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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.
Yeah, it should, considering he is one of the most influential SF writers to date. Slashdot loves scifi, so, we love to hear about this stuff.
There's a reason why Foundation and Dune come up a lot.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
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.
No, it's the age at which science fiction authors start to travel backwards in time.
If you can find me one geek who doesn't list an SF writer as a major influence in their interest in technology, then I'll agree with you.
I have my doubts that you would succeed though. For me it was Douglas Adams.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
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.
Your Heinlein paperbacks are sticky, aren't they?
Some people have time enough for love.
No SF author has ever creeped me out as much as Bradbury can. He can describe a happy summer day with just a note of ... something ... that makes you think you're in a horror story despite every description being pleasant. "There will come soft rains" from The Martian Chronicles still sticks with me 20 years after reading it for the first time, long after we stopped fearing the bomb. Truely a genius at his craft.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
I don't think anyone questions his credentials, but I think it does make for a slow news day to point out his 88th birthday. Is this an annual announcement that is made here? Were there front page stories for his 73rd, 68th, or what about 86th?
For what it is worth, it also was the 91st birthday of John Lee Hooker, the 69th birthday of Carl Yastrzemski, and the 146th birthday of Claude Debussy. If you want to argue that these people don't fit in with the slashdot crowd (and before you do, don't forget that baseball nerds and geeks by far predate computer geeks), shouldn't we have mentioned that the 11th was Steve Wozniak's 58th birthday, the 7th was James Randi's 80th birthday (good lord, I didn't know he was that old, but at least that is one of those decadal numbers people get all worked up about), the 5th was Neil Armstrong's 78th, and the 19th would have been Gene Roddenberry's 87th birthday.
Unless there is some significance to this particular birthday, I would have to agree with the GP that it must be a slow news day for this to make the front page.
Not to nitpick but several games have rather lengthy scripts with many more lines than in a typical movie. Planescape: Torment, for example, is said to have a script of more than 800,000 words
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players