SCREEN Magazine

Sam Weller at Energy BBDO Creative Salon

Head over to Energy BBDO in Chicago at 4 p.m. for Sam Weller's talk on the late Ray Bradbury.

When Bradbury was coming up as a writer, he told one interviewer, if you admitted to embracing science fiction at a party, “they would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers.” Sci-fi wasn’t important. Or literary. It was kind of a joke. Flash-forward sixty-odd years and Bradbury, who passed away at 91 this June, is remembered as a legend of the genre—a “poet of the rocket age”—and among its rarest specimens, one with crossover appeal. Not just a sci-fi guy, but a Man of Letters.

Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury’s chief biographer (and the interviewer, is a journalist and teacher from Lake Forest. When not leading creative writing classes at Columbia College, he’s traveling the country, lecturing on Bradbury’s life and work, aka the “conglomerate heap of trash” that was the sum of his influences: Poe, comics, radio—most profoundly, the circus man Mr. Electrico.

In 2005 Weller published The Bradbury Chronicles, the only authorized biography, then followed up with 2010’s interview book Listen to the Echoes, the result of ten years of conversation with the Waukegan native. This month sees another tribute: Shadow Show, an anthology of short stories inspired by and honoring Mr. Bradbury that Weller co-edited with his friend Mort Castle. Its contributors offer testament to Bradbury’s standing in the world of letters: Margaret Atwood, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, and many others.

On Thursday, July 19, on the heels of the book’s release (but even before its launch party), Weller stops by Energy BBDO to talk about his latest project and—with luck—offer visitors a glimpse of his own “heap of trash,” aka the stuff that’s inspired him. He’s also promised to Skype in a very special guest to read to us. We’re not sure who, but Ms. Atwood’s Headlife was the first and only story excerpted before the book went to press.