Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars

by Ray Bradbury Narrated by Jim Frangione

Overview

He is an American treasure, a clear-eyed fantasist without peer, and a literary icon who has created wonder for the better part of seven decades. On subjects as diverse as fiction, the future, film, famous personalities, and more, Ray Bradbury has much to say, as only he can say it.

Collected in this audiobook are memories, ruminations, opinions, prophecies, and philosophies from one of the most influential and admired writers of our time. As unique, unabashed, and irrepressible as the artist himself, here is an intimate portrait, painted with the master's own words, of the one and only Ray Bradbury —far more revealing than any mere memoir, for it opens windows not only into his life and work but also into his mind and heart.

Editorial Reviews

St. John of God is the patron saint of booksellers, but for many moderns, Ray Bradbury, the creator of Fahrenheit 451, deserves nearly equal status. This collection of nonfiction essays reveals the diverse interests of this beloved author. The topics of the pieces include space travel and science fiction; books, television and film; and even the great cities of the world. Other essays cover personal topics such as influences on Bradbury's life and his writing. An intimate view of an SF great.

Publishers Weekly

The grand master's many fans will delight in behind-the-scenes stories about the creation of such science fiction classics as The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes (which began as a film project for Gene Kelly), but that's just one of Bradbury's many facets on display in this collection of 37 essays. We also learn about his encounters with famous men, from Walt Disney to Bertrand Russell; adventures in Hollywood; and even his love for going out in the rain. Some of these stories may be familiar, and some are told twice, but Bradbury's friendly, conversational tone always makes them worth hearing again. (The tale of how he overcame his fear of flying especially benefits from the jocular narration.) Some of the essays haven't been seen in decades, like an introduction to a paperback edition of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which cleverly juxtaposes captains Nemo and Ahab, and a dozen are being published for the first time. Whether Bradbury is talking about cross-country train trips or manned flight to Mars, his enthusiasm remains as contagious as ever. The intimate connection many readers already feel through Bradbury's fiction will be strengthened by these highly personal reminiscences. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In this collection of 36 informal essays, an unassuming man from Waukegan, IL-and one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century-invites readers to join him in a quest for immortality. Topics range from a meeting with Bertrand Russell to overcoming a fear of flying. The individual selections, some previously unpublished, are both insightful and playful. In one, Bradbury identifies Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio as the inspiration for The Martian Chronicles. In another, he confesses that in order to write a screenplay of Moby-Dick, he became Melville. Reflecting Bradbury's optimism and enthusiasm as well as his sense of joy and wonder in life's possibilities, this book is a glimpse into the past and a paean to the future. When Bradbury speaks, we should listen. A worthwhile addition for every library. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/05.]-Anthony Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In three dozen pieces sometimes prickly and always passionate, SF/fantasy legend Bradbury fires off opinions galore on books, movies, SF and the people and places in his life. As a rule, Bradbury prefers essays that "wake me at dawn and ask to be finished by noon" rather than ones requiring extensive research. Such "familiar essays" can lead to spontaneity but also, at times, as here, to preening and ranting. Though Bradbury diehards will clamor for this uneven collection (especially the dozen unpublished pieces), others may be frustrated. There are glimpses of the lyricism of the author's best writing (a Kansas train ride a half century ago: "So the night went, the train gliding among stilts of fire, huge laboratory experiments of electric flame, then rumbling coughs of thunder as great blind hands of shocked air clapped tight, the night's echoing applause for its own words"), showing that the octogenarian hasn't lost his child-like capacity for wonder. And some anecdotes hold great potential: encountering Al Jolson, W.C. Fields and George Burns while roller-skating through Hollywood as a starstruck 14-year-old; visiting a polite Lord Bertrand Russell and his chilly wife as a young novelist; wrestling over the screenplay for Moby-Dick with John Huston. But Bradbury skimps so much on detail that he sounds less interested in these figures for themselves than in the fact that they crossed his path. Even hymns of praise to Paris and Los Angeles end up inevitably about himself. Sometimes he unapologetically toots his own horn ("No one else had noticed, or written about, the fact that Jules Verne had probably read Herman Melville"), at other times groans about the sorry state of the moviebusiness, science fiction and the media ("Shut off the set. Write your local TV newspeople. Tell them to go to hell"). Essays made up mainly of declamation. Stick with the novels and stories that ensure Bradbury's place in the pantheon.

From the Publisher

Mr. Bradbury brings immense satisfaction . . . These pieces will prove more than rewarding.” — Washington Times

“Both insightful and playful . . . When Bradbury speaks, we should listen.” — Library Journal

“Wonderful . . .This book is vintage Bradbury. — Deseret News

Deseret News

Wonderful . . .This book is vintage Bradbury.

Washington Times

Mr. Bradbury brings immense satisfaction . . . These pieces will prove more than rewarding.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171113162
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	05/11/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Bradbury Speaks
Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars

Chapter One

About Writing

My Demon, Not Afraid of Happiness (undated)

I have a strange and incredible muse that, unseen, has engulfed me during my lifetime. I have renamed my muse. In a Frederick Seidel poem, I found a perfect replacement, where he tells of "A Demon not afraid of happiness."

This perfectly describes the Demon that sits now on one shoulder, now on the other, and whispers things that no one else hears.

My Demon warned me one night years ago when I saw some glum theater at UCLA. Later I said to the director, "You want me to stick my wet finger in a wall socket for electrocution. Instead I will screw a brighter bulb in the same socket and light the room."

So my Demon warned me off such encounters and provided invisible material for my future life.

Dandelion Wine, for example, began as an essay in Gourmet magazine in 1953, and over the years my Demon tripped me, sprawling, into a novel to be read in American schools.

On my twenty-fourth birthday, I discovered Winesburg, Ohio, which is indeed not a novel but a short-story collection by Sherwood Anderson. How fine, I thought, if someday I could birth similar grotesques to inhabit Mars.

My Demon, provoked, secretly made travel plans to landfall Mars, live there, and arrive at an unplanned novel, The Martian Chronicles.

Green Shadows, White Whale resulted from my life in Ireland, when for eight months I wrote the screenplay of Moby Dick for John Huston. At the time I thought I wasnot sponging in any of the green atmosphere or the characters of sad and beautiful Ireland. But then one night, a year later, a voice spoke in my head and said, "Ray, darlin'. "And I said, "Who's that?" The voice said, "It's Nick, your cabdriver. Remember all those nights of my driving you back from Kilcock to Dublin and describing the mist and the fog and the rain along the way? Do you remember that, Ray?" "Yes," I said.Then the voice said with the voice of my Demon, "Would you get up and put that down?" I got up, surprised, and went to my typewriter and began to write a series of poems, essays, and one-act plays that finally shared a San Francisco theater with Sean O'Casey.

Twenty years passed with more essays, poems, and stories, and I woke one morn to find in that litter Green Shadows, White Whale, a novel, complete and intact.

A short tale, "The Black Ferris," melded itself into a screenplay for Gene Kelly, and when Kelly couldn't find the money for the film, I spent three years turning the screenplay into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Then at last there is my late-on offspring From the Dust Returned, commenced when I drew skeletons, age six, to scare my cousins, continued in secret when I helped redecorate my grandparents' house with Halloween broomsticks, and ended with a gothic story, "Homecoming," rejected by Weird Tales as needful of Marley's ghost and lacking Poe. I sold the story to Mademoiselle, and over the years it grew in rain and mist and arrived in fogs as a novel just last year.

What we have here, then, is a very unusual approach to writing and discovering, not knowing the outcome. To move ahead on a blind journey, running fast, putting down thoughts as they occur.

And along the way my inner voice advised:

If you must write of assassinations, rapes, and Ophelia suicides, speak the speech, I pray thee, poetry in your breath, metaphors on your tongue. Remember how glad Iago was to think on Othello's fall. How, with smiles, Hamlet prepared his uncle's death.

Shakespeare and my Demon schooled me so: Be not afraid of happiness. It is often the soul of murder.

Bradbury Speaks
Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars. Copyright © by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Videos