Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ray Bradbury Has Died

Posted by Unknown on from the he-just-moved-to-mars dept.

dsinc was the first to note, but an anonymous reader writes "Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, the dystopian novel about the logical conclusion of many trends in modern society, and many other works that have inspired fans of speculative fiction for decades, has died at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, California, Tuesday night, June 5th, 2012. No details on how he died were released, but I suspect it may have had something to do with the Earth orbiting the sun over 90 times since he was born. I guess we'll have to wait to be sure."

16 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. The most human side of scifi... by Art+Popp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is found in that man's works. He is the reason my Mom understands the wonder of extraterrestrial life, the temptations and costs of technological solutions to social problems, and has any clue as to what her son is thinking.

    I owe that man a great deal more than I've spent on his books.

    1. Re:The most human side of scifi... by elgeeko.com · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Very well put. He made a huge impact on me growing up. A lot of people think of him as only a Sci-Fi writer, but his works went way beyond that. My wife is anything buy a Scifi fan, but she was deeply influenced by Bradbury and his "Zen and the Art of Writing". He was a true master and will be deeply missed.

    2. Re:The most human side of scifi... by Kiyyik · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Amen to that... more than his hard SF work, his stories of sheer damn everyday magic -- and I'm talking Dandelion Wine here, and Death is a Lonely Business, and so many others, captivated the hell out of me. He was the high water mark of what speculative fiction can accomplish, and taught me what SF is really about. When a reader told me my writing was alike a cross between Bradbury and Lovecraft, it was the best thing ever. Tonight... well, tonight I have a jug of dandelion wine sitting in my fridge--liquid summer, my first attempt but no less sweet. Tonight I'll raise a glass to him, and remember the long ago summers and the magic they held and the man who taught me to see them. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

    3. Re:The most human side of scifi... by SteveFoerster · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, very well put. Fahrenheit 451 was so far ahead of the times it is frightening.

      Far ahead when it was written, perhaps. As he himself put it, "I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it."

      --
      Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
    4. Re:The most human side of scifi... by jazzmans · · Score: 5, Interesting

      http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+beggar+on+Dublin+bridge.-a03579795

      "A fool,' I said. "That's what I am.'

      "Why?' asked my wife. "What for?'

      I brooded by our third-floor hotel window. On the Dublin street below a man passed, his face to the lamplight. "Him,' I muttered. "Two days ago----'

      Two days ago as I was walking along, someone had "hissed' me from the hotel alley. "Sir, it's important! Sir!'

      I turned into the shadow. This little man in the direct tones said, "I've a job in Belfast if I just had a pound for the train fare!'

      I hesitated.

      "A most important job!' he went on swiftly. "Pays well! I'll--I'll mail you back the loan! Just give me your name and hotel----'

      He knew me for a tourist. But it was too late; his promise to pay had moved me. The pound note crackled in my hand, being worked free from several others.

      The man's eye skimmed like a shadowing hawk. "If I had two pounds, I could eat on the way----'

      I uncrumpled two bills.

      "And three pounds would bring the wife----'

      I unleafed a third.

      "Ah, hell!' cried the man. "Five, just five poor pounds, would find us a hotel in that brutal city and let me get to the job, for sure!'

      What a dancing fighter he was, light on his toes, weaving, tapping with his hands, flicking with his eyes, smiling with his mouth, jabbing with his tongue.

      "Lord thank you, bless you, sir!'

      He ran, my five pounds with him. I was half in the hotel before I realized that, for all his vows, he had not recoreded my name. "Gah!' I cried then.

      "Gah!' I cried now at the window. For there, passing below, was the very fellow who should have been in Belfast two nights ago.

      "Oh, I know him,' said my wife. "He stopped me this noon. Wanted train fare to Galway.'

      "Did you give it to him?'

      "No,' said my wife simply.

      Then the worst thing happened. The demon glanced up, saw us and darned if he didn't wave!

      I had to stop myself from waving back. A sickly grin played on my lips. "It's got so I hate to leave the hotel,' I said.

      "It's cold out, all right.'

      "No,' I said. "Not the cold. Them.'

      And we looked again from the window. There was the cobbled Dublin street with the night wind blowing in a fine soot along one way to Trinity College, another to St. Stephen's Green. Across by the sweet shop two men stood mummified in the shadows. Farther up in a doorway was a bundle of old newspapers that would stir like a pack of mice and wish you the time of evening if you walked by. Below, by the hotel entrance, stood a feverish hothouse rose of a woman with a bundle.

      "Oh, the beggars,' said my wife.

      "No, not just "oh, the beggars,'' I said. "But, oh, the people in the streets, who somehow became beggars.'

      My wife peered at me. "You're not afraid of them?'

      "Yes, no. Hell. It's that woman with the bundle who's worst. She's a force of nature, she is. Assaults you with her poverty. As for the others-- well, it's a big chess game for me now. We've been in Dublin--what?--eight weeks? Eight weeks I've sat up here with my typewriter, and studied their off hours and on. When they take a coffee break, I take one, run for the sweet shop, the bookstore, the Olympia Theatre. If I time it right, there's no handout, no my wanting to trot them into the barbershop or the kitchen.'

      "Lord,' said my wife, "you sound driven.'

      "I am. But most of all by that beggar on O'Connell Bridge!'

      "Which one?'

      "Which one, indeed! He's a wonder, a terror. I hate him, I love him. To see is to disbelieve him. Come on.'

      On the way down in the elevator my wife said, "If you held your face right, the beggars wouldn't bother you.'

      "My face,' I explained patiently, "is my face. It's from Apple Dumpling, Wisconsin, Sarsaparilla, Maine. KIND TO DOGS is writ on my brow for all to read. Let the street be empty-- then let me step out and there's a strikers' march of freeloader

      --
      Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. No-one sees motorcycles
  2. RIP by krakass · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rest in peace, but is it too late to Fuck me, Ray Bradbury?

  3. I KNEW Venus was up to no good! by Gr33nJ3ll0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously this is all about the transition of Venus across the sun. Just like the comet took Mark Twain, Venus has claimed Bradbury!

  4. damn sad. by grub · · Score: 5, Funny

    I loved his book Celsius 233.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  5. His most famous work by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship. I know 100 people who know nothing else about the book except cliff notes or what they got off wikipedia are about to make that comment. So I'll save you the trouble. It was about TV and the mental wasteland that he thought it represented.

    1. Re:His most famous work by hal2814 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd side with the masses. It's not particularly important what the author intended. It only matters what people take away from it. However, a contradiction between those two parties doesn't mean an author sucks at getting his/her point across. It just means when the work was released and took on a life of its own, the takeaway was different than what the author originally envisioned. There's nothing wrong with that.

    2. Re:His most famous work by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Books tend to have three meanings:
      1) What the author meant
      2) What the reader takes away from the story
      3) What English teacher say the author meant and what they (the teachers) think readers should take away from the story

      1 and 2 are often, but not always, the same. Neither 1 nor 2 are ever the same as 3.

  6. Something Wicked This Way Comes by chill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My wife never liked science fiction. One evening I chose "Something Wicked This Way Comes" to watch on DVD and she rolled her eyes at my choice.

    After watching, she said to me "now I know why you read all that stuff. That was great!"

    A true master of the art has passed.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  7. What really scares me. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What really bothers me about 451 is how just about everything but the book burning turned out true. If you remove that aspect from the book, you'd have a hard time separating it from the United States of today. I can't read it without being unnerved. Immersing ourselves in our electronic entertainment rather than our lives, advertisement everywhere, complete lack of empathy as a social standard, constant, ignored wars, distaste for pedestrians, rampant anti-intellectualism, near identical suburbs everywhere.

    It was a brilliant extrapolation from 1953, and I wish it wasn't so close to reality.

  8. Collected Short Stories by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And "R is for Rocket" I read 40-some years ago. They were collections of Bradbury short stories.

    Indeed, I too cut my teeth on Ray Bradbury's works for fantasy and science fiction. Recently I discovered an edition of 100 of his collected short stories (chosen by the man himself) that appeared to include most if not all of my favorites. For anyone looking to discover/rediscover, this is an inexpensive and fairly comprehensive route to take. These stories are written for a younger mind but are still enjoyable to me.

    It might have been because I had not dealt with death on a profound level yet but his short story "Kaleidoscope" from The Illustrated Man was permanently etched upon my mind. Now Bradbury is a shooting star providing wishes and dreams to the young minds who read his works. Personally I feel that hundreds of years from now, Bradbury will join the ranks of Hans Christian Anderson, Road Dahl, etc and his works will be seen as mandatory classics for readers. Like all modern writing, some of these stories aren't the most original in their nature but they are perfect to capture a mind and set someone on a course for endless reading. It's a sad day to see such a wonderful mind pass but I will do my part to immortalize him through recommendations.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  9. as bricks and mortar burn by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What really bothers me about 451 is how just about everything but the book burning turned out true.

    WHY DO YOU THINK IT'S CALLED A KINDLE MOTHERFUCKER?!!![*]

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  10. Prescient by cthlptlk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just looked at a few wikipedia pages and saw this thing that he wrote about a transistor radio in the 1950s. It is exactly the way you might describe someone talking on a cell phone if you walked outside your door right now:

    In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

    No, he didn't predict cell phones or anything like that, but he recognized one of the first victims of the epidemic that went on to swallow us all.