For the record, neither “Martian Chronicles” nor “Dandelion Wine” are truly novels; rather, they are composed primarily of short stories which had previously appeared in magazines such as “The Saturday Evening Post,” “Collier’s,” “Cosmopolitan,” and others. Ray’s only other novel before “Something Wicked This Way Comes” was the wonderful “Fahrenheit 451.”

My wife and I attended a pre-birthday celebration for Ray at a bookstore in Glendale, California, last Sunday and I was given the honor and privilege of being the first person to “toast” him and thank him for all that he has given me during the past 40 years of our friendship.

Arnold Kunert
Irvine, California

I find many science fiction fans scoff at Bradbury. Part of this is probably because he is a poet in the field of gearheads. But I think much of it is that they sense that despite his forays into space or the speculative future, he is a humanist at heart and not an escapist. As he himself implied in the Martian Chronicles: Going to Mars, what we find is our inescapable selves. Even those “fire balloons” from his memories of Fourth of July became (in the Illustrated Man, I think, not MC) the disembodied final form of the dead Martians.

What a writer! What a man!

Francis, I did some searching and can’t find a record of Bradbury collaborating with Serling. The one episode you mention where the ad executive returns to his boyhood and tries to warn himself to enjoy it while it lasts, was called “Walking Distance”. It is supposedly one of the most personal and autobiographical stories that Serling did. Being a fine young lad from Binghampton, I am not surprised he felt the same sense of longings for those boyhood summers. You can take us Upstater’s out of upstate, but you can take the upstate out of us.

This same thing was evoked by a number of old “Twilight Zone” episodes. I’m thinking of “Kick the Can” and the one where the middle-aged guy returns to his own boyhood summer and sees himself riding the carousel in the park. Didn’t Bradbury collaborate with Serling in some of those?

In the charge of witchcraft or familiarity with the devil I do plead not guilty. I am wholly innocent of any such wickedness through the goodness of God that has kept me hitherto. I am the servant of Jesus Christ and have given myself up to Him as my only Lord and Savior, and to the diligent attendance upon Him in all His holy ordinances, in utter contempt and defiance of the devil and all his works as horrid and detestable; and accordingly have endeavored to frame my life and conversation according to the rules of His Holy Word, and in that faith and practice resolve by the help and assistance of God to continue to my life’s end. For the truth of what I say as to matter of practice I humbly refer myself to my brethren and neighbors that know me, and unto the Searcher of all hearts for the truth and uprightness of my heart therein. (Human frailties and unavoidable infirmities excepted of which I bitterly complain every day.)

Nonetheless, and despite the enthusiastically supportive testimonies of her husband, prominent community members including a clergyman, and nearly 100 of her neighbors, she was convicted of witchcraft. She was one of the best-loved members of her community, and a frail 77 years old at the time. Of the 15 others condemned with her, eight were hanged, five confessed to being witches and thus were reprieved, and one was given a stay of execution due to her pregnancy. How Mary Perkins Bradbury managed to escape is still a mystery, for she did not recant her testimony and she certainly wasn’t pregnant.

Despite it all, she lived to be 85.