Four years ago Sam Weller, a onetime New City staff writer who’d written a guidebook, Secret Chicago, was covering the midwest for Publishers Weekly and freelancing stories to the Tribune magazine. He proposed a profile to mark the 80th birthday of Ray Bradbury, the sci-fi master who was born in Waukegan.
Bradbury had resisted three or four earlier proposals from would-be biographers. “They were fact collectors,” says Bradbury, “and that wasn’t enough. There was never any excitement there.” But he sensed in Weller an ability to “capture the facts with his imagination,” and in January 2001 invited him to tell his story.
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“Fragments of information about Ray came out during our conversations,” says Weller, “but so did 45 minutes of talk about the hamburgers we were eating.” Weller was persistent. “He’s an incredible researcher,” says Bradbury. “I would mention something from the past, and it was like I was saying ‘go fetch.’ Sam would come back with details that I didn’t know existed.”
As both Bradbury’s “honorary son” and his biographer, Weller’s had to walk a line. “I want to be a good person,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt a person who is good to me. That supersedes everything. People had asked Ray for years to do his biography, and he had said no. Who the fuck am I to betray him? But my ambition is also to tell a good story, which means including things that are dark and might be hurtful.”
Bradbury continues to write a short story a week. “It’s my lifeblood,” he says. “I’ve been at this since I was 12 years old. I have two rules in life–to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.” A new collection is scheduled for publication in July.
