Today marks the centenary of Ray Bradbury's birth. Though best known for novels such as Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine, there was a time, sword-brothers, when Ray wrote for pulps like Thrilling Wonder Stories, Weird Tales, and Planet Stories. In fact, Ray collaborated on a planetary adventure tale with none other than Leigh Brackett. A minor classic titled "Lorelei of the Red Mist". 

But, let's start from the start. Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois. While still a preteen, he developed a love for the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is what happened in the summer of 1930:

"I couldn't stop reading [ERB's] books. I couldn't stop memorizing them line by line and page by page. Worst of all, when I saw my friends, I couldn't stop my mouth. The words just babbled out. Tarzan this and Jane that, John Carter here and Dejah Thoris there. And when it wasn't those incredible people it was Tanar of Pellucidar or I was making noises like a tyrannosaurus rex and behaving like a Martian thoat, which, everyone knows, has eight legs." 

Bradbury wasn't just checking out Burroughs novels from the Waukegan library; he was also buying issues of Weird Tales from the local newsstand. One author in particular tripped his trigger and helped push him toward a career as an author:

"In the hardbound book field there were a few writers, of course, who set me going, but in the short-story form CAS stood alone on my horizon. [Clark Ashton Smith] filled my mind with incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures on those worlds and in those cities. . . . Take one step across the threshold of his stories, and you plunge into color, sound, taste, smell, and texture — into language.”

Ray's family moved to Los Angeles when he was fourteen. He very quickly started working himself into the local SFF fandom community. Bradbury became an "official" sci-fi fan in October 1937, when he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League (LASFL). In 1939, he attended the first Worldcon ever, which was held in New York City. As his friend, Forry Ackerman, recounts it here, Ray made a point of visiting A. Merritt at the Atlantic Weekly offices to get Abe's autograph.

Ackerman wasn't the only friend Bradbury found in the ranks of the LASFL. He was soon hanging out with the likes of Hannes Bok, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett. Brackett and Kuttner, in particular, became mentors to the aspiring author. According to legend, Kuttner once told Ray to just "shut up and write".

By 1941, Ray sold his first story and his career as a pulp author was launched. He was placing stories like "The Candle" in Weird Tales and "King of the Gray Spaces" in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. For three years, 1941 to 1944, Brackett and Bradbury would meet every Sunday at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica. According to Ray,

“I would bring along a new short story (dreadful) and she would let me see one of her Planet Stories novel chapters (beautiful) and I would praise hers and she would kick hell out of me and I’d go home and rewrite my imitation of Leigh Brackett.” 

Then, in 1944...aw, hell, I'll let Leigh Brackett tell the story:

"[Lorelei of the Red Mist] is as much Ray Bradbury's as it is mine--exactly as much. ... In late summer of 1944 I had finished about half of a 20,000-worder for Planet [Stories]. Suddenly lightning struck and (no one was more amazed than I) I had a job working on the screenplay for The Big Sleep, for Howard Hawks. Obviously I would not have time to finish the story, and I asked Ray if he would like to tackle it. He had nothing to go on but what I had down on paper. I never worked from an outline in those days (and often regretted it) and I had no idea where the story was going. Ray took the story and finished it, completely on his own. I never read a word of it until he handed me the manuscript, and I never changed a word after that. I'm convinced to this day that he did a better job with the second half than I would have done. Bradbury's section begins with the line, 'He saw the flock, herded by more of the golden hounds.' Ray did some of his best writing for Planet, and this was some of that."

For those who have never read it, "Lorelei of the Red Mist" is set in Brackett's Solar System milieu. The protagonist, Hugh Starke, is on the run from the Venusian authorities. He crash lands in the Mountains of White Cloud and ends up in the middle of a war. The "stunted" Starke very soon finds his mind placed in the body of a tortured--but mighty--warrior and it just gets wilder from there.

Looking back from now, it seems insane for Brackett to have given a story like this to the man who would later write novels like Dandelion Wine. Looking at it from then, however, Leigh would've seen a young writer who grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and A. Merritt, just like she had. A writer who, by his own admission, had been writing "imitations" of Brackett's stories. Here was Bradbury's chance to step up to the big leagues and he ran with it.

Ray took that story of Starke, a man with two souls—and gorgeous Rann of the dazzling, green-tipped breasts—and finished it, creating a minor classic in the process. As Leigh herself said--with thirty years to think on it--Bradbury did a better job than she would have.

Bradbury would never go all-out like that again. Never again would he raise the black flag and—as Brackett so eloquently put it—engage in the “dark trade in heroes” with such grim intensity. His later stories tended to be more philosophical and more nostalgic. However, for one bright, shining, bloody moment, Ray was right there in the High Hall of Planetary Adventurers, slamming shots of segur-whiskey and daring anyone to impugn the honor of Waukegan, Illinois.

Happy centennial, Ray.