Mike Schramm

Ray Bradbury says there's no question why the relatively inexperienced Sam Weller was chosen to write his official biography.

In 1912, the Chicago Tribune published a cartoon by Joe McCutcheon called "Injun Summer." The drawing consists of two panels, one on top of the other. The first panel shows an old man and a boy watching a campfire burn out in front of a sunset over a field. In the second panel, night has fallen, and the wheat field's haystacks have turned into teepees and the campfire's smoke has become a haze of dancing Indians, howling it up in the midsummer night. Bradbury found it, and "collected it as a child, and I loved it so much," he says. Almost eighty years later, Sam Weller found and treasured the same cartoon. "This romantic image" of the two keeping the same image, says Bradbury, "convinced me that we had the same feelings in our blood."

It was a good choice--Bradbury calls the book "fantastic." "It makes me cry at times," says the sentimental author. "There are sections of it I can't read, because it brings back so many memories. I'm reminded of how far I've come, and how fortunate I've been." He doesn't have a favorite story-- "I have four daughters and eight grandchildren, and I don't pick any favorites, and I've felt the same way about my stories," but says his proudest experiences were working in the movies, the medium that originally inspired him. "One of the things I'm most proud of is writing `Moby Dick' for John Huston," he recalls.

And though he still reads and writes--he has a sequel to "Dandelion Wine" and two movie adaptations in the works--it's mostly classics for him now. "At my age," he says, "you don't read science fiction, because you've already read it. You read Shaw and Shakespeare and Alexander Cook and Emily Dickinson." He says he's also a big fan of anthropologist Loren Isley. "I encouraged him to write books thirty years ago, and he followed my advice, he had a great career."

In the "Bradbury Chronicles," Weller says that a young Bradbury would tell anyone who wanted to listen that he planned to be a great writer some day. Has he done what he set out to do? "When you're young you say things like that, which are silly," he laughs. "But you've got to set a goal for yourself, no matter how silly it is. I've done very well, and I'm very happy."

When you're talking about the author of "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" (or "four five one," as Bradbury calls it), that doesn't sound so silly after all.

(2005-04-05)

Also by Mike Schramm

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Game over?
The MSI's "Game On" exhibit has plenty of great video games on display, including "Adventure" on the Atari, the original version of "Pong" (with paddles), a six-player setup of "Bomberman" and one of three existing versions of the only Communist-created arcade game, "Poly Play." But here are four hard-to-find games you won't see at "Game On," or anywhere else unless you're lucky
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Spam and Cheese
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Serving Kurtwood Smith
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Not too many cooks
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Go West
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Umphrey's McGee
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