John Stark Stories. A kind and imperially gracious woman. One of the best people ever known to me. Ed looked like something out of American Gothic . They called him the Galaxy Smasher—the true creator of the “space opera.” Dozens and dozens of stories all the way back to the advent of Gernsback: The Star King series. All those great comic books, and the Captain Future pulp novelettes. Droll, cosmically smart, one helluva plotter, and kind to tots like me and Ray. They were the Strophe and Antistrophe of our literary infancy.
So, they’re gone, Bradbury and I are alone, grinnin’&schmoosin’ and he proceeds to explain to me that he and I are brothers . Not my word, his word. (Not to make this too clear, but I have a chasmlike abomination of bloviating sf fans who, upon the death of someone they once met in an elevator, begin to leak like WikiAnything, just to buy themselves the face-time at a memorial. “Oh, yes, I knew Isaac as if he were my brother…” / “Oh, lawdy, I pluckt up rootabuggas with Cliff Simak in de fields…” / “Yes, Octavia Butler and I were ever so close…”) This unlikely story I tell actually happened . Go ask Ray Bradbury if you think I’m fudging it. But better hurry…
Anyhow, I says back to him, “How’s that, Ray?”
And he says back to me, “Them.”
And I says to him, “Ed and Leigh?”
And he says back to me, “Our father and mother. They raised us.” I have no memory of the rest of the actual verbiage.
Well, sir, wasn’t that a keen moment!
You see, I was working at Paramount at the time, on one or another of the crippled creations Rouse and Greene had hired me to do for vast sums of money (I was in my “hot 15” at the time). And Leigh, whom I’d known since my teens in Ohio, was writing a dog for Howard Hawks called Red Line 7000 , starring James Caan (who, coincidentally, played the role of “Harlan Ellison” in an Alfred Hitchcock Hour based on my MEMOS FROM PURGATORY only a year or so earlier). Also at Paramount.
Our offices were near to hand.
Ray doesn’t drive. I drive. Every time we both got booked into the same lecture gig at some jerkwater literary potlatch, I drove, Bradbury lectured.
Me, he lectured. (Our politics are about as close as our faiths.)
So, I was always the wheelman on the caper.
Somewhichway, Leigh didn’t have (what she used to call, to mock James M. Cain) a “short” that night, and I can’t remember what Ed’s story was. But I wound up doing the driving down to The Pacific Dining Car, and we left straight from the studio. Ray must’ve come by cab: he met us at the Bronson Gate, and I did my thing downtown for a good big T-bone dinner. Also Bermuda Onion, Rondo Hatton’s-jaw sized tomatoes with Roquefort dressing, and zucchini Florentine. Ray drank; I never touch the stuff. We had an absolutely nova-squooshing dinner.
Thus, before I run on at greater length, the answer to the question “Can you reminisce a bit about your Ray Bradbury ‘connection?’” is frozen in Ray’s asseveration: we’re brothers.
He said so.
But, not to make a big foofaraw of it, Ray has trouble remembering who I am, and who Harlan Ellison is. And then, he’ll remember, howl “Live Forever!” or somesuch impossibility at me, and recall me as “Ah, yes, the ‘Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang.’” and I’ll smile wanly, and scream back at him, “ Nothing lives forever, Ray, you crazy old coot! Not the Great Pyramid of Gizah, not the Polar ice caps, not a single blade of green grass, you nut-bag!”
And that is the link between us, the “connection.” Nobody ever writ it large on the Northern mastiff of Mt. Shazam…you gotta agree with your brother. You just got to love him.
The next day, Monday, Susan and my associate
went out to buy a computer. I went out, got the
mail, walked back in to the foyer. I’m standing
there, perfectly cogent, looking at the mail.
The next second, I’m lying there
looking up at
So, they’re gone, Bradbury and I are alone, grinnin’&schmoosin’ and he proceeds to explain to me that he and I are brothers . Not my word, his word. (Not to make this too clear, but I have a chasmlike abomination of bloviating sf fans who, upon the death of someone they once met in an elevator, begin to leak like WikiAnything, just to buy themselves the face-time at a memorial. “Oh, yes, I knew Isaac as if he were my brother…” / “Oh, lawdy, I pluckt up rootabuggas with Cliff Simak in de fields…” / “Yes, Octavia Butler and I were ever so close…”) This unlikely story I tell actually happened . Go ask Ray Bradbury if you think I’m fudging it. But better hurry…
Anyhow, I says back to him, “How’s that, Ray?”
And he says back to me, “Them.”
And I says to him, “Ed and Leigh?”
And he says back to me, “Our father and mother. They raised us.” I have no memory of the rest of the actual verbiage.
Well, sir, wasn’t that a keen moment!
You see, I was working at Paramount at the time, on one or another of the crippled creations Rouse and Greene had hired me to do for vast sums of money (I was in my “hot 15” at the time). And Leigh, whom I’d known since my teens in Ohio, was writing a dog for Howard Hawks called Red Line 7000 , starring James Caan (who, coincidentally, played the role of “Harlan Ellison” in an Alfred Hitchcock Hour based on my MEMOS FROM PURGATORY only a year or so earlier). Also at Paramount.
Our offices were near to hand.
Ray doesn’t drive. I drive. Every time we both got booked into the same lecture gig at some jerkwater literary potlatch, I drove, Bradbury lectured.
Me, he lectured. (Our politics are about as close as our faiths.)
So, I was always the wheelman on the caper.
Somewhichway, Leigh didn’t have (what she used to call, to mock James M. Cain) a “short” that night, and I can’t remember what Ed’s story was. But I wound up doing the driving down to The Pacific Dining Car, and we left straight from the studio. Ray must’ve come by cab: he met us at the Bronson Gate, and I did my thing downtown for a good big T-bone dinner. Also Bermuda Onion, Rondo Hatton’s-jaw sized tomatoes with Roquefort dressing, and zucchini Florentine. Ray drank; I never touch the stuff. We had an absolutely nova-squooshing dinner.
Thus, before I run on at greater length, the answer to the question “Can you reminisce a bit about your Ray Bradbury ‘connection?’” is frozen in Ray’s asseveration: we’re brothers.
He said so.
But, not to make a big foofaraw of it, Ray has trouble remembering who I am, and who Harlan Ellison is. And then, he’ll remember, howl “Live Forever!” or somesuch impossibility at me, and recall me as “Ah, yes, the ‘Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang.’” and I’ll smile wanly, and scream back at him, “ Nothing lives forever, Ray, you crazy old coot! Not the Great Pyramid of Gizah, not the Polar ice caps, not a single blade of green grass, you nut-bag!”
And that is the link between us, the “connection.” Nobody ever writ it large on the Northern mastiff of Mt. Shazam…you gotta agree with your brother. You just got to love him.
The next day, Monday, Susan and my associate
went out to buy a computer. I went out, got the
mail, walked back in to the foyer. I’m standing
there, perfectly cogent, looking at the mail.
The next second, I’m lying there
looking up at
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