Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 21, 2020

Penultimate Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial post. Ray Bradbury, born August 22 (tomorrow!), 1920, died June 5, 2012, 91 years old (or young, as he probably would have said). He had suffered a stroke in 1999, recovered some mobility, but he usually dictated his writing to one of his daughters for the next decade. On May 28, 2012, a week before he died, he wrote a short essay for the New Yorker’s “Sci Fi” issue which was published in the double issue of June 4 - June 11. The New Yorker, applying its usual misunderstanding and condescension of science fiction/fantasy writers, illustrated the essay with a painting of a skull on fire, a dark demonic image. Bradbury’s essay was about his love for his grandfather and a fire balloon they launched from the lawn in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1924. It is a remarkably gentle, deeply affectionate revelation of awe, transition, loss, and beauty. The grandfather died the next year. In a few spare words, his farewell as best as he could make it, Bradbury for one last time lit a pathway from a sense of wonder to an intimation of immortality. He explained one marker of this experience was his short story “The Fire Balloons,“ which was later incorporated first into The Illustrated Man and later into The Martian Chronicles. Thus once again, as he had consistently accomplished throughout his writing life, Bradbury brought his art around again to unity, to wholeness, to reconciliation. The essay was wasted on The New Yorker, but it was a graceful wave to a lifetime of hard work, his joy in that work, and to millions of readers around the world.

Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 17, 2020

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial post. In 1950, seven years before the Soviets launched the first satellite (Sputnik), Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles. The title suggests its framework, as would The Illustrated Man a year later. (Tip: don’t believe critics who say Bradbury does “fix-ups” or loose anthologies. He was much more careful and exact than his critics understood or than he let on.). Chronicles is a future history with dates (charmingly early) of the human exploration and settlement of Mars. Begins in 1999, ends in 2026. Such an immense shift in the human story, such a permanent transfer from the cradle to the future, could have been told from a high (future) historical perspective, big canvas, something that Kim Stanley Robinson took on decades later. Bradbury instead took on the small stories, the lightning flashes, the psychological interiors that traveled with the humans to what they thought was an alien planet. His approach turned out to be as comprehensive as any hard-science terraforming proposal. To select just one layer of interpretation, The Martian Chronicles can be read as as account of imperialism in all its naivety and its cruelty and its self-destructiveness. It is an allegory and an analysis and a moral weighing as terrifying as anything Anubis would do, to use an Egyptian analogy that Bradbury would have loved. And with all this intellectual caffeine, it is beautifully written. Bradbury can thrill you, scare you, horrify you, enrage you, make you weep, and make you silent with awe and wonder. It is my favorite book. I once memorized the entire prologue, “Rocket Summer,” after reading the book in a single day. I told Ray Bradbury that when I met him in Anaheim, California, in the mid-Eighties. He joyously cried, “No! Really?” And he laughed. And we talked some more before the book convention business resumed. I explained to Betsy as we walked away that of course I could not wash my hand that shook the hand of Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 12, 2020

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial post. My family returned to the Carlisle area in the summer of 1974. We had been here in ‘71-‘72 when my father attended the US Army War College. At first, before I came to know Bosler Memorial Library, I enjoyed using the Post Library above the PX. It was run by Terry Munson, who was a tough short no-nonsense white-haired woman with a soft spot for this boy who loved books. The Post Library had an exchange case where you could bring in books and trade them for library cast-offs or extras. At this time I had read Ray Bradbury only in school anthologies or sf/fantasy collections (I was 12). The Post Library exchange case supplied me with these five books, which I still have. One is stamped ”Courtesy of Post Library.” It was my Rocket Summer (the title of the first chapter of The Martian Chronicles). I discovered Ray Bradbury, and my life as a reader, as an aware human, was changed. I notice the prices of the books range from 95 cents to $1.50. They are priceless to me. They thrilled me, terrified me, dazzled me, made me laugh out loud, intoxicated me, and made me want to be a writer. I was a kid who worked hard on the farm we moved to, who explored every rock and tree on 60 acres, and who read every minute I could. Ray Bradbury was an essential part of a lifelong education. Rocket Summer.