Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, Prolific Sci-Fi Writer, Dies At 91 – Business Week

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel,
sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

― Ray Bradbury

I don’t know many writers personally. The ones I do know have yet to be published (as I’m certain they will be, in one way or another.) I grew up with books all around the house, even next to my bed. They were always there. I never understood kids who didn’t like to read. If you didn’t like stories, what did you like?

Ray Bradbury was one of the first “grown-up” authors I started wondering about. There were always a few “grown-up” books in with my smaller ones that were around the house, and I picked those up a few notable times, but Ray Bradbury was the first author I found on my own, as I remember.

It was exciting.

While I have many influences on my writing style and countless inspirations, Ray Bradbury stays rooted in the ultimate foundation for why I started writing in the first place. Other fantasy and sci-fi works have given me energy, but not in the same way. It runs on a parallel track with a completely different sort of train.

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

When I was eleven, about the time I decided to write books, I saw the 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451. I want to say “it scarred me for life,” but I’m not sure that’s exactly a professional term. But there it is, so I’ll leave it there. It wasn’t bad — it was actually very good, in my eyes. Rather like a train wreck. It was instantly my favorite, though I’ve never watched it again, and I’m twenty years old at the time I’m writing this.

I found the book soon after, curious of the differences from writing to film. The movie is about the absence of all writing, because it “causes people pain.” The book is about the absence of storytelling and fiction. People simply don’t want it, because of the conflict it causes.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

{Read the First Two Stories in The Martian Chronicles}

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

“It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451