Waterstone's Liverpool One Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club


Waterstones Liverpool One Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club

"This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can't have a *final* frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier *to*, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate...)"
- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

About Us


This is the official blog for the book club held in the book lounge of Waterstones Liverpool One.

The group meet at 6pm on the first Monday of the month to discuss their thoughts and opinions on the books selected. The books range from classic fantasy to brand new science fiction short story collections.

It's a fun and friendly atmosphere and all are welcome: from those who have never read any science fiction or fantasy before, to those who don't read anything else.

The group, and this blog, are administered by Glyn Morgan, the Bookseller responsible for the Science Fiction section of the store and an avid reader of SF who is currently studying for his PhD at the University of Liverpool.

If you would like to comment on any of the books we've read, this month or in the distant past, please feel free to contribute to the comments section of the relevant posts.

Visit this club's little sister: Coffee and Comics

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Synopsis

It's the week before Hallowe'en, and Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled ...And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore the mysteries of the dark carnival's smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will also discover the true price of innermost wishes ...

What Did We Think?

 That we read this book over the month of October, that is to say - over Halloween, was entirely serendipitous.

Most of us were delighted by Bradbury's most famous horror title, finding it unique and original despite its archetypal status. What most impressed everyone however was the stylised language Bradbury uses to tell his story. The prose is flowery and beautiful and creates an atmosphere which is at once tense, sinister and immersive, however it also makes the book nigh on impossible to skim.

There's a definite air of nostalgia around the two main characters: William "Will" Halloway and Jim Nightshade, both thirteen year old boys. So powerful is this nostalgia for an innocent childhood that at times it can be overly sweet and cloying. That said, his representation of the boys as two sides of the same coin was refreshingly different from the normally lazy characterisation of such figures in horror or boys-own-adventures, where normally duplicate children are all more or less the same and only more than one so that they have someone to talk to.

Whilst nicely drawn, more interesting than the boys were the chief villain, Mr. Dark: a powerful and exciting Faustian character, and Will's father Charles. Charles Halloway is an inciteful and complexly brilliant character with doubts and philosophies which come across as being honest and representative of genuine wisdom, possibly Bradbury's own (he was 42 when this novel was published in 1962). There are no significant female characters to speak of, and those that do exist seem to conform to the classical template of the maid, the mother and the crone, although this fits with the novel if seen as a boys-own-adventure story.

Obviously this was one of the first novels, if not the first, to exploit the circus freak mystique for horror purposes (although one wonders whether Bradbury had seen the 1932 horror film Freaks). Its influence on media as diverse as the TV show Carnivàle and Stephen King's It are clear (King references the novel is several fictions of his own, notable The Dead Zone)

What detracted from the novel was, paradoxically, what also made it so beautiful - the florid language making it at times hard to follow, especially if read in short bursts. Also, possibly a symptom of its age, the horror of the novel was far less horrific than would be liked in a modern novel, indeed it might be more acurate to consider it a suspense novel than a horror novel.

Nevertheless, there was an overall positive reaction to this book and a strong appreciation for Bradbury's skill as an author.

Votes were as follows: 9, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 5

2 comments:

  1. Where did he get his ideas to write this book? I need sources please

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey anonymous, if it's not too late for you, the best places to find out about Bradbury's sources and inspirations for SOMETHIN WICKED are:

    RAY BRADBURY: THE LIFE OF FICTION by Jonathan Eller and William Touponce (scholarly study with very detailed chapter on the historical development of the book)

    THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES by Sam Weller (biography of Bradbury)

    - Phil

    www.bradburymedia.co.uk

    ReplyDelete