Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2. Ray Bradbury

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       Introduction

      It is hard for me to believe that in one lifetime I have written so many stories.

      But on the other hand I often wonder what other writers do with their time.

      Writing, for me, is akin to breathing. It is not something I plan or schedule; it’s something I just do. All the stories collected in this book seized on me at the strangest hours, compelling me to head for my typewriter and put them down on paper before they went away.

      A good example of this is ‘Banshee.’ When I was working for John Huston in Ireland on the screenplay of Moby Dick, we spent many late evenings, sitting around the fire, drinking Irish whiskey, which I did not much care for, but only drank because he loved it. And sometimes Huston would pause in the middle of drinking and talking and close his eyes to listen to the wind wailing outside the house. Then his eyes would snap open and he would point a finger at me and cry that the banshees were out in the Irish weather and maybe I should go outdoors and see if it was true and bring them in.

      He did this so often to scare me that it lodged in my mind and when I got home to America I finally wrote a story in response to his antics.

      ‘The Toynbee Convector’ was born because of my reaction to the bombardment of despair we so frequently find in our newspaper headlines and television reportage, and the feeling of imminent doom in a society that has triumphed over circumstances again and again, but fails to look back and realize where it has come from, and what it has achieved.

      One day, overcome with this feeling, I had to do something about it and so created a character to speak my thoughts.

      ‘The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair’ comes from a lifetime of the affection I have for this wonderful team.

      When I arrived in Ireland many years ago I opened the Irish Times and discovered therein a small ad, which read:

       TODAYONE TIME ONLY!A BENEFIT FOR THE IRISH ORPHANSLAUREL & HARDYIN PERSON!

      I ran down to the theater and was fortunate enough to purchase the last available ticket, front row center! The curtain went up and those dear men performed the most wonderful scenes from their greatest films. I sat there in joy and amazement, with tears rolling down my cheeks.

      When I got home I looked back on all this and remembered an occasion when a friend of mine took me to the stairs up which Laurel and Hardy had carried the piano box, only to be chased down the hill by it. My story had to follow.

      ‘The Pedestrian’ was a precursor to Fahrenheit 451. I had dinner with a friend fifty-five years ago and after dining we decided to take a walk along Wilshire Boulevard. Within minutes we were stopped by a police car. The policeman asked us what we were doing. I replied, ‘Putting one foot in front of the other,’ which was the wrong answer. The policeman looked at me suspiciously because, after all, the sidewalks were empty: nobody in the whole city of Los Angeles was using them as a walkway.

      I went home, sorely irritated at being stopped for simply walking – a natural, human activity – and wrote a story about a pedestrian in the future who is arrested and executed for doing just that.

      A few months later I took that pedestrian for a walk in the night, had him turn a corner and meet a young girl named Clarisse McClellan. Nine days later, Fahrenheit 451 was born as a short novella called ‘The Firemen.’

      ‘The Garbage Collector’ was inspired by my reaction to a newspaper item that appeared in the Los Angeles newspapers in early 1952, when the mayor announced that if an atomic bomb fell on Los Angeles, the resulting bodies would be picked up by garbage collectors. I was so inflamed by this remark that I sat down and wrote the story, fueled by my outrage.

      ‘By СКАЧАТЬ