Celebrated storyteller, cultural commentator, friend of astronauts, prophet of the Space Age'by the end of the 1960s, Ray Bradbury had attained a level of fame and success rarely achieved by authors, let alone authors of science fiction and fantasy. He had also embarked on a phase of his career that found him exploring new creative outlets while reinterpreting his classic tales for generations of new fans.
Drawing on numerous interviews with Bradbury and privileged access to personal papers and private collections, Jonathan R. Eller examines the often-overlooked second half of Bradbury's working life. As Bradbury's dreams took him into a wider range of nonfiction writing and public lectures, the diminishing time that remained for creative pursuits went toward Hollywood productions like the award-winning series Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury developed the Spaceship Earth narration at Disney's EPCOT Center; appeared everywhere from public television to NASA events to comic conventions; published poetry; and mined past triumphs for stage productions that enjoyed mixed success. Distracted from storytelling as he became more famous, Bradbury nonetheless published innovative experiments in autobiography masked as detective novels, the well-received fantasy The Halloween Tree and the masterful time travel story ""The Toynbee Convector."" Yet his embrace of celebrity was often at odds with his passion for writing, and the resulting tension continuously pulled at his sense of self.
The revelatory conclusion to the acclaimed three-part biography, Bradbury Beyond Apollo tells the story of an inexhaustible creative force seeking new frontiers.
Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. The Inherited Wish 1. Prometheus Bound 2. The Darkness Between the Stars 3. A Teller of Tales 4. The Prisoner of Gravity 5. Witness and Celebrate 6. The Sleep of Reason 7. The Inherited Wish 8. Long After Midnight 9. A Mailbox on Mars Part II. Beyond Eden 10. The God in Science Fiction 11. Infinite Worlds 12. Abandon in Place 13. Beyond Eden 14. Robot Museums 15. The Great Shout of the Universe 16. A Eureka Year 17. One-Way Ticket Man Part III. 1984 Will Not Arrive 18. My Name Is Darka 19. A Most Favorite Subject 20. Memories of Murder 21. 1984 Will Not Arrive 22. Death Is a Lonely Business 23. A Poet's Heart 24. Forms of Things Unknown 25. Time Flies 26. Beyond the Iron Curtain Part IV. Graveyard for Lunatics 27. A Graveyard for Lunatics 28. Disputed Passage 29. Green Shadows, White Whale 30. The ABCs of Science Fiction 31. An American Icon 32. Harvest Time 33. A Promise of Eternity 34. Séances and Ghosts 35. An Evening on Mars Part V. Closing the Book 36. Make Haste to Livea 37. Messages in a Bottle 38. The Fire Within 39. A Child's Imagination 40. Farewell Summer 41. Samurai Kabuki 42. Nothing Has to Diea 43. Visions of Mars 44. Remembrance 45. Closing the Book Notes Index
"As with his earlier volumes, Eller makes meticulous use of his detailed research and extraordinary access to materials such as correspondence, manuscripts, and notebooks. The focus here is less on how Bradbury became a major writer, or how he parlayed his early success, than on his status as what Eller quite defensibly calls an American icon."--Gary K. Wolfe, author of Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature