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Ray Bradbury Turns 88
Lawrence Person writes "Legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury turned 88 years old on August 22. Happy Birthday Ray! 'The Illustrated Man' was one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and I've been hooked ever since. I'm sure that's true of a lot of science fiction writers and readers, be it that, or 'The Martian Chronicles,' or 'Fahrenheit 451.' There are also several videos of Ray on that page, including one where he doesn't endorse Sunsweet Prunes." I remember when another student on the bus loaned me "Fahrenheit 451," and my middle-school English teacher Mrs. Young was smart enough to include "All Summer in a Day" in her curriculum.
Should this really make the front page of Shlashdot? A writer's birthday? Someone tag this "slow news day" please.
May you never reach 451 degrees.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I liked the short-story The Pedestrian. From what I hear, it was the basis for Fahrenheit 451, however, I think that one can get some different meanings out of each.
What's interesting about Fahrenheit 451 are some of the parallels that could be drawn to today's society. Guy Montag's wife has a seashell like device that she puts in her ears so she can listen to the radio, much like today we have iPods, where people can seem to be in their own little worlds.
The fascination she has too with the telescreens, and wanting to be involved in one of the, for lack of a better word, "soaps," could tell of our society's own inordinate fascination with the personal lives of the "rich and famous."
Finally, that overwhelming desire for more, another telescreen, even though the last one was put in within a year prior, could speak to our society's want for material goods.
Whether or not Mr. Bradbury believes our society could degenerate to a point where we burn books, I would argue that our society already contains elements of his fictional society.
The Pedestrian is similar in that the everyday man is fascinated with what takes place on his television screen, and cannot be bothered to calmly walk down the street and think.
One connection I believe can be found between the short story and the novel is that in The Pedestrian, the main character is arrested for walking down the street (as nobody does that anymore, he must be suspicious), and in Fahrenheit 451 the girl who talks to Guy Montag mentions that her uncle got arrested once for walking down the street.
Still alive, yet he still has a tombstone in a cemetery in L.A. The same cemetery were Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin are buried. Strange, but true.
About average for slashdot. And anyone who doesn't think Bradbury's birthday is relevant on a tech forum needs their head checked, preferably into something made of steel.
Bradbury's Farenheit 451 is really not that good. The writing is pretty poor, and the storytelling is uneven. Bradbury uses silliloquies to express his points. So what you end up with is a series of monotonous essays rather than an actual story.
Clarke is dead but Bradbury persists. There is no God.
Oh yes, I've read your precious Fahrenheit and your Martian Chronicles, much to my dismay. Simply because he said 'teh future!' in one and 'Mars, bitches!' in the next somehow makes these browbeating, one-dimensional allegories that could literally have been set in any place and time "Great Works in Science Fiction" (TM).
H. G. Wells. E. E. Smith. Not Ray Bradbury.
Ray Bradbury was a good friend of senator Packwood, and when the senator's political career began to unravel amidst allegations of sexual abuse and harassment from his female staffers, Bradbury tried to defend him on an episode of politically incorrect. Among other things, he said something to the effect of "who hasn't slapped a girl on the butt?" and "I sexually harassed my wife until she married me."
A class act, that guy is.
By some chance both All Summer in a Day and Sound of Thunder were in my 7th grade lit book, better than the crap my kids are assigned to read.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Now there's a simple, powerful, and disturbing story. I read it when I was in my early teens, and have never forgotten it.
For a (so-called) science fiction writer, Bradbury was an unabashed romantic of the American school. He goes right along Steinbeck in my view.
... is this man's Nobel Prize for Literature? I'm completely serious.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
because I have never heard of him and I read lots of science fiction...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It seems Bradbury and Bukowski were in the same graduating class. According to their respective Wikipedia entries, both were born in 1920, and both graduated from Los Angeles High School.
Interesting bit of trivia if true...
-- anthony
http://www.whuddafug.com
Years ago I hung out a lot in an IRC Channel with one of his nephews.
I always thought 451 was over-rated, my school taught it along-side 1984 and Lost Paradise. I do however enjoy several of his other books.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I contend that Bradbury is the single greatest science fiction writer of our age. Period. What he did - his vision - and when he did it was truly remarkable.
I still remember reading the Martian Chronicles and the Illustrated Man. For a kid that didn't like to read for fun it says a lot about books that kept me up 3 nights straight to find out how things ended.
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I liked Bradbury a lot. And Heinlein. And E.E. Smith.
A few years later, Farmer and Stapledon.
At the age of 25, I discovered two very witty and humourous authors, namely Robert Sheckley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sheckley
and R.A. Lafferty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Lafferty
Not to forget Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, the Strugatskijs.
And of course, the British Authors: Douglas Adams, and Clarke, Moorcock, Brunner, Ballard, Aldiss,...
Among them, the great but not well-known David I. Masson ("The Caltraps of Time")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_I._Masson
Somebody just tell me to stop? ;-)
Thanks.
... but "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is one of my favorite, most enjoyed influences in terms of writing style and pure entertainment. I've read many of his other stories (and I agree with some that "Fahrenheit 451" isn't one of his better works, though it's undeniably important), and enjoyed them all.
However---and perhaps it's the time in my life that I read it---for pure *joy* at the written word and how he wields them, "SWTWC" is probably in the top five works which has most affected me (and this post is no, nor is it meant to be, reflection of Ray's abilities).
What makes these guys cool is that they could have probably just gotten away with writing crap, like so many authors do today, or they could have tried to prove they were smarter than everyone else by writing 'literature'. But they didn't. They wrote stuff that socially relevant and accessible to the people. As a result we have a good history or the social views of technology and cultural issues of the time. As they die we are losing first hand history from people who made living by objectively observing it and then writing it down in entertaining form.
So all these kids that think this is not relevant, well that because we know watch tv instead of read. No one becomes a scientist because of pulp fiction. Now everyone watches TV. Which is no so good because the bandwidth of TV is nowhere near as wide as the bandwidth of pulp fiction, so the vision and opinions tend to be limited and sanitized to what will attract sufficient viewers to pay the 200K it would take to develop a script, instead of the 20K it would take to buy a story. Of course, everyone now wants to be a millionaire overnight, so likely would think it was too much to develop a story and only get 20K.
The legacy of books that these guys left us is awesome. It is techy writing, unabashedly, unapologetically, and willingly. I will take this time to thank bradbury for the writing, be it science fiction, fantasy, or just fiction.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
F 451, 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World were required reading in my schools in the late 70's - 80's.
Not sure if they still make the kids read these anymore. I hope so.
In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at the Ingres convention in San Jose. Awesome speaker - I still remember the theme of his speech - science fiction to science reality. Very inspiring.
Do you have ESP?
Asimov may be better at the science part of scifi, but Bradbury is definitely the better writer.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Modern SF Writers all stand on his shoulders when they write.
I couldn't find out when Ray Bradbury got married, but I would guess it was 40+ years ago. Believe or not there was a time where most did not even know the term sexual harrasment.
And isn't 88 a special age for hobbits, or something?
You are thinking of "eleventy-one."
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Fahrenheit 451 itself was censored in exactly the method we wrote about for years, and he didn't know it. When he later discovered it, he wrote this new piece to go in the end of the book. Everyone should read it.
http://members.iquest.net/~jswartz/jks/humor/451.htm
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is nothing short of brilliant. I must have read it half a dozen times. I never saw the movie; I didn't want it to ruin it for me.
"This letter that I am carving into the bullet is not a letter. It is my smile."
I piss off bigots.
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl." He makes it sound so reasonable.
I piss off bigots.
I fondly recall that Fahrenheit 451 (along with Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) was one of the first really serious "adult" (in the non-porno sense) books I read, when I was all of maybe 11? 12? The visions and dark allegories of all three books, combined with the events of the late 60's (and Watergate, soon to follow), which made me realize that the Real World (TM) was not at all like what my History and Civics textbooks portrayed, helped to turn that impressionable, too-smart-for-his-own-good adolescent into the bitter, paranoid, mistrusting, cynical middle-aged grunt I have become. For all the ulcers, the insomnia, the times I beat my head against the wall in frustration at the direction of government and society, and the accumulated hair I tore out of my head along the way.....I thank you.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
POLITICS:
[George W. Bush is] wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a s***head and we're glad to be rid of him. And I'm not talking about his sexual exploits. I think we have a chance to do something about education.... It doesn't matter who does it -- Democrats or Republicans -- but it's long overdue. (Salon.com, August 29, 2001)
The great thing is our counter-revolution that occurred in the polls a few weeks ago. I think it's great. All the Democrats are out and the Republicans are going to have a chance in a couple of years. It doesn't make a difference what party you belong to--it's a chance for a fresh start. It's very exciting. (Speaking about the "Republican Revolution" of 1994)
Oh yeah, and he says that Fahrenheit 451 isn't really about censorship or oppressive governments:
http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/2
A silly little short squib of a thing, part of The Martian Chronicles, yet it has stuck in my mind for over fifty years.
That and The Sound of Thunder--the time travelling tourist steps on a butterfly--but everyone knows that one, of course... ...and the one about the automated house that keeps running, serving meals and scraping the uneaten meals into the dishwasher, reading the housewife her favorite poem (by Sara Teasdale), and so forth, apparently unaware that the family has been vaporized by an atomic bomb, with silhouettes of what they were doing burned into the paint on the outside of the house.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ray Bradbury was married in 1947. 60+ years! I had a chance to talk with his daughter about 5 yrs ago and she told me how old fashioned her parents were. They had been living in the same house for 40+ years and neither of them had ever learned to drive!
believe it or not, that doesn't make such behavior any less wrong
Happy birthday, Ray!
I performed a reading of "The Pedestrian" my senior year in high school for the Wisconsin state forensics program. I apparently did well enough with it that I went on to finals, for which I performed a cutting of "A Clockwork Orange" -- complete with the Russian bits -- and won the gold medal! Between that and the antics of my underground newspaper (we printed the notes from the school's meeting about a proposed dress code -- at Middleton High School!!!1!)*, I went from the geeky dweeb who everyone picked on to just about Thee Coolest Guy in School. It was a very good year. 8-)
* Lesson: Never let the nice kid set up the Science Department's AppleTalk network. You never know where a backdoor may be left open....
-- haaz.
"... and my middle-school English teacher Mrs. Young was smart enough to include "All Summer in a Day" in her curriculum."
My last high school English teacher, by contrast, declared that science fiction didn't merit being called literature and refused to even let us submit books reports about any SF novels. Several of us eloquently argued the matter with her, but to no avail. This same teacher gave birth to not one but two thoroughly gifted sons who both scored close to a perfect 1600 on the SAT, and who both appreciated science fiction unlike their mother; the entire family was eligible for Mensa, but in spite of it she held fast to this weird illogical notion.
Had this occurred after Bill Engvall's famous "Here's Your Sign" routine(s), I'd have offered dear Constance Pencall her own custom one.
I remember when another student on the bus loaned me "Fahrenheit 451,"
WHOA. Hold it right there buddy, a student loaned you Ray Bradbury's intellectual property, and you read it without paying the man?! Ray's going to drag his octogenarian ass to your house and give you a good solid SF-writer-caliber whoopin, I tell you what. Look at all the ruckus he caused just because someone borrowed his title; how do you think he's going to feel when he finds out you borrowed the whole book!
GASP!!!
Posting AC to prevent you group-thinking morons from modding me down for expressing a non-conforming view. Fascist pigs.
Ray Bradbury's a romantic? I always thought of Bradbury as a naturalist -- at least as far as characterization is concerned. As for whether or not he writes SF, I always thought he was more of a fantasist than a sci-fi writer. If he wants you to know that there are rockets, he'll tell you, but that's all he'll tell you. He doesn't care about how the rockets work, so he figures the reader doesn't need to know either.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
"Fahrenheit 451" is one of my classic sci-fi favorites. However, Ray also wrote "Dandelion Wine" (not sci-fi), which I read when I was pretty young. I could best sum it up as a story of a young boy that realizes he is alive and kind of marvels, at times, at the world around him. Great story!
He and Asimov must've gotten along quite well indeed.
Considering that I am your typical basement-dwelling /.er, I would say it is one of the perks I enjoy at work. So I dish it out as well. His and her-assment nothing to me, Your Honor.
...are middle aged....who wants to celebrate that?
-Matt
He is also a great admirer of George W Bush.
I have to say I lost a lot of respect and fondness for Bradbury over the whole Fahrenheit 9/11 title kerfuffle. And I don't even like Moore and have avoided his movies since researching them a bit. My mental image of him went from a starry-eyed dreamer to a crotchety old man shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN!" It made him seem to have more in common with Harlan Ellison than I ever guessed. I don't believe you should hold the character of a man against his works of fiction, but I can't pick up a book by either of them without that image constantly interfering with the story.
"I sexually harassed my wife until she married me."
I've always wondered how nerds used to get laid.
Most academics wouldn't know good literature if it bent them over a lectern and spanked them in front of a packed lecture hall. Most academics would be more comfortable with Moby Dick if it were a doctoral thesis on cetology instead of "This is what happened to Ishmael on the last voyage of the Pequod." If I wanted somebody else's opinion, I'd be better off asking my cat.
I write sci-fi for metalheads