Ray Bradbury, 1920 - 2012

[cleolinda]

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.

I have a lot of feelings about this, and I'm not even sure how to articulate all of them. I haven't read everything he's ever written; we had Fahrenheit 451 in high school, of course, but I liked Something Wicked This Way Comes a good bit more. I actually just reread The

Comments

[la_donna_pietra]

I have been reading his quotes since I saw the news, and of all the excellent things he said or wrote, this one really jumped out at me:

"The ability to 'fantasize' is the ability to survive."

And it really is.

[greyduck]

Excellently put, and I just finished a re-read of Martian Chronicles a few months ago.

I'd agree that of the "greats," Bradbury used Hope, how important it is to cherish and how badly it can be betrayed, the most as an element in his stories. It's a charming mix of idealism and realism that nobody else could quite manage. Clarke's thing was more Wonder than Hope, for instance. (Mind you, I enjoy Clarke's short stories immensely and he's my favorite of the three. Asimov often leaves me cold for no reason I can put my finger on.)

[la_donna_pietra]

Asimov is more Cleverness than Wonder or Hope.

[greyduck]

*ponders*

Yeah. I think I can go with that. Asimov was best at 'smart for smart's own sake,' with much less of the emotional underpinnings that tie you to a story.

Cheerfully Disagree

[runa27]

Really? I mean don't get me wrong, Asimov was all over the "smart people as heroes" - hell, a majority of his classic Robot Stories were basically just mystery/detective fiction with scifi elements - BUT.

I recall when I was a teen and reading his work for the first time - including "Profession", a brilliant short story, READ IT, seriously! - and I remember reading everything, even his essays, even his introductions and prefaces and forwards on other people's novels, everything by him I could find, and you know what? The thing that blew my mind, that made me pretty much an Asimov fangirl for life, wasn't "smart people saving the day"... it was his humanism. His sheer, unadulterated faith that despite all its flaws, humanity as a whole was kinda gonna be okay. That we could fix the worst of our problems if we just put our minds and our gumption to it. And that even though there's always gonna be a few bad seeds, most of us are okay. (Because science

[greedyskunk]

Our high school curriculum was more focused on international literature, so I never had to read Fahrenheit 451. I plan on rectifying that this summer.

I do remember reading "All Summer in a Day" in junior high. Twenty years later and I'm still haunted by the poor girl being forgotten in the closet.

[icprncs]

Yes. I read that story in 7th grade and it literally shaped my life. I'd had no real concept before then of how we could be cruel to each other just for the sake of being cruel, and I started to really examine everything around me in light of that realization. Family instilled the critical thinking skills, but that story made me *want* to use them.

[chibi_regalli]

I know. I remember reading it at about the same time (though I'm not certain whether or not it was my first, we did a whole unit on Bradbury and middle school just blends together for me), and the class was actually assigned to write a "what happens next" story.

[icprncs]

I've always considered him essentially a fantasy author; he simply used SF settings and details for some of his work because it offered a useful framework, especially in that era.

I agree with you on the element of hope. I found much of his work to have a flavor of melancholy, but that was because that thread of hopefulness was always woven through, and the dissolution of that hope--whether in the story itself or in the real world where what he offered didn't come to be--was a melancholy thing. And yet without that hopefulness, it all would have been for naught, so hope was what we had to always hold somehow. I think I learned a lot of that idea from him.

[cornerofmadness]

very well said. I read Fahrenheit 451 for my university's Read a Banned Book project this year (ironic that it, too, is a banned book).

I agree whole heartedly about number one (a running argument between me and my mother), though number two has not proven true for me.

Bradbury's work shaped my imagination when I was young and leaves its footprints today