R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

rest easy, big man. your imagination is still a big inspiration to me. you got me into sci-fi singlehandedly!

http://lovecraft1890.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/raybradbury.jpg

also, great watch. and cat.

Aw damn. But what a life! RIP sir, one of the true greats.

Utter classic and a legend in his own time. RIP good friend.

rip

RIP

http://www.lwcurrey.com/pictures/111879.jpg

^^ one of my fave books of all time

In my sci-fi years I wanted to be all into the "edgiest" stuff (i.e. Dangerous Visions and British New Wave, "speculative" fiction plz lol) and then I read Something Wicked This Way Comes and it basically punched all my buttons. So good. Rest in peace Ray B. iirc you became a cranky old man like we mostly all will but your books inspire young people to dream about stuff so you're a net positive to the world!!

I still can't believe my good fortune in having The Martian Chronicles read to me and others in my fourth grade class -- a wonderful introduction, and lord knows talk about a dip into some really heady waters early on in life.

RIP

My favorite story about him was how classy he was in dealing with EC Comics when they adapted his work without permission.

Adaptations of Ray Bradbury science-fiction stories, which appeared in two dozen EC comics starting in 1952. It began inauspiciously, with an incident in which Feldstein and Gaines plagiarized two of Bradbury's stories and combined them into a single tale. Learning of the story, Bradbury sent a note praising them, while remarking that he had "inadvertently" not yet received his payment for their use. EC sent a check and negotiated a productive series of Bradbury adaptations.[9]

just wrote this on my facebook. put it here too. this is basically how i feel about him:

it wasn't even that long ago that i started reading his stories with great enthusiasm. he turned a light on in my head. it dawned on me that you can go anywhere you want to go in fiction. anywhere that your mind can go. and this is true of all writing. and life! it was kind of jaw-dropping to me how many ideas he could come up with within a single story.

And good god, "The Veldt."

What a wonderful curmudgeon.

i mean, it was somehow really liberating to learn that at an advanced age (6 or 7 years ago). or RE-learn it. i always knew that when i was kid. about writing and the imagination. but it was truly inspiring to read his stories. it made me fall in love with books again. for real.

aw, RIP

i agree w that scott, just the sheer density of ideas in some of his stories is amazing. i feel the same way about a few other folks--Leiber and Sturgeon come to mind immediately-but it's also something I didn't learn to appreciate until later in life. As a young teen/pre-teen, I was too engrossed in 'adventure' to really fully grasp how inventive Bradbury was.

getting that 4th video wall put in to honor him.

From the io9.com story, a memory from his grandson:

If you're looking for any single passage to remember him by, I just picked up my copy of The Illustrated Man, my favorite of his books. The introduction is entitled "Dancing, So As Not to Be Dead," and there are some great lines about death. My favorite:

"My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M.

So as not to be dead."

I'm an actor, something he was always been really proud of, and told me once, after getting cast in a play. "You're living out my life! You're doing everything I wanted to do but couldn't!" He was such a driving force in my life, but what always fascinated me were his impact on others. How his stories lifted people up and saved them from lonely summers. Who among us was never buried deep in a Bradbury story, lost in his meticulously yet effortlessly crafted metaphor?

Haven't read nearly enough of this guy. Something Wicked is a classic and childhood fave and of course I've come across a fair few of his stories in various collections across the years. Also Fahrenheit 451. Will seek out more - RIP.

RIP

"The Veldt" changed my life as a kid

So at what temperature do they perform cremations at these days?

Hoping they donate his ashes to NASA so they can take him along on the Mars mission.

RIP

really one of the first writers to really engage me deeply to the point where I voraciously checked out everything by him from the public library over a period of years.

when I moved two years ago I lost, somehow, one box of books, the one that included signed first editions of a bunch of douglas adams books but more importantly, a signed first edition of the Illustrated Man. Had to have been left and pilfered at my storage spot. Damn!

RIP

rip. his writing was one of my first great literature loves. i read so much stuff by him, of course all the short story collections, but also something wicked this way comes and a graveyard for lunatics. illustrated man, dandelion wine, fahrenheit 451, martian chronicles, i think the last thing i read by him was the short story collection Quicker Than The Eye - which i remember buying in hardcover when i was idk, around 12. one of the first grownup lit purchases i made on my own.

met him once at a booksigning when I was a kid. awesome dude. RIP

RIP, my first favorite author. i should revisit this stuff, haven't read it in forever.

I dunno if it's just me, but his writing always felt very intimate....like he was pulling you in to tell you a secret. There was always a sense that I was reading something that no-one else had ever read, despite his fame etc. I can't really explain it...

RIP. Thanks for the journeys!

91 years old! RIP

I love his books so much, and I've read them so many times over the years, that they feel like part of where I'm from. Going back to The October Country or Martian Chronicles now is like returning home. And a place that was passed down to me, too -- my father was the one who gave me my first copies of The Illustrated Man and The October Country. I will do my best to pass them along to my own kids. I'd love to be there the first time they read "The Veldt" or "The Crowd." (Actually, I might keep a safe distance when they read "The Veldt"...)

R.I.P. Thanks for the stories.

I need to read a ton more things by him.

I'd heard a Caedmon Records reading of this story by Leonard Nimoy in the '70s, but YT only has Burgess Meredith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXKT7QQsVx0

one of my first big loves too. i have the big red book of short stories, it is great for dipping even when a story turns out to be thin and hysterical. something wicked and "the veldt" both total masterpieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

RIP dude. I love that EC documentary where you do an extended interview as a bonus feature and couldn't be bothered getting dressed for it.

my father also introduced me to bradbury xxxp

His writing got more ornate and would-be poetic as he went along, not to its benefit. But pretty much everything through S Is for Space is essential, imo.

My favourite short story writer. I too was fortunate enough to get some Bradbury fed to me at school. "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" and "The Veldt" made such an impression aged 13.

RIP

did all you people who loved 'the veldt' have terrible parents?

does everyone who loved the little assassin have terrible babbies?

haha.
it's funny, even though I was probably eight or nine when I read the martian chronicles, i remember *getting* that the stories weren't supposed to be some kind of truly speculative version of what Mars might be, but more of this imaginative fantasia kinda thing that was more about humanity than it was about spaceships or whatever. not saying i was a super-precocious reader or anything, just that Bradbury was able to get that across to a nine-year-old.

I'll have to read The Veldt at lunch to figure out if I've read it before.

http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm

Ha, I have a brother 12 yrs younger than me who was a baby at the time I read "Small Assassin." I had a nightmare where he was walking around holding a scalpel. One of two specifically Bradbury-inspired nightmares I can remember, though there were probably more.

there's a great moment in Fallout 3 where you step into a bombed out house where all the humans are dead but a robot keeps up the maintenance and reads 'there will come soft rains' to the children's skeletons

re-read the October Country recently and The Scythe creeped me out something proper.

ha, i thought i was the only one who was really effected by The Veldt as a kid

RIP

This is a sad day. I read Something Wicked... just a few months ago, having managed never to read it before, and it really is a masterpiece. The short stories, and the work approach of the man himself, such huge influences on me in so many ways, right down to autumn in Minnesota automatically being BRADBURY'S TIME.

This dude GOT IT DONE.

We should do a rundown of the various film/TV/radio adaptations. Here's The Electric Grandmother aka a version of "I Sing the Body Electric!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvUWvifigLs

And of course I presume we all know about Something Wicked This Way Comes.

he was awesome. i remember reading an old book of his stories when i was a pre-teen and just loving it so much, total young-mind-shaping times.

xp ha, just found out my friend's dad did the screenplay for that w/ bradbury!

there's a story that i remember. i think it's bradbury, and i think it's martian (but not in the chronicles) but i don't remember really. just that the plot involves the last man on mars (or maybe earth), and he's been alive for years, and alone for years, and he starts getting phone calls and letters and soforth which torment him. they were all set up to be sent by his younger self, in the throes of a sort of aggressive loneliness and despair. i think about this story all the time, since it's just such a perfect metaphor for all sorts of things. anyone remember this story, or where it's from precisely?

“It’s driven a lot of writing...I want to be one up on death. I want to leave a lot of me behind. Every time I finish a new novel, there’s that triumphant moment when I pop it in the mailbox and think, ‘OK, death. One up. One up.’”

sometimes Facebook gives me a headache:

my friend shared a link to the huffpo announcement of Bradbury's death on FB with the following note to her friends: "omg! we JUST stayed in his house last week in Palm Springs!!!!!"

u_u

I guess they were not there during the soft rain season.

xxxp Night Call, Collect. I think it's in the collection I Sing The Body Electric. Unsettling as all hell. That book also had The Haunting of the New, one of my favorite story titles ever, and a really nice variation on the classic haunted house story (the house is haunted by the knowledge of what it used to be, and just wants to stop existing).

I posted this on facebook, the last couple paragraphs of "Mars is Heaven!":

In the morning the brass band played a mournful dirge. From every house in the street came little solemn processions bearing long boxes, and along the sun-filled street, weeping, came the grandmas and mothers and sisters and brothers and uncles and fathers, walking to the churchyard, where there were new holes freshly dug and new tombstones installed. Sixteen holes in all, and sixteen tombstones.
The mayor made a little sad speech, his face sometimes looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like something else.

Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward, and they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face into something else.
Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their faces shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a hot day.
The coffins were lowered. Someone murmured about “the unexpected and sudden deaths of sixteen fine men during the night –”
Earth pounded down on the coffin lids.

The brass band, playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” marched and slammed back into town, and everyone took the day off.

went to a few used bookstores this afternoon, primarily to scout paperbacks of gene wolf's urth of the new sun series (got the first three in "timescape" pb's for $3). while out and about, i also picked up copies of the october country and the vintage bradbury best-of collection. haven't read RB in probably 20 years, so i'm looking forward to revisiting some of my favorites. maybe something wicked... next?

anyway, was nice to commiserate/reminisce with bookstore peeps about ray's passing. hard to find dedicated readers my age who don't hold him dear. i wonder if he means much to young folks, or if he's slipped over the horizon of "weird old stuff". probably, but the youngish bar crew i talked to later on were shook to hear he'd gone.

Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, et al., offer remembrances: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/bradbury-death-steven-spielberg-obama-stephen-king-damon-lindelof-tribute-334275

thanks joe. found a recording of it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR36HbWgxYw

this is such a cruel story. breathtaking.

i think they still read martian chronicles in schools

actually i'm certain they do

Yeah, but they actually read them in Martian now. Maybe Klingon. Whatever.

Wonder what old Ray thought of the con lang movement?

There were definitely a few years where Bradbury was my favorite writer. (I think it went something like Frank Herbert->Ray Bradbury->Kurt Vonnegut->Thomas Pynchon.)

Don't think anyone's linked this Paris Review interview yet. Pretty interesting stuff:

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

thinking about it a bit, bradbury's decaying future seems to presage a fair amount of cyberpunk, not to mention the chums of chance storyline in Against the Day...

I checked the massive story collection out of the library this morning and, yes, I HAVE read "The Veldt." Good times.

some other necrophile hadn't beaten you to it?

Students don't check books out of the library.

Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

lol, much love

Things were better before the mechanization of print. Nothing beats the smell and feel of hand-tooled leather and monk sweat. But still, manuscripts got nothing on the oral tradition, when dudes had to memorize some shit before they got lazy and started storing their knowledge in codices.

I just like the idea of priveleging how reading material smells

I guess I never realized how many cranky, oddball opinions Bradbury holds - but I cut him a lot of slack since his genius seems intertwined with his metaphorical view of life.

This is great: "I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn’t work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!"

ray otm

what is wrong w/ cranky oddballism?

I started reading "The Better Part of Wisdom" at lunch. Is this a story with gay characters...?

what is wrong w/ cranky oddballism?

Nothing! People up-thread alluded to some of his Tea-Party-esque political views - but perhaps those are rather normal for someone of his generation, and not examples of oddballism.

loveable cranks are cool

I just like the idea of priveleging how reading material smells

I actually do! Bradbury totally nails why I prefer to read from books over screens. I just get a kick out of the "damn kids get off my lawn" aspects of bibliophilia.

If cherishing printed and bound paper is now considered bibliophilia, then I'm an old crank as well. I don't want or need every book that I will ever read in that format, but some books require it. My giant hardback edition of the complete works of e.e. cummings. That same shitty paperback of Catcher in the Rye that everyone has, with the inexplicable 45-degree rainbow in the top corner, like a generic brand from Aldi. Emily Dickinson with a broken spine. James Burke with huge pages, an illustration on literally almost every one of them. Some books require texture, and their own specific gravity.

I got the e.e. cummings book used from Powell's. It's unstained, unread, and very likely unopened. There is writing on the inside front title page:

Jill,

May you find inspiration and comfort in this book. You have been and continue to be a truly wonderful friend! ((The exclamation point has a heart where the dot should be.)) Thank you for teaching me to be "mindful." Love, Alex.

Either Jill didn't much care for the book and still hasn't told Alex, or Jill and Alex aren't speaking anymore. Either way, there's a story in this book. Just this one book.

Re: The Better Part of Wisdom, yes, it is. I remember it being a little bit awkward, as if Bradbury was pushing himself to write about something he wasn't really that familiar or comfortable with. But it's a sweet story.

Reread "The Jar." God, what a creepy little bit of ugliness. "Tom Carmody, who would never smile again..."

The whole damn book is like that! And god I love it.

warning: video

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/414933/june-06-2012/sign-off---ray-bradbury-tribute

Re: The Better Part of Wisdom, yes, it is. I remember it being a little bit awkward, as if Bradbury was pushing himself to write about something he wasn't really that familiar or comfortable with. But it's a sweet story.

The section of the grandpa's monologue reminiscing in the most lyrical terms his golden friendship with the boy comes as close to authentic poetic prose as I've ever read. I'm astounded Bradbury could write this well. As a result, I tore through about nine stories in one sitting.

btw my first awareness of RAY BRADBURY as an eminence came when Epcot, then known as EPCOT Center, announced that he'd contributed to the development and script for the Spaceship Earth ride.

And funny you should say that!

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2012/06/honoring-ray-bradburys-contribution-to-epcot/

'Make sure when you wake up in the morning that you know you accomplished everything you possibly could the previous day. And then do it again!’

There are two kinds of people in this world....

Mr. Bradbury and Dr. Morbius

"Doctor" if you're feeling nasty

As with R A Heinlein, I prefer his earlier work to his old coot pronouncements.

oh I dunno: Morbs still writes excellent reviews.

I saw that coming from miles away like the last Martian astronomers saw the rockets leaving the surface of the Earth

I knew Colbert was a fan (thus the link above) but how had I missed the existence of this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSoigRHHNLM

Such a great story.

could not turn that off (meta!)

i think that was the first short story i ever read

it was kind of all downhill after that

And now his house is gone.

http://file770.com/?p=20397

There came soft rains?