We Almost Got an ‘Addams Family’ Written by Ray Bradbury
Horror and sci-fi are closely related and often cross streams, though the masters of the genres tend not to stray from their sides. We’re never going to get James Cameron’s Dracula or Eli Roth’s I, Robot, as lit as that would be. That’s why it makes sense that Ray Bradbury, known to the internet via scantily clad memes as the “greatest sci-fi writer in history,” struck up a friendship with Charles Addams, creator of The Addams Family, and almost ended up writing the creepy and kooky clan.
You’d think Addams and Bradbury would meet naturally through what we hope were their weird-ass social circles, but they actually became acquainted after Addams was hired in 1946 to illustrate Bradbury’s short story “Homecoming” for Mademoiselle magazine, which apparently used to be a lot cooler. Bradbury liked Addams’ vision of his story, which was about the humane black sheep in a family of vampires, and reached out to him to collaborate. At that time, Addams hadn’t fully developed his own cast of characters, and he saw Bradbury’s Elliotts as a potential vessel.
“We had similar imaginations, that’s why we got on so well,” Bradbury later said. “I realized he was a kindred spirit, so we made plans to write a book together. I was going to do the stories, and he was going to do the illustrations.” Specifically, the stories were meant to be a history of the Elliott family, which ended up including an eccentric uncle, a melancholy teen witch and a pet spider.
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Mysterious. One might say “spooky.”
Unfortunately, as usual, capitalism got in the way. “Time went by, and we couldn’t find a publisher who would pay a little bit of money to him and a little bit to me to proceed with the book,” he continued. “So he went his way and created The Addams Family, and I went my own way and created my family in this book,” From the Dust Returned, which was published in 2001.
Bradbury admitted the stories were “quite similar,” though allowed that his weren’t “quite as funny” and ended up being based on his own family.
Does that mean Bradbury is a vampire? He didn’t actually come out and say it, but it would make a lot of sense.
