One of the amazing things about Ray Bradbury (and there are many) is the way he managed to transcend boundaries and genres in his writing. Find ten random people and ask them what the name “Ray Bradbury” means to them, and you may get ten different answers: science fiction about Mars, stories about growing up in a small Midwestern town, horror tales that give you chills in the middle of summer — Bradbury wrote them all.
In the introduction to Shadow Show, just published this month, editors Sam Weller and Mort Castle begin by saying: “He published in Weird Tales and The New Yorker. Just how many writers can claim such a dichotomous literary distinction?” When you pick up something written by Bradbury and start reading, you never know if you’re getting a slice-of-life realist tale or if there will turn out to be literal skeletons in the closet (dancing, probably). All you know for certain is that it’ll be a great ride.
Shadow Show is a very fitting tribute to this man who never quit writing: a collection of stories by a diverse bunch of writers, inspired by and in celebration of Bradbury. Neil Gaiman’s opening piece “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” (which io9.com posted last month) is a wonderfully meta sort of piece about memory and writing, made all the more poignant by Bradbury’s passing last month. Along with a foreword by Bradbury himself, it’s like the narthex into a grand cathedral of words built in honor of this master storyteller.
Sam Weller had the great privilege and tremendous responsibility to serve as Bradbury’s biographer — I got to see him interview Bradbury on stage at Comic-Con two years ago, and his book Listen to the Echoes is a collection of more than a decade’s worth of interviews. Mort Castle, an author and writing teacher, comes from the world of horror fiction — again, these two working together show the vast reach Bradbury had.
As with Bradbury’s own stories, when you read this collection, you never know when you start whether it’s going to be fantastical or realistic, whether that scraggly cat on the couch will turn out to be something more than a cat, whether those strangers are really people or ghosts or aliens or something else entirely, whether a story will make you laugh or cry or shiver. The author list (I’ve included it at the end of this post) is like a Hall of Fame, with some of my personal favorites and many that I’m now eager to read more of. I like that each author also includes a short explanation after the story so you have an idea of how Bradbury’s writing touched them and whether their story was an homage to some particular piece.
Of course, it isn’t Bradbury, and it could never be. But these stories are, as Bradbury says, his literary children, and they have all “come home to Papa.” Shadow Show is a wonderful family reunion, and we’re all invited.
The list of authors (in order of appearance in the book): Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Jay Bonansinga, Sam Weller, David Morrell, Thomas Monteleone, Lee Martin, Joe Hill, Dan Chaon, John McNally, Joe Meno, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, Mort Castle, Alice Hoffman, John Maclay, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Gary Braunbeck, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Audrey Niffenegger, Charles Yu, Julia Keller, Dave Eggers, Bayo Ojikutu, Kelly Link, Harlan Ellison.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this book for review.
