Thursday, June 7, 2012
R was for Ray…
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Photo courtesy of the Associated Press
Ray Bradbury poses for a photo at a Waukegan, Ill. park named in his honor in this 1990 AP file photo. He wrote about playing in the park as a child in "Dandelion Wine." Bradbury, who wrote everything from science-fiction and mystery to humor, died Tuesday, June 5, 2012 in Southern California. He was 91. |
Yesterday, science fiction and fantasy fans learned they had lost one of their long-time heroes, Ray Bradbury, who died in Los Angeles after a lengthy illness. He was 91.
The multiple award-winning author of such classics as “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “R is for Rocket” and “I Sing the Body Electric” inspired generations of people including filmmaker Steve Spielberg and author Steven King.
“He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career,” Spielberg said in an interview with CNN. “He lives on through his legion of fans. In the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal.”
“Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and 300 great stories,” King says in the same CNN article.
“One of the latter was called ‘A Sound of Thunder.’ The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant’s footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty.”But perhaps his greatest impact was on the millions of everyday people who read his work.
“I remember reading Fahrenheit 451 in high school and suddenly ‘getting’ sci-fi,” wrote wolfpack75, commenting on the author’s obit on the sci-fi website IO9.com. “In that, I had the realization that unlike the books I had read before, science fiction can be fiction you relate to and understand and, in some ways, can understand you. I was reading pure escapist fiction beforehand: superhero comic books, Dumas’ Musketeers series, Fantasy novels (D&D related mostly). It is an amazing story and lead (sic) me to such authors as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, etc. His books opened doors in my mind that I never knew were shut. For that I am eternally grateful and will miss Ray Bradbury.”
Like wolfpack75, I trace my real introduction to science fiction to Bradbury’s short stories. Before I discovered them, I didn’t tend to read much. I am dyslexic and a slow reader and as a child I hated reading because it took me such a long time to finish a book. As a result the only things I tended read were “Star Trek” books because I didn’t have to work so hard to understand them. Then one day, in school I believe, I was introduced to Bradbury and suddenly discovered a whole new universe.I don’t remember which story it was, but I do remember being wowed by the creepy, twisty ending. It eventually led me to reading some of his other works like “The Illustrated Man” and “The Martian Chronicles” and from there other full length novels by such authors as Robert Heinlein (“Starship Troopers,” “Glory Road,” “Friday”), Kurt Vonnegut (“Cat’s Cradle”) and Piers Anthony (The Incarnation of Immortality series).
For opening my eyes up to whole new universes of wonder I, like so many others, owe Ray Bradbury a debt that can never be repaid. And as an aspiring sci-fi writer myself, I can only hope to be half as eloquent as he was.That said, I will leave the last word about his death to the great author himself who wrote in “Fahrenheit 451”:
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
“It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
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