Ray Bradbury in another world

Ray BRADBURY sat like a wounded lion on an overstuffed chair in the lair of his writing room. Silky white hair brushed forward, full of plans and growls, he gave every appearance of being about to leap from the chair and pace through the private jungle of books that surrounded him. Books on a table, books in boxes, books on shelves, books on the floor. One expected vines from the ceiling and the far-off bellow of a bull elephant.

But unable to walk without a walker, his right arm paralyzed from a stroke, the old lion, just four days from turning 83, is trapped in his own body, its strength gone to bulk, its energy flagging. Only his mind prowls the forests now, but it remains full of life, full of dreams and full of stories.

Here was the master in repose, a man some regard as the greatest science fiction writer ever, because he mixed morality with make-believe and fused the rules, the hopes and the deficiencies of his other worlds with the world we occupy. We were as one with Mars and with the galaxies beyond.

But it wasn’t through science fiction that I met the man who sat before me in shorts, a dress shirt and no shoes. I discovered him in the early 1950s in a short story he wrote for the old Saturday Evening Post, about an aging sailor who lived in a small house in a field of waving wheat and imagined himself still at sea. The prose was evocative and lyrical, a perfect marriage of mood and imagery, and I’ve loved him ever since. “He wanted to be buried at sea,” Bradbury said. “They buried him in a sea of wheat instead.” He laughed. “It was full of metaphors.”

I used the publication of his new book, a collection called “Bradbury Stories: 100 of Bradbury’s Most Celebrated Tales” and his 83rd birthday next Friday, as an excuse to visit him, but I would have gladly stopped by his house in Cheviot Hills for no reason at all. I admit to a case of hero worship, and I wanted to thank him, in his time of lengthening nights, for contributing to my life and to the lives of millions of others.

What he told me, as we sat in his book jungle of a room, barely lighted by two table lamps, was that even now, his credo is to never give up, no matter what. It was a decision he made 3 1/2 years ago when a stroke changed his life. “On the second day I was in the hospital,” he said, “I made up a motto: To hell with it, get your work done. I called my daughter in Arizona and began revising a novel over the phone.”

Work is his love. Work and family. If he couldn’t write, he would die. Unable to type now, Bradbury continues to dictate his work to the daughter, Alexandria, in Phoenix. He has a collection of new short stories, “The Cat’s Pajamas,” coming out next spring. “Isn’t that a great title?” he asks, eyes bright behind his trademark heavy, black-rimmed glasses. He is without darkness in his travail, without self-pity or bitterness.

Life has been good to the old lion. A 55-year marriage has produced four children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He has, in the warmth of his surroundings, turned out 32 books, plus more than 100 television shows, movies and plays. Not bad for a man who claims he couldn’t write anything in high school. “It was only by persistence and love,” he says, “that I learned to write.”

When he isn’t dictating stories, he reads. Shakespeare, Yeats, Robert Frost, Alexander Pope. They all influenced his life, as did Dickens and George Bernard Shaw and Hemingway, “at a certain time.” Now he is a major influence in the lives of others, a literary icon slowed by an impaired body, but freed by a mind that continues wandering to new worlds. Still, he regrets that he can no longer physically travel and yearns for the years when he could walk the ancient streets of Europe.

He paused, remembering, the old lion shorn of agility, his prowling days gone. “My idea of the perfect life,” he finally said, speaking more softly, “is to walk across Paris with Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender Is the Night’ under one arm, and to stop and read from it now and again, and to do that from one end of the city to the other until sunset.” His voice lowers. “My great sadness is not being able to get back there. I would love to make just one more trip.”

Although hard of hearing and partially disabled, in the starry nights of his vast imagination, Ray Bradbury will always travel where he pleases, whether it’s on a far-away planet with crimson skies or here on Earth, still among us, glad to be making plans, telling stories and dreaming dreams.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.