Something Wicked This Way Comes

From a Gene Kelly screenplay to a novel

The story started as "The Black Ferris", a short story Ray Bradbury published in 1948. In 1958 he turned it into a screenplay for the actor and director Gene Kelly, and delivered it to Kelly's house himself.

Gene Kelly agreed to make the film but could not raise the money. Ray Bradbury then turned the screenplay into a novel, published in 1962.

Pieces of other Ray Bradbury books are in it. Mr. Dark, the tattooed man, comes from The Illustrated Man, and Mr. Cooger and the carousel that changes a person's age had first turned up in "The Black Ferris". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction suggests the book may also be a tribute to Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935), which Ray Bradbury had put in an anthology in 1956.

Where the title comes from

The title is a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. In Act 4, scene 1, one of the three witches feels her thumbs prickle and says that something wicked is coming. The next person through the door is Macbeth.

The novel is divided the same way a visit from a carnival would be: a short prologue, then three parts called "Arrivals", "Pursuits" and "Departures".

Charles Halloway

The hero of the book is not one of the boys. Charles Halloway, Will's father, is the janitor of the town library. He married late and had his son late, and he worries that he is too old to be the father Will needs. He envies the boys their energy.

He is also the one who does the research. He finds out that Cooger and Dark's carnival has been touring the country for at least eighty years, and that it always arrives somewhere in October. Charles Halloway calls its people "autumn people", a phrase Ray Bradbury had already used in The October Country.

Anthony Bernardo, writing for EBSCO, calls Charles Halloway the most fully realised figure in the book. He is a hero who feels the carnival's pull himself and has to resist it.

How it was received

Kirkus Reviews called the book an allegory of good and evil set in a haunted landscape. The reviewer said its allusions, such as "the October country" and "the autumn people", would be familiar to Ray Bradbury's readers, and recommended it to all his admirers.

Critics have been divided. Some find the story strong but say the heavy metaphors slow it down. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls it episodic and rather heavily symbolic. Anthony Bernardo thinks the many links to Ray Bradbury's other books make the novel a good introduction to his work.

The 1983 Disney film

Getting the film made took more than twenty years. In January 1971 Ray Bradbury agreed to write a new screenplay for the English director Jack Clayton. A version to be produced by Kirk Douglas's company for Paramount was cancelled in January 1977.

Walt Disney Productions finally made it, with Jack Clayton directing from Ray Bradbury's screenplay. The cast included Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce and Diane Ladd. Green Town was built on an acre of the Disney backlot, and filming began on 28 September 1981.

The film opened on 29 April 1983 in more than 800 cinemas. Reviews were mostly good, but ticket sales were disappointing. Ray Bradbury was reported to be pleased with it.

Something Wicked This Way Comes in Paris

The Paris publisher Denoël, which had been publishing Ray Bradbury in its Présence du futur series since 1954, brought out the novel in 1964. The French title is La Foire des ténèbres, which means "the fair of darkness". Richard Walters translated it.

Gallimard in Paris reissued the translation in 2006 in its Folio science-fiction series, revised by Brigitte Mariot. The novel itself never leaves Illinois.