"So as not to be dead." - RIP Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury died last night at the age of 91, a unique voice whose writings will be treasured for centuries.

I was actually hired once to be Mr. Bradbury's chauffeur, I spent two hours talking with him in a car driving across the Southern California desert. I will never forget it.

Here's a link to a story with the source for the quote in the title.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/06/06/ray_bradbury_dead_...

Hugs to all,
Erin

Comments

Gone...

...but never forgotten. My first sci-fi novel I read was a Ray Bradbury novel. My first Fantasy was JRR Tolkein. The greats are always with us.



He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage

RIP Ray Bradbury

Another great literary light has left, and we the poorer for his passing.

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Bradbury...

Andrea Lena's picture

...the Martian Chronicles was my first exposure to Science Fiction. I know that much of my help as a child came in the form of escape to other worlds; Mars being no exception. Though some found disappointment in François Truffaut's vision of Fahrenheit 451, the ending where the old man is reciting what I seem to recall as Dickens to his grandson; it stirred my soul like no other scene in any movie I can recall. From Wikipedia:

Author Ray Bradbury has said in later interviews that, despite its flaws, he was pleased with the film. He was particularly fond of the film's climax, where the Book People walk through a snowy countryside reciting the poetry and prose they've memorized, set to Herrmann's melodious score. He found it especially poignant and moving.

I remember being fourteen and falling in love for the first time with Julie Christie; someone who fell into that category I've discussed previously: women we'd love to love and love to be.

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I give you on behalf of my love for the author and the connection I felt through Bernard Hermann's brilliant score: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lllr_2ZF5Tk

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Style

He was a great one for the twisty last word. Anyone who reads, for example, 'Small Assassin' or 'Emissary' will see that. The little phrase or comment that clarifies or utterly changes the sense of the tale, in as few words as possible. I loved that as a child, still do, and try over and over again to do the same sort of thing in my own writing. Imitation, flattery. A writer who knew the worth of words, unlike those who have apparently entered into, ahem, a covenant to use the most obscure of all possible constructions.

Anybody here who wants an object lesson in tension, originality, prose poetry, clarity, (pass me the thesaurus): read 'Small Assassin' and try not to be discouraged. It will, on the other hand, be perfectly acceptable to be thoroughly disturbed.