This post is brought to you by SHORT.SHARP.SHOCK, a collection of micro-fiction by G. W. Thomas. I can honestly say that Ray Bradbury was as influential in my own writing of very short stories as were Saki, Fredric Brown, O.Henry, John Collier, James Thurber, William Tenn, Robert Sheckley and Harlan Ellison. The decision to tell a short in a brief flash of surprise is actually counter-intuitive for a profession that gets paid by the word. I think Ray’s contribution was the idea that the title is the starting place and very important. He famously generated a list of “The —” titles and many became his most beloved like “The Crowd”, “The Jar” and “The Scythe”. I’ve used the process myself occasionally as I discussed here.
Last month on social media I commented on the 74th anniversary of “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury appearing in The Saturday Evening Post. (It was also the 63rd anniversary of “Tyrannosaurus Rex”.) It was a happy coincidence that I just happened to notice the date was the same as when I was looking at it seventy-four years later. The story has had a few different names but “The Fog Horn” was Ray’s preferred even though Hollywood chose “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” when Ray Harryhausen filmed it in black & white. (Harryhausen will show up again here later also.)
Ray Bradbury did not start by publishing in The Saturday Evening Post. He got his start back in 1942 in the pages of Weird Tales. He wrote Horror tales that got illustrations like this one from Fred Humiston. But only eight years later Ray would sell “The Veldt” to SEP and give the world of Science Fiction the “holodeck”. (Star Trek you can send the check to Ray anytime now.) The editors of SEP liked to rename Bradbury’s stories so it appeared as the much weaker “The World the Children Made”, also giving away the idea in the title. Ray wisely changed it back to “The Veldt” when he put it in The Illustrated Man (1951).
I am sure Ray Bradbury didn’t mind the title changes since SEP checks had plenty of 0s in them. Robert A. Heinlein broke the Slicks’ snobbery barrier for Science Fiction with “The Green Hills of Earth” in The Saturday Evening Post, February 8, 1947. Ray was the next author to do so and unlike RAH, over and over again, finding the Americana nostalgia of SEP not unlike his own vision of Green Town, a rose-colored glasses version of Waukegan, Illinois. (Later SF writers include Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Isaac Asimov.) I used a Norman Rockwell image for the topper here from one of Ray’s appearances. Rockwell visually captured the essence of nostalgic America the way Ray did with words.
“The World the Children Made” (aka “The Veldt”) (Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1950) has a modern house of the future that includes a nursery for the kids. George and Lydia Hadley are scared. They fear the new playroom and its overly realistic holographic environments have cast a spell over their children. They should be more worried about the lions… Bradbury is able to sell what is in reality a Horror story about killer tech by making it first and foremost a tale about the people affected by the dangerous technology. This story was collected in The Illustrated Man (1951). I first enjoyed this story as it was read by William Shatner back in the 1970s when these things appeared on LPs. Here is the TV version. Here is another.
“The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (aka “The Fog Horn”) (Saturday Evening Post, June 23, 1951) has a dinosaur called from the slimy depths when it thinks a fog horn is a fellow saurian calling for love. It returns to the dark depths in disappointment. This story was collected in The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953). Trailer for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.
“The April Witch” (Saturday Evening Post, April 5, 1952) features Cecy, a witchy girl who belongs to a family of terrors (a very Bradburian idea) who slips into the body of Ann Leary so she can experience things like dances, nice dresses and love. She forces Ann to give a handsome boy her address in the hopes that Cecy will one day meet him. Also collected in The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953).
“Love Contest” (Saturday Evening Post, May 24, 1952) was published under the pseudonym Leonard Douglas and is one of two stories that appeared in SEP but were not collected in any collections including The Lost Bradbury. Ray’s middle name is Douglas. A father frets as his two daughters gush over a handsome lad.
“They Knew What They Wanted” (Saturday Evening Post, June 26, 1954) is the second tale to not be collected. It appeared under Ray’s usual name. It continues the boy crazies in the same household. Bradbury had four daughters so he might be writing from experience though the date 1954 makes this unlikely. He had only been married for seven years.
“Summer in the Air” (aka “The Sound of Summer Running”) (Saturday Evening Post, February 18, 1956) Douglas is an old man remembering how when he was twelve he really wanted a new pair of running shoes. There is no real SF element to this story, making it a good pick for SEP. This story appeared in R Is For Rocket (1962). For a deep analysis of this story, go here. The illustration for this one is by an old Pulp artist, Amos Sewell, who drew “The Wolves of Darkness” for Jack Williamson back in 1932 along with many Shudder Pulps.
“Good-by, Grandma” (aka “The Leave-Taking”) (Saturday Evening Post, May 25, 1957) is another bitter-sweet glimpse at life, with the upcoming death of a grandparent written about poetically. What makes this one interesting for me is I am pretty sure it inspired Stephen King’s “Gramma” (Weirdbook 19, Spring 1984), which is a much more horrific play on this scenario with a Lovecraftian twist. This story was collected in The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980).
“The Happiness Machine” (Saturday Evening Post, September 14, 1957) has an inventor, Leo Auffmann, create a machine that can show you the best things in life to make you happy. Leo’s wife, Lena, tries the machine and the results are not what the inventor expected. This is more of a Fantasy parable supported by SF technology. The machine could have easily been a genie in an Unknown story. This one later appeared in The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980). TV version.
“The Magic White Suit” (aka “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”) (Saturday Evening Post, October 4, 1958) is a longer Bradbury tale with three men pooling their money to buy a really nice suit. They take turns wearing it, finding it delivers their highest hopes. But trouble comes when they can no longer share it properly. Again, not a fantastical story, but SEP must have loved it. This story was collected in A Medicine For Melancholy (1959).
“Forever Voyage” (aka “And the Sailor, Home From the Sea”) (Saturday Evening Post, January 9, 1960) has a dying sea captain living on the prairies. He wants to be buried at sea where his wife rests. The man is laid to rest in a different kind of ocean, a sea of wheat. This story was collected in The Machineries of Joy (1964).
“The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” (Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1960) is about a boy named Joby who marches with the army in the Civil War. A conversation between the boy and a general discuss the vital contribution such drummers made. A historical tale that has become a feature of Middle School text books. It was also used as an example of the kind of fiction Boys’ Life was looking for their magazine. It was collected in The Machineries of Joy (1964).
“The Beggar on the Dublin Bridge” (aka “The Beggar on the O’Connell Bridge”) (Saturday Evening Post, January 14, 1961) has a tourist in Dublin encounter a man begging for money to get to Belfast. Not a Science Fiction story, but it is another Irish story like “The Banshee”, which Ray wrote with affection. Collected in The Machineries of Joy (1964). The artist on this one is another Pulp master, James Bama, who did the first Doc Savage paperback covers.
“The Prehistoric Producer” (aka “Tyrannosaurus Rex”) (Saturday Evening Post, June 23, 1962) has an animator for the movies battling with a nasty producer. The model-maker, based on Bradbury’s pal, Ray Harryhausen, gets his revenge by making the T. rex look like the obnoxious employer. This one isn’t really SF either but is closely related to the filming of such movies that SF fans loved it. Collected in The Machineries of Joy (1964). The TV version. My favorite illustrations for it were done by Moebius for Dinosaur Tales (1983).
“Fathers and Sons Banquet” (Saturday Evening Post, May 1974) is odd since Bradbury only had daughters. The poem describes a Father/Son function poetically. The poem appeared in When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (1973).
“Up from the Deep” (Saturday Evening Post, September 1981) This one made me laugh. The old Weird Tales feature “Reprint Story” should have been on this repeat of “The Fog Horn” from 1951. At least we got a new illustration rather than the boiler plate Hugh Rankin WT used.
“America” (Saturday Evening Post, July 2009) a poem about how others see America. It was reprinted from Death has Lost Its Charm For Me (1964).
“Juggernaut” (Saturday Evening Post, September 2009) has a traveling carriage filled with musicians playing the Blues. Bradbury speaks to how that form of music touches his soul in an elegiac way. The story was reprinted from PostScripts, Summer 2008.
Conclusion
The Ray Bradbury of The Saturday Evening Post is not the Ray of Weird Tales that became The October Country. Any more than it is the Bradbury of Planet Stories that became The Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury re-invented himself several times until he became the writer that delighted both SF fans and Mundanes. And he did this not by deceiving anyone. He did this by writing what was true to him. He obviously found a way to keep editors happy but not at the expense of his own truth. He was rejected in the early days by every SF magazine except the lowest paying. But in only eight short years (I am sure they didn’t feel short) he had done what so many SF/F/H writers could not. I’m not going to lie, many of these stories don’t interest like his more SF stuff, but his poetry in writing is evident even in the least fantastical of them. Ray could have abandoned Science Fiction much as Kurt Vonnegut did (and I don’t blame him) but that kid who started out reading Tarzan novels and dreaming of dinosuars never did. Ray was the best of us. All of us.
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Many thanks for this wonderful tribute to Bradbury, whose work I’ve always loved.