasy writer Ray Bradbury, to whom I had written a fan letter asking some questions about a mutual hero – Walt Disney...

The letter itself is remarkable, but – even more so – is the fact that it led to an almost 40-year friendship.

To hear me talking about this letter on the BBC website for their upcoming drama series, 'Dangerous Visions', which features my latest Bradbury adaptation The Illustrated Man, click HERE

And, as part of the lead-up to that new production, I continue sharing some of my earlier adaptations of classic Bradbury stories with, today,  The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, first published in Detective Book Magazine, November 1948.

This production was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 28 December 1995 and features Nigel Anthony, John Hartley and Roger May. As Ray Bradbury notes in his introduction, Nigel Anthony gives a remarkable performance in the part of Acton playing a man arguing with his own inner thoughts...

Tomorrow: 'Jack in the Box'

Ray's letter to me appears in Shaun Usher's marvellous book, Letters of Note, Deserving of a Wider Audience (a superb anthology of insightful correspondence from writers, musicians, artists, politicians, presidents and comics. You can order a copy HERE

THE WRITE STUFF

Before e-mail, young readers, there was something just called 'mail' –– letters, written by hand (and later by typewriter) and delivered by personal courier (and later by a government agency). Now, unless you are reasonably old, it may be difficult to believe in such a weird-sounding and obviously antiquated means of communication, but not only did it actually worked and led to the art of letter writing...

Shaun Usher created a marvellous website Letters of Note to share extraordinary, funny, touching and inspiring examples of this arcane craft with the children of the 'e-generation'. Then the website became a book, Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience and I have spent the past week delighting in it's engaging and diverting contents...

Within these covers are a collection of famous (and, occasionally, infamous) Men and Women of Letters – Queens, Presidents, film stars, authors, musicians and artists – writing to their admirers, enemies, lovers, and children and, in so doing, reveal something unique about their famous selves or offer life insights that are more than worthy of consideration...

The letters are not just quoted, almost all are reproduced: elegantly penned, neatly typed or erratically scribbled on hotel, airline or exercise book paper.

I began noting down my favourites but the list just kept growing, however, special gems include...

* Gandhi writing to Hitler pleading with him to avoid a war – intercepted by British intelligence, the letter was never delivered and, days later, Germany invaded Poland...

* Captain Robert Scott's last words home from the frozen wastes of Antarctica 

* Charles Schulz responding to a young reader of his Peanuts strips asking the cartoonist to get rid of a new character, Charlotte Braun, briefly introduced in 1955: "I am taking your suggestion regarding Charlotte Braun and will eventually discard her... Remember, however, that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?" The accompanying sketch shows Miss Braun literally getting the 'chop'...

* Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun asking if it were true – as her school friends had told her – that there was no such person as Santa Claus together with veteran newsman, Frances Pharcellus Church's famous reply beginning: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus... He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist...."

* A heart-breaking suicide note from Virginia Woolf to her husband, Leonard, on her second, successful, attempt to drown herself...

* Katherine Hepburn writing to Spencer Tracy – 18 years after his death...

* A blistering letter from Kurt Vonnegut to the head teacher of a school where copies of his book Slaughterhouse-Five had been burned in the school furnace...

* A young girl's letter to would-be President Abraham Lincoln suggesting he would stand a better chance of getting elected if he grew whiskers ("...all the ladies like whiskers") and honest Abe's reply: "As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?" History shows he, nevertheless, took the advice...

* Mary Stuart writing to King Henry III of France on February 8th, 1587, just six hours before she knelt before her executioner...

*The letter that led to the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot...

* The tragic SOS telegram from the sinking Titanic... 

* Seven-year old Amy who, inspired by Roald Dahl's The BFG, sent the author a bottle containing one of her dreams (a concoction of oil, coloured water and sparkle) and received this perfect reply:

* Mario Puzo begging Marlon Brando to consider the role of Vito Corleone in the film of  The Godfather...

* Alec Guinness writing to a friend and complaining about the rubbish script he was being given as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and mentioning co-star, "Tennyson Ford – Ellison – Harrison Ford - ever heard of him?"

* A chilling memo from William Safire to H R Haldeman with the text of the Presidential broadcast in the event of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing ending in disaster with the non-recovery of Armstrong and Aldrin...

* Molecular biologist Francis Crick writing to his twelve-year-old son to explain the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA...

One hundred-and-twenty-five fascinating letters from – among many others – Charles Dickens, Spike Milligan, Bette Davis, Mark Twain, Elvis Presley, E B White, Samuel Barber, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, Iggy Pop, Groucho Marx, Jack the Ripper and – perhaps most delicious of all – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II writing to President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1960 to send him her recipe for drop scones as served at Balmoral!

I am also delighted that the book includes a letter I received forty years ago this year in response to a far letter sent to the American Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, that began a precious friendship that lasted until Ray's death in 2012...

Shaun Usher's Letters of Note is a veritable treasury of wit and wisdom interlaced with deeply moving testimonies to the indomitable human spirit and a book to which you will return again and again. The British edition can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk and the US edition from Amazon.com