Perhaps the glory and the damnation of this world of ours are how easily art can get lost in time, but also how easily it can often be rediscovered.
I can’t tell you when I first fell in love with Ray Bradbury’s writing, but I can tell you how deep that love goes. I love horror, have always loved horror, but there are authors that almost transcend genre, their writing simply a giving tree with each apple offering a different flavor. Bradbury is considered a science fiction author, which is reasonable. His book “The Martian Chronicles” is astounding, and in a way I never really realized until now, influenced my own book “Cemetery Earth” with the idea of a ‘novel of short stories’. “Chronicles” is a collection, but the stories are all about Mars and humanity’s attempted conquest of it. The stories are all different, but they also inform one another and are connected beneath the surface.
As a writer, I have always loved short stories and the delicate balance you have to strike to create an effective one. There are few authors who mastered short fiction like Bradbury. His stories were unique and vivid, and the best felt dangerous. He imbued his work with so much life and such a lived-in feel that no matter what they were about, they felt genuine. If we’re honest with ourselves, there never really was much of a ‘good old days’ as the days that were good for some were never good for all, but Bradbury captured the idyllic quality we look for when we think of the past with nostalgia. The aching longing we have for days long gone, and friends no longer there. King’s “It” and “The Body” are two great examples of that author’s ability to hearken to the past and to the days of youth. Many of us look to times gone by and remember people and places and experiences that could only happen when we were young, and are not meant to last forever, which is what made them beautiful: their ephemeral nature. Danger was always up ahead, just like adulthood, but we were safe among friends, hidden in the branches of tall trees.
For me, one of Bradbury’s masterworks is “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” a novel of the last days of adolescence and the horrors that feed on longing. It is a tremendous work that captures so much of what it means to be young, and free…and hateful of that youth and freedom. The book is the story of two young friends. Two boys full of dreams and longing, and desperate to be older. A carnival comes to their small town in the middle of the night. The carnival is run by two men, Dark and Cooger, one a tattooed man of mystery, and the other a muscular man of silence. Together they infect the town with a fever of regret and longing, with promises of the heart’s desires wafting through the night air. As the fascination the two boys have with the carnival turns to horror, they must join forces with the father of one of the boys to fight this insidious troupe, or theirs will be just the latest town to fall prey to the Pandemonium Shadow Show.
Truly, this is a wonderful book, full of magic and horror, and pure storytelling. The story captures so much of what it means to be young, adventurous, and desperate. It also understands what it means to be getting old and looking back at all that has passed. The heartache, the regret. It’s an achingly beautiful book that deserves to be discovered and lauded.
I remember being a kid and my family renting the Disney adaptation of the book as one of our first movies on our new VCR. I adored the movie and how scary it was for both a ‘kid’ movie and a Disney film. Having recently re-watched the film, I was happy to see it still stands up, but disappointed in how much was sacrificed in the streamlined retelling of the story. The big things are there: the despair and longing, but so much of the horror of it all is gone. The hopelessness of the situation the boys find themselves in, as the forces of darkness gather. The book is much more epic and has some truly horrifying setpieces that were sacrificed. I will say that I am not sure if you could get better casting than Jonathan Pryce as Dark, as he comes across as a nasty version of Wonka, a showman promising the world, so long as you’ll bleed for it.
The film moves at a brisk pace, and wonderfully captures the small-town America of the era it’s set in. There is a lot to love about the film, but it truly is a shadow of the book, and should serve as an entry point into Bradbury and this book in particular. A great book and a great story are not always the same thing. When an author can pair the two, you know you have something special. You can have a great book, or a great story, but not often at the same time. It can be technically good, it can be a wonderful story, but how often is it both? I know I would rather be known for great stories over great books, because I’d rather know that my stories got to people and stuck with them. I know the books may not be the prettiest or the tightest, but I hope that the stories are memorable.
“Something Wicked This Way Comes” is memorable.
It’s unforgettable.
It’s a story that captures so much of what it means to be young, and just as much as what it means to grow old. And standing between the two is Dark, an utterly horrifying and brilliant villain. He doesn’t want conquest; he wants food. He wants to devour. I am sure he takes joy in what he does, but in the end, it’s about hunger and satisfying it.
Ray Bradbury was a one-of-a-kind talent, and this is truly a book that he should be remembered for, and one that demands rediscovery.
