R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

[3113]

Died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91.

 

[topace]

Died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91.

May you rest in peace forever Ray.

 

[Stella_Omega]

He wrote the books that made me want to write. He was a poet in his prose.

 

[RjThoughts]

He is one of the reasons why I graduated high school. If not for a book of his short stories and novellas, I would have flunked my Senior English. His imagination will be missed.

 

[LaRascasse]

I loved The Illustrated Man.

 

[mynameisben]

This saddens me immensely. Ray Bradbury has long been one of my favorite authors. I had the extreme pleasure of attending a science symposium in 1976, where he gave the keynote speech. The symposium was held in celebration of the Viking spacecraft launches headed for his favorite planet to write about, to dream about, the planet Mars. He spoke for over an hour, an unforgettable speech that covered everything from his boyhood dreams of going to Mars, to the inspirations for his stories and poems, to personal anecdotes which underscored his passion for people, for literature, and for all of life. He truly had the soul of a poet.

I Sing The Body Electric is not merely the title of one of Bradbury's anthologies, it was also his gift, it was his entire life. With unbelievable charisma, he spoke that day from the heart and he touched us all. The conclusion of his electrifying speech was the first time in my life I have witnessed an entire crowd of 5,000 people stand up and cheer, a body electric, not because it was the polite or the appropriate thing to do, but because we could not help ourselves. We could not and would not contain our overflowing joy. To the man who gave us everything he had to give in that one hour we gave back everything we had to give in gratitude. Thirty-six years have come and gone, and I still have never experienced anything like it, and I doubt I ever will.

His speech moved me so profoundly that day in 1976, I do not hesitate to credit Ray Bradbury as THE reason I took an interest in literature and in writing. I didn't own a single book at that time. Now, I have a personal library of well over a thousand books and I've read them all. But it is Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, that is the only book I own that is personally signed by the author himself, and it is the only autograph I have ever sought.

Dear God, Mr. Bradbury! I will sorely miss you, as will the countless millions of hearts you have inspired. Today, the world has lost one of America's greatest authors and poets. But more than that, we have lost a man who genuinely understood what it meant to live, to love, and to be a human being.

 

[mcguinness]

One of my literary heroes. I will miss him tremendously. He had a hell of a run.

 

[R. Richard]

A giant talent. but, read the last paragraph, about his early days. You gotta be determined.

Bradbury sold eight million copies of his books in 36 languages, according to The New York Times' obit. "By many estimations Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream," the Times writes. He attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college--instead, he read and wrote voraciously.

"When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week," he said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."

His best known book, Fahrenheit 451, was a dystopian tale set in the future about a society where books were banned and firefighters spent all day burning them. "Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits," the Associated Press writes.

Bradbury recently wrote a short essay responding to his favorite Snoopy comic strip about how much rejection he faced when he first began writing. "Starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn't realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn," he wrote.

 

[lovecraft68]

He wrote the books that made me want to write. He was a poet in his prose.

Same here. Lovecraft got me into reading, but Something Wicked this way comes made me want to write.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I thought he dies twenty years ago...

 

[PennLady]

I haven't read enough of his stuff.

He always seemed like such a genial guy in the interviews I saw, good sense of humor and outlook on things. We need more of that.

 

[mynameisben]

Ray Bradbury made it to the ripe old age of 91, but I wanted him to live forever. Looking back on his body of work, I realize that he definitely will. The Million-Year Picnic has only just begun.

 

[3113]

What strikes me most about his passing is that he's the last of the golden age sic-fi authors, like Asimov, Clark and Heinlein, ones who started out in pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks, who were formed in the age of Gernsback futures, Flash Gordon serials and radio transmitters. Here was a very exclusive club, having faith in a literature that was viewed as kid-stuff, and in their readers who were usually of all ages. They were the elder statesmen of the genre, getting it into orbit and leading the way. We won't see their like again, I think.

 

[RodenAddison]

Fahrenheit 451 for me. He had a good long run.

 

[TE999]

Another icon in the pantheon of authors that so brightened my adolescent reading experience has left us. I can see him sitting at a table in a sidewalk cafe in Eternity shooting the breeze with Asimov, Clarke, Lovecraft, Weinbaum and many others.

Rest in peace, Ray.

 

[PennLady]

Here is a PDF copy of a Bradybury short, "The Pedestrian." (Link via Roger Ebert) I'd never read this one -- it's good. Short, to the point and interesting.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

He wrote the books that made me want to write. He was a poet in his prose.

He was a truly magical writer, and no one could evoke the eeriness of everyday life like he could, not just in sci fi, but in mainstream lit as well. I don't even think of him as a scence fiction writer, because his real interest was in the human psyche. He was an artist in mood, and had a wonderfully gentle and lyrical touch even when he was scaring the shit out of you. It's only lately that I realize what an influence he was.

As it turned out, I ended up working right next to his hometown of Waukegan, IL, where the library and the park mentioned in several of his stories are now named after him. There's a story of his whose don't I don't remember, about a spinster librarian in a Midwestern town who's haunted by a sexually predatious satyr. He lurks in a gorge in a park she has to cross every night, and that gorge is in the park now named after him. I used to eat lunch there.

 

[Anomandaris]

He was a giant in SF. His importance cannot be overstated. A great loss to the literary world.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

He wrote one children's book Switch on the Night. It was about a little boy who was afraid of the dark and one night Dark comes to visit him and shows him the moon, the stars, the crickets and the frogs. It's charming in a small child's book sort of way but when you read the story to twelve-year-olds (gruesome, cynical, hormonally challenged twelve-year-olds) and have them tell the story from their middle school perspective where Dark is now about seventeen you get some wonderful flights of imagination. Mostly they try and tell the same story from an older point of view but you also get tales that would make Lovecraft want to sleep with a nightlight. What I found most intriguing, though, were the occasional aching love stories of loss and grief . . . from the boys!


There turns out to be a significant difference between, "Hewwo, my name is Dark" (bat eyelashes) and, "Hello, my name . . . is Dark!"

 

[litfan10]

Ben put it best in the sixth post: his writing was a gift. Very imaginative and extremely thought provoking, so many great works.

 

[The_Young_Swell]

What strikes me most about his passing is that he's the last of the golden age sic-fi authors, like Asimov, Clark and Heinlein, ones who started out in pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks...

Not quite.

At 93, Frederik Pohl is the last surviving founding member of The Futurians. Pohl's first publication was in 1937 and his latest publication was in 2011.


Ray Bradbury was a great writer who had a huge influence on science fiction, but he didn't consider himself a science fiction writer. Bradbury believed that his works (except for Fahrenheit 451) belonged in the fantasy genre.

For most contemporaries, this distinction is no longer that rigidly observed, but since that was the man's preference, I wish to observe it here.

RIP

Ray Bradbury

 

[Dual_Triode]

Rest in peace, Guy Montag, a.k.a. Ray Bradbury.

 

[PennLady]

Here's a little photo essay on ten things Bradbury wrote about that have come to be, at least in similar form. This is at the Washington Post and may require registration, which is free.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...ns/2012/06/06/gJQAi8jFJV_gallery.html?hpid=z7

 

[mynameisben]

Here's a little photo essay on ten things Bradbury wrote about that have come to be, at least in similar form. This is at the Washington Post and may require registration, which is free.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...ns/2012/06/06/gJQAi8jFJV_gallery.html?hpid=z7

That was a fun visit. Thanks for the link! I didn't have to register as a member at the Washington Post.

 

[PennLady]

That was a fun visit. Thanks for the link! I didn't have to register as a member at the Washington Post.

Glad you liked it. I'm never sure what requires registration and what doesn't, as I have an ID there.