The carnival has moved on
Ray Bradbury passed away yesterday. I discovered Ray Bradbury when I was twelve or so, when science fiction and fantasy began to really dominate my reading. Ray's writing had a brightness to it, a touch of the whiz-bang quality of pulp science fiction, but with a darker side to it, a shadow to match the brightness. He wrote tales about the Family, a collection of freaks and ghouls that appealed to my teenage self, when I often felt alone and alienated from other people, stories set on strange worlds or the far future, and tales set against the backdrop of a small town. "The Martian Chronicles", "Faranheit 451", "The Illustrated Man", I loved them all. But if I had to pick one book that represented Ray's writing, I would have to go with "Something Wicked This Way Comes". It's the story of two boys coming of age in a quintessential and somehow mythical small midwestern town, the allure and terror of adolescence and the importance of love and laughter against the dark forces represented by a dark carnival of the damned. It's my favorite Ray Bradbury novel, and remains one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time.