Cutting his literary teeth in the memorable pages of Weird Tales in the 1940s, his early stories from that pulp magazine were reprinted in the Arkham House collection Dark Carnival, published in 1947. Known principally for his short fiction, he has sold his work to all the major magazines in the intervening fifty years, and his many tales of science fiction, fantasy and horror have been widely collected. The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, I Sing the Body Electric and Long After Midnight are just a few of the evocative titles that hint at the equally atmospheric prose to be found in Ray Bradbury’s timeless fiction. He is also the author of several classic novels, including Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, The Halloween Tree and, more recently, Death is a Lonely Business and A Graveyard for Lunatics. His screenwriting credits include Moby Dick (for John Huston) and It Came from Outer Space, and since 1985 he has adapted his own short stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. ‘I took a couple of years off, and did sixty-five teleplays for my TV series, plus a couple of screenplays,’ says Bradbury. ‘But I wanted to get back to my root system — because I started as a short story writer when I was twelve. I had a lot of ideas put away, just old scribbled notes I started going through.’ The result was a number of new short stories written during the last year or so, including ‘Free Dirt’, which have been collected in Quicker Than the Eye.

Self-Made Man

POPPY Z. BRITE

Justin had read Dandelion Wine seventeen times now, but he still hated to see it end. He always hated endings.

He turned the last page of the book and sat for several minutes in the shadows of his bedroom, cradling the old thumbed paperback, marvelling at the world he held in his hands. The hot sprawl of the city outside was forgotten; he was still lost in the cool green Byzantium of 1928.