41–50 of 98 posts
I will miss Bradbury.
"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better." -- Ray Bradbury, "Beyond 1984: The People Machines", 1982
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orson Scott Card is not too far off, IMO.
Sadly, I found over time his newer books became steadily worse. It's odd to me that someone like Jim Butcher can get steadily better where other authors 'give up', start believing their own hype, use ghost writers, or something.
My favorite Ray Bradbury memory is the time he came to my school to talk about his books and ended up yelling at my English teach for trying to find hidden meaning that wasn't there just for the sake of busywork. RIP Mr. Bradbury.
When I was in school, I often wondered how often teachers did this.
The idea that all stories must have a moral in order to be legitimate is modern. Conventional wisdom gets in a self-righteous huff over how the different Inquisitions censored books. It would surprise modern people to see what books those old-time moral guardians did not censor.
Daphnis and Chloë, by Longus, has a frank scene where a married woman teaches a teenaged boy how to have sex. It was first translated into a modern vernacular by a Catholic bishop and was considered a perfectly good book for teenaged girls.
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius—better known as The Golden Ass—is the oldest extant novel. It contains explicit scenes of adultery and pagan worship. St. Augustine of Hippo, the greatest of the Western Fathers of the Church, cited that novel as a partial inspiration for his own work, The City of God. None of his contemporaries faulted him for this.
I'm going by memory, so I don't have citations for some of the above claims. I have a few ideas about the origin of the modern mentality of "every story must have a moral." Those ideas center around the rise of Calvinism on the Protestant side and the rise of Jansenism on the Catholic side of Europe.
I often walk by this building https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Carnegie+Library+Waukegan,+Ct... which is the library he spent lots of time in as a youth. Sadly, the building is now closed, but I do hear occasional rumblings of it being reopened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was in school, I often wondered how often teachers did this.
I assume that the "hidden meaning" was supposed to be a moral for the edification of the children ( Think of the children! ). The idea that all stories must have a moral in order to be legitimate is modern. Conventional wisdom gets in a self-righteous huff over how the different Inquisitions censored books. It would surprise modern people to see what books those old-time moral guardians did not censor. Daphnis and Ch…
He was the last of the giants, along with Heinlein, Clark and Asimov. As a kid in the 70s, I devoured their novels and stories from the 50s and 60s. Bradbury was probably the most sophisticated writer of the four, though I preferred Asimov's straightforward, techie prose more back then. But we did get to read Bradbury in school, while none of the others was deemed lofty enough for the curriculum (except Heinlein's St…
My favorite Bradbury book is Dandelion Wine . It's not sci-fi, but great authors are not limited to a single genre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Is_a_Lonely_Business
Very evocative mystery/film-noir style
I often walk by this building https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Carnegie+Library+Waukegan,+Ct... which is the library he spent lots of time in as a youth. Sadly, the building is now closed, but I do hear occasional rumblings of it being reopened.
Ray was a huge proponent of libraries. If you want to honor the man, go visit your local library today. Check out a book. Shame on you if you don't have a library card, but it's not too late to get one. If you have some money or some books you can donate, help the library out while you're there.
He was the last of the giants, along with Heinlein, Clark and Asimov. As a kid in the 70s, I devoured their novels and stories from the 50s and 60s. Bradbury was probably the most sophisticated writer of the four, though I preferred Asimov's straightforward, techie prose more back then. But we did get to read Bradbury in school, while none of the others was deemed lofty enough for the curriculum (except Heinlein's St…