The unnamed narrator in some ways resembles Bradbury himself. Like the narrator, Bradbury wrote motion picture screenplays in the early 1950s and even worked with director John Huston on Moby Dick (1956). The narrator, a talented writer, is naive, idealistic, and unwilling to let an idea go before he has worked out all of its possibilities.

This last factor makes him a dogged investigator; when presented with the mystery of the undead Arbuthnot, he relentlessly tracks down clues. He feels a deep personal need to know the answers to nagging questions.

He is surrounded by a cast of bizarre and eccentric characters. Some of them are based on real-life figures. For instance, Fritz Wong — an imperious director who only respects people if they stand up to him and call him names the way he calls them names — seems to be based on director Fritz Lang, with a...