Shadow Show

Starred review from June 25, 2012
Ray Bradbury’s recent death renders this loving tribute anthology—a “homecoming” of “fantastic brethren from all over the world,” as Bradbury writes in the introduction—all the more poignant. The nameless narrator of Neil Gaiman’s “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” has forgotten Bradbury’s name, but not his stories. The heroine of Alice Hoffman’s “Conjure” has her destiny and her closest friendship changed by Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bonnie Jo Campbell tells the origin story of an illustrated man in “The Tattoo,” and Bayo Ojikutu’s “Reservation” describes a dystopia that is a near cousin to that of Fahrenheit 451. Some of the best stories pay tribute in their evocation of Bradburyian themes: the vast possibilities and indescribable melancholy of childhood in Joe Hill’s “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” the profundity of loss in John McNally’s “The Phone Call,” and the renewing power of storytelling in Robert McCammon’s “Children of the Bedtime Machine.” Bradbury biographer Weller and horror doyen Castle have produced a fine remembrance of a great writer, a deeply moving testament to his enduring appeal.