Books: Let's All Kill Constance by Ray Bradbury (2003)

“Opening in 1960 and our storyteller, who has returned to his old Venice, California apartment while his wife is away, gets an unexpected visit from aging Hollywood actor Constance Rattigan. She hands him two things: The Los Angeles Telephone Directory, 1900 – what both call a sort of Book of the Dead that contains early Hollywood movers and shakers (most who are now dead) and her own personal address book. Only one book has Constance’s name in them. The Los Angeles Telephone Directory, 1900, was left at her doorstep by some unknown person at her home and Constance see this as a message –that someone wants her dead. A skeptic at first, our chronicler decides to visit the listed people in order, all of whom die under mysterious circumstances shortly thereafter. Suspiciously, each of them claims to have met Constance, whom seemly is one-step ahead of the narrator. Is Constance the true murderer, or is someone seeking to sever all ties to her associates before finally killing her? The only way to solve this mystery is with the help of long-time friend and private investigator Elmo Crumley.”

 

Let's All Kill Constance is the third and final mystery novel by Ray Bradbury, following up on 1985’s Death is a Lonely Business and 1990’s A Graveyard for Lunatics. As with the previous books, an unnamed Los Angeles based writer, who bears a striking resemblance to the author, narrates it. As with two previous novels, the author offers some subtle references to his better known work, such as Fahrenheit 451, where in chapter 16, the protagonist muses on the possibility of people using books to start fires in the future. And someone calls him “the Martian.”

All three books are weird, but Let’s All Kill Constance takes the cake. It’s anything but ordinary, though, which reminds me how much fiction and –in almost any genre- has become a bit dull, predictable, almost vanilla. The tales coda is about what fame and fortune can do to a person, but that’s old hat in Hollywood. But it’s a nice reminder still that looks -and not necessarily talent- shakes Hollywood today and Yesteryear more than anything else.

So I enjoyed the series, with its ghosts, murder, and the glamour of old Hollywood.

Books: A Graveyard for Lunatics By Ray Bradbury (1990)

“Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery—and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.”

As with Death is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics is the second of three noir mystery tales Ray Bradbury wrote that sort of features a fictionalized version of the author himself as the unnamed narrator. The novel is set in 1954, when the narrator is a writer working at a Hollywood motion picture studio. The setting and themes of the novel are inspired by Bradbury's experiences working on several films during this period, including It Came from Outer Space, King of Kings, and even Something Wicked This Way Comes. The fictional Maximus Pictures shares a back wall with an adjoining cemetery, as Paramount Studios really does with Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and most of the story takes place in those two locations. Two of the novel's characters, stop motion animator Roy Holdstrom and autocratic director Fritz Wong, were based on Bradbury's friends Ray Harryhausen and Fritz Lang/James Wong Howe. Another character, the shy, blond-haired autograph collector Clarence, may be an alternate autobiographical portrait of Bradbury, who as a teenager waited outside Hollywood studios for glimpses of movie stars.

It’s a weird book, more so than previous one. Its plot slowly unwinds and only really gets interesting (and noir-like) during the last third of the book. But Bradbury writes with more enthusiasm and love for Old Hollywood than most writers of his time or those writing today. His prose, his innate ability to craft metaphors and similes, remains his true gift to us readers. He remains forever one of the more odder writers of Dark Fantasy – with a mind that forever remembers his youth, and who ventured from his home in Waukegan, Illinois, on the windy shores of Lake Michigan, and came to Hollywood to show them his talent.

Books: Death is a Lonely Business By Ray Bradbury (1985)

I’m back after nearly a month of being sick and not wanting to do anything but watch TV and cough like an old engine trying to pretend they’ve not thrown a piston.

“Toiling away amid the looming palm trees and decaying bungalows, a struggling young writer (who bears a resemblance to the author) spins fantastic stories from his fertile imagination upon his clacking typewriter. Trying not to miss his girlfriend (away studying in Mexico), the nameless writer steadily crafts his literary effort--until strange things begin happening around him. Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. Aided by Elmo Crumley, a savvy, street-smart detective, and a reclusive actress of yesteryear with an intense hunger for life, the wordsmith sets out to find the connection between the bizarre events, and in doing so, uncovers the truth about his own creative abilities.”

Like authors who would come after him, authors who were influenced by him, Ray Bradbury’s Death is a Lonely Business –his contribution to the noir genre- is a tale of remembrance of an earlier life, when things were horrible yet hopeful. Set in and around 1949 Venice California, our unnamed hero is an overweight, clumsy, near sighted writer who bears a great resemblance to the writer himself (there are frequent allusions to stories he has published).  

The book is filled colorful characters –some, at times, bordering on the preposterous- but the enjoyment of Bradbury comes from the surreal, like the city of Venice sitting between two worlds, one of reality where the city of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation obvious distaste for Venice's honky-tonk atmosphere and wanted the area dismantled, and one where the old Pier and surrounding canals held dark, fantastical secrets. You also get a sense that Bradbury found the weirdness of the people more interesting -they are loved by him because they are themselves. So the old, the discarded, the friendless seem more enduring to him (again something like writers Peter Straub and Stephen King picked up on).

It is a little too slow getting started, but it remains classic Bradbury, even if it was written much later in his life. It’s still a great tale from a master wordsmith.

Books: Childhood's End By Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

 

“The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city—intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began. But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning?”

I made a few attempts over the decades to read this book –but it’s probably close to 30 + years since my last attempt.

The themes of a peaceful alien invasion of Earth by these mysterious Overlords, is an interesting take on the genre, and while their arrival begins decades of apparent utopia, under the indirect alien rule, the cost of it is our human identity and culture. I can see why a lot of science fiction shows –like Star Trek- lifted some ideas Clarke came up with, even while he would further use this novels subject of transcendent evolution in his later work, in particular 2001: A Space Odyssey and their sequels.

It also goes against every other sci-fi novel of the era, where humans are forbidden to leave Earth because the there is really nothing there for them – but death, I guess. But there seems to be a lot of symbolism here, both philosophical and religious –not sure I clearly got them. Also, while dubbed the Overlords, the aliens see themselves more as Guardians of Earth, which should’ve been the first clue as to where the tale was going.

I was further intrigued by the utopian ideals postulated here, where robotics and computers are advanced to the point that humans are only need to work about twenty hours a week. This enabled people to continue their education (sometimes going back several times just to learn something new),  develop new hobbies and skills, if only because ”The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.”

Now that I could get into. Like a lot of hard sci-fi of the era, it’s a bit dry, but I found I enjoyed the novel, even if Clarke’s vision of mid-twenty-first century America sort of resembled 1950s America.