My 350-word review of Becoming Ray Bradbury, Jonathan R. Eller's fastidiously-fashioned and rather fascinating biography of Bradbury's formative years, appeared in the Ninth Circle section of the Oct. issue of Rue Morgue: Horror in Culture & Entertainment. This is one of my more fitting and accomplished reviews, seeing print in October no less, a month that Bradbury celebrated and drew inspiration from throughout his career.
In Becoming, Eller shows how Bradury, working with a series of different mentors, broke into the pulps in the 1940's, including the famous Weird Tales, as well as the "slick" mainstream magazines. Eller also describes how Bradbury navigated both critics and editors who were perplexed by a writer who crafted both literary fiction and horror, fantasy and sci-fi fiction shot through with a literary sensibility and a sense of whimsy. Although Eller is the director for Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at the University of Illinois Press, his is no dry academic biography, but a colourful, humanizing portrait of Ray in his beginnings, before he became the white-haired media darling of later years.
http://www.rue-morgue.com/2012/10/halloween-issue-on-stands-now/
