Comments on: RIP, Ray Bradbury

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:37:00 +0000

No, but they did meet.

By: pKp

pKp — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:05:00 +0000

That’s a really hard question.

Lord of the Rings, probably.

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:29:00 +0000

” Oh, it’s a man. In a pup tent!” That was running through my head this weekend, apropos of nothing (or so I thought).

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:27:00 +0000

” antelopes. gazelles.”

I probably haven’t read that in 25 years.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:00:00 +0000

I think he was a bit of a cantankerous old man – I heard a piece of an interview on an NPR program yesterday from 2004. He was seriously pissed at Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11. The interviewer wasn’t able to get him to explain why he was so pissed other than that Moore apparently didn’t return his angry phone calls; Bradbury dodged the question about whether or not he disagrees with the politics.

From what I can gather based on some quick google research, I think he had some whack political views and apparently was a big supporter of Schwarzenegger as governor of CA.

His body of work is beyond reproach, of course, unlike other sci-fi writers with whack views (e.g. Orson Scott Card). There isn’t any craziness in anything I’ve read by him, and his most obviously political statement piece (Fahrenheit 451) remains relevant and important.

Still, learning that someone who influences you greatly is crazy-cantankerous (as opposed to sweetly cantankerous e.g. Maurice Sendak) inevitably mars (heh) your opinion of them.

By: CH

CH — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:55:00 +0000

Well… I was a bit disappointed in how he denied he was a science fiction writer or that his writing was science fiction… but that was due to me being a sci-fi fan and feeling he was denying that he “belonged to us”. I do think he had the right to define himself as a writer and his writing in whatever way he wanted, nothing wrong there.

By: CH

CH — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:47:00 +0000

The Illustrated Man… I had totally forgotten it! Haven’t read it since I was a kid… and now I got a sudden need to read it _now_!!!
Thank you for mentioning it, I felt like I needed to read something from Bradbury as a tribute, and I was perusing my library yesterday and wondering what would be fitting, but yes, you solved it for me! The Illustrated Man!!! I love short stories, often more so than the full length novels from the same authors (does that make me a heretic?), and I absolutely loved (to put it mildly) the stories in that book.

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:34:00 +0000

Vale Bradbury.

By: Vanwall Green

Vanwall Green — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:46:00 +0000

I met Ray Bradbury a number of times since the early ’70s, he was always a great listen, his voice was so distinctive, in life and in his writing. Here’s a nifty link:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury#.T8-DwYuqAeI

By: Evi L. Bloggerlady

Evi L. Bloggerlady — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:37:00 +0000

http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/06/rip-ray-bradbury.html RIP Ray. We will miss you.

By: Rosin Ffield

Rosin Ffield — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:10:00 +0000

When i was tiny growing up, his Martian Chronicles-rather than any social order-taught me what has value in life and inspired everlasting awe. This below is from sometime ago, it has part of his story and part of mine…the two have an intersection blending…:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150873429522098&set=a.97791972097.92447.749997097&type=1&theater

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 01:46:00 +0000

Did he and Harlan Ellison get along?

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 00:29:00 +0000

This sucks. His words meant so much to me as a young man. His poetry comes from another time and place. So glad he lived as long as he did and get to see so many of his dreams come to fruition. Godspeed, Mr. Bradbury.

By: tubacat

tubacat — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:49:00 +0000

I was just thinking, yesterday, as I watched the transit of Venus, how my seemingly realistic images of the atmosphere and surface of Venus had come from a science fiction story I read as a teenager — which turns out to be “The Long Rain”, from The Illustrated Man. Bradbury was a certain source of pleasure back then, and, like danimagoo says, one of my first encounters with weirdness…rest in peace, and thank you, Mr. Bradbury.

By: danimagoo

danimagoo — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:07:00 +0000

The Martian Chronicles was the first book I read that was … well, weird. It definitely turned me on to the weird. I think my favorite was Something Wicked This Way Comes.

By: danimagoo

danimagoo — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:05:00 +0000

Bradbury was not a big fan of the internet, or of modern technology in general, and was not shy about expressing those views. My guess would be that’s what Cory is referring to.

By: Gary61

Gary61 — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:21:00 +0000

Obama pays tribute to Bradbury, via LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-issues-statement-on-ray-bradburys-death-20120606,0,1846140.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29

By: timquinn

timquinn — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:45:00 +0000

probably the monorail thing, wouldn’t let it go.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:31:00 +0000

I liked the little ink drawings in “Golden Apples Of The Sun.”

All I’ll need to do is glance at those creepy little drawings and I’m 12 years old on the porch hammock again.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:29:00 +0000

They spent an ungodly amount of money to make a pretty lousy movie version just a couple years ago.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:15:00 +0000

My favorite short story of his would probably have to be “Frost and Fire”, from R is for Rocket. A lovely piece of science fiction.

It’s a bit of a shame he apparently gave up on sci-fi pretty early on; much of his later work had nothing to do with it.

By: Vince Pugliese

Vince Pugliese — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Occasionally, there is an alignment of talent which produces masterworks such as this:
http://ec.wikia.com/wiki/Weird_Science-Fantasy_Vol_1_25

Specifically, Mr. Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” as interpreted by Al Williamson!

.vp

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:12:00 +0000

He finally got around to publishing an anthology of all the stories he did in that vein in 2001, with “From the Dust Returned”.

By: Jellodyne

Jellodyne — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Might be time to reread Death is a Lonely Business again. The man was a poet.

By: Rossi

Rossi — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:32:00 +0000

I realize it’s bad form to talk ill of the recently dead. But, you brought it up Cory, and I’m curious about what stuff he did to dissapoint you.

By: Rossi

Rossi — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:32:00 +0000

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:31:00 +0000

He turned on a lot of young readers to good imaginative writing that he delivered in pieces the perfect length for their short attention spans, and he tackled a lot of challenging moral issues. I liked “The Homecoming” about a sad little boy who seems to be completely normal growing up in a family of witches, werewolves, and vampires, and even though his family and all his aunts uncles and cousins are literally monsters, they love him.

By: manybellsdown

manybellsdown — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:24:00 +0000

I’ve been gutted all morning since I saw this on the news. Four times I went to events where he signed my books and never managed to stammer out more than a nervous “thank you”.

By: Mitchell Glaser

Mitchell Glaser — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:15:00 +0000

Bradbury was an integral part of living in West Los Angeles. You could frequently see him riding his bike around town (I believe he never had a driver’s license). It’s well known that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library. But probably the best local memory is a story he wrote long ago about a lonely sea monster who mistakes the foghorn of a lighthouse for the voice of its own kind: Bradbury got the idea of the sea monster from seeing the wreckage of a famous old wooden roller coaster from Pacific Ocean Park. POP (as we used to call it, oh the childhood memories I have of POP!) was a pleasure pier and amusement park that stuck into the ocean off of Los Angeles, which fell into disuse and slowly succumbed storms, fire and vandals. The remains of its signature roller coaster littered the local beaches for decades. And the unique sensibility of Ray Bradbury confabulated the old park with an old denizen of the ocean, one of the last of its kind as well. There are some who labeled Bradbury as kind of a dinosaur himself, which might have pleased him in a curmudgeonly way.

By: Azu

Azu — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:02:00 +0000

/idly wonders if he ever fucked that one girl, like she adamantly requested in song