The author is well aware of the irony. As the ‘70s began, half of Ray Bradbury’s career lay ahead, yet his greatest work was already in the past. The final volume of Jonathan E. Eller’s ambitious biographical trilogy—told largely through Bradbury’s work—chronicles three busy decades bereft of enduring stories. Perhaps, Eller wonders, Bradbury had become preoccupied with inhabiting his persona as the most engaging, approachable storyteller of the Space Age. Bradbury had many admirers in high places, including members of Congress, and used his connections to lobby for NASA funding. It must have been hard for him that interplanetary travel was shunted aside in favor of the shuttle, the minivan of space travel when compared to the muscle cars of the Apollo missions.
