Conceptual Fiction is a regular feature, contributed by Ted Gioia, focusing on major works of fantasy, science fiction, magical realism and alternate history. These books are celebrated in recognition that literary experimentation with ways of conceptualizing reality has been as important as experimentation with language in creating fiction of lasting value. Dismissing these books as genre or escapist works has created a blind-spot in literary studies that this feature aims, in some small part, to rectify.
Let’s get this straight from the start: you don’t read Bradbury to learn about future of science and technology. These aspects of his books are perfunctory and as true-to-life as the Cheshire Cat's smile. In Bradbury's tale “Zero Hour” from The Illustrated Man, first published in 1947, the reader encounters homes with vacuum elevators, food-delivery tubes, chromium cars, and electro-magnet dusting machines, among other inventions that never were. They are merely stage props, adding color to the real action, which (as so often with Bradbury) is psychological and emotive in nature.
The dusting machine could run on microwave rather than magnets. It wouldn’t make any difference. The cars could be made out of palladium instead of chromium, who cares? But the human angle in this story, so typical of Bradbury’s work, builds on the subtle divide between the impressionable minds of youngsters, with their rich imaginative life, and the staid, skeptical outlook of adults. Ah, now we are in Bradbury territory.
You want predictions about the future? Well, Bradbury’s most accurate forecast in The Illustrated Man may have simply been the title character’s full array of tattoos. Who would have guessed, back in the 1940s, that radical top-to-toe body art would be so popular in the new millennium? A few piercings, and the Illustrated Man would be at home in your trendiest modern-day nightclub, and ready for his own reality show on MTV. We may have made few steps toward colonizing Mars, but we are tattooing like there is no tomorrow.
In all seriousness . . . hmmm, perhaps with this author it is better to say all non-seriousness . . . Bradbury’s fascination with the make-believe life of youngsters is very much a commentary on his own approach to his craft. Ray Bradbury is the child who never grew up, the Peter Pan of sci-fi. The theme of youthful fantasy recurs in the concluding story of The Illustrated Man, “The Rocket,” in which a poor junkyard owner buys a model of a spaceship, and with clever use of movie screens, mirrors and other equipment is able to convince his children that he is taking them on a trip to Mars and back. In fact, the rocket never leaves the ground, but for this author, the power of imagination is a levitating force far more potent than the meager hyperspace drives and thrust shifters of his sci-fi peers.
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