Ray Bradbury is dead: ”Ray Bradbury — author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and many more literary classics — died this morning in Los Angeles …”
Since I do not worship at his literary altar, I will not say anything, save this: the Washington Post writer of Mr. Bradbury’s obituary, one Becky Krystal, seems to have flatlined on the old EEG before writing the obit.
Of course, we can expect the endless, simpering fanboy mouth-breathing and/or snooty hauteur from the dreckwriters of today, talking about “sci-fi” and “spec fic,” and making the usual idiot slurs and belittlements against the genre. But Ms. Krystal’s opening sentence ought to win some sort of award for literary cluelessness and sheer obtuse opacity above and beyond the call of duty. Here’s the relevant portion:
… who transformed the genre of flying saucers and little green men into a medium exploring childhood terrors, colonialism and the erosion of individual thought …
No. Not hardly. Not likely. Not at all. Bradbury was many things, but he did NOT transform science fiction, nor did he change it from a tacky cheapjack form with borderline pornographic covered paperbacks and pulp magazines into something literary and respectable.
He himself became literary and respectable, and was a great commercial success as a crossover, but Bradbury is NOT a transformative figure in science fiction, did not fundamentally alter its direction, nor invent some new form — and the implicit slur against the genre and the implication that Bradbury’s protean writing single-handedly saved it from the gutter is idiot nonsense from someone who evidently hasn’t the foggiest idea what she’s obituarying about.
Bradbury is to science fiction as Stephen King is to horror novels. Period.
The cause of death remains unspecified, but I would not doubt that the late Mr. Bradbury asphyxiated under the sheer weight of reams of penny dreadful poetry. (And we shall pass over his tea party politics.)
If you loved Ray Bradbury’s writing and cherish it as a special memory of your childhood, please disregard that last paragraph.
He was 91.
Gerald Jonas at the New York Times does a pretty good literary assessment, which you ought to read.
Otherwise, with that small correction regarding the SF&F genre vis a vis Mr. Bradbury’s transformative literariness, I am herein concluded.
As is Ray.
Now, I’m going to go and check on the giant mushrooms I’m growing in the basement.
And it’s the 68th anniversary of D-Day.
Courage.
Having read most of Mr. Bradbury’s books, I’m saddened to hear of his passing, but, at 91 years I’m sure he had a remarkable life.As a lifelong sci-fi fan I always knew I’d get a good story from him, and agree with your criticism of the obit writer. She probably had no idea of his work other than what she might have gotten from the google. The early writers in the genre are mostly regarded as giants in the field, but, few of them as trans-formative. I could name a few who might fit that category, but, will just leave it be, and say RIP Ray, and thanks for all the enjoyable hours lost in your story’s..
I enjoyed reading Ray Bradbury when I was a child. But one becomes an adult.
I knew Ray Bradbury. I do not say we were bosom buddies, but I am jaundiced by knowing Bradbury the man, and not Bradbury the words that 99% of his readers know as their only connection. I do not confuse the art with the artist.
And, frankly, “Ray Bradbury” ceased writing in the mid-1970s. Very little of note was produced thereafter and mainly he oversaw the translation of his early work into various media.
It never translated successfully to screen or stage, though, which I think, suggests how important his poetic style was in the reading of his stories. Merely recapitulating the plots on that most literal of media, the screen, produced results that were — more often than not — embarrassing. Not that Ray himself was to blame for that. Film and video dumbs ANYTHING and EVERYTHING down.
Sadly, a poetic prose style does not necessarily translate into poetry, which he wrote in later years.
My favorite Bradbury story is “”A Miracle of Rare Device,” which I first read (in its first publication, as it turns out) in an old copy of the January 1962 PLAYBOY, which a cousin had stashed under his mattress.
I have lived that story.
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