Ray Bradbury Bio.

Ray Bradbury Bio (Fahrenheit 451 Author)

“Its lack that gives us inspiration.”

-Ray Bradbury

"Alan! This picture is proof that the Great Pumpkin has arrived! Best from
Ray Bradbury" A signed picture of Bradbury.

(Notable People on Ray Bradbury: Click me if you can't see it.)

Signature Bradbury.

Wonder and awe filled Ray Bradbury’s life. As a young boy, he saw mysticism in everything: From carnivals, to comics, to writing.  He admits, as a fourth grader, his peers made from of him for collecting Buck Rogers comics strips--and so “in that particular year, I tore up my comic strips and a month later, I burst into tears and said to myself, 'Why am I weeping?' Who died?' " he said. "And the answer was me. I had allowed these fools to kill me and to kill the future...I’d never listen to another damn fool in my life...And I went back and collected the Buck Rogers comic strips and started to write about it...And I became a writer."  

Buck Roger Comic Strip

He was raised by his father, an electrician, and his mother, a Swedish Immigrant. In 1926 to ‘33, Ray Bradbury had moved back and forth to Waukgen and Tucson. Finally in  ‘34 he moved to Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles, he saw a devestating thing:

Young Ray Bradbury

"I saw a car crash when I was 15 here in Los Angeles and five people died as a result of it. I arrived at the scene within 20 seconds of hearing the collision. It was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I didn't know what I was running into. People had been horribly mangled and decapitated. So for months after, I was shaken. It's probably the reason I never learned to drive... "

But he did however roller skate. He would roller skate down Hollywood and try to spot celebrities, even befriending a couple of them.  One of the two happened to be George Burns, a media celebrity (who was the first person to pay for his work: a joke he wrote for his show.)

Ray felt called to the stage, but two teachers, however, encouraged him to be a writer. Seeing talent in him, and then he began to contemplate to pursue a career in writing. He never did throw away theatre totally--up until he died, he remained a playwright..
High School would be the end of his “formal education.” But it never stopped him from educating himself: "I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." He also wrote so much for one literary journal, that he wrote pseudonyms so it wouldn’t seem like a one-man-show.
       He married a woman--an unlike many writers--he stayed married to that woman, and in fact, it was the first woman he ever dated (she passed away at 2003). They both had four daughters.
Early on in his life, in the 1950’s, Ray wrote a major work The Martian Chronicles. Like the,“The Crucible” did for Arthur miller, The Martian Chronicles carried an air of allegory to it. Proving, that sci-fi could show realism and cold war tensions. Due to the respect the book garnered, he met a hero of his, Aldous Huxley--an author of the pinnacle dystopian novel Brave New World.  Aldous Huxley was so impressed, he said: “You’re a poet.”     

Interviewer: What was Huxley like? 

Bradbury: He was very polite. Most Englishmen, most intellectual Englishmen, are very polite, and they treat you as if you're the genius, which is a sweet thing to do. Years after we met, I was a panelist along with Huxley discussing the future of American literature. However, I was disappointed when he refused to admit that science fiction is the only way for fiction to go. 

Interviewer: He was already extolling the virtues of psychedelics by then. We presume he offered you some.   

Bradbury: I gave him the right answer: No, thank. I don't want anyone lifting the trapdoor on my head - it may not go down again.

 Then he wrote Fahrenheit 451. His most well known work as well, as he describes himself, the only “science fiction” he has written; He says this because he claims to write fantasies--which can’t happen--but science fiction has a chance of happening. “It's "prevent the future," that's the way I put it. Not predict it, prevent it.”He wrote Fahrenheit 451 with a typewriter in the library of UCLA: 

“In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.”  

Ray Bradbury did not deny changing times.  He help create television series based of his works on the Science Fiction Channel, “The Ray Bradbury Theatre.” And when NASA’s Viking landed on Mars he was “hailed as a space age prophet.”

Interviewer: How did you feel when Viking landed on Mars?
Bradbury: There was this festive feeling, like a surprise party, at the Caltech Planetarium the night the Viking ship landed. Carl Sagan and I and a lot of others stayed up all night. Suddenly, the first photographs of Mars started coming back on the giant screen. We were all exhilarated - dancing, laughing and singing. Around nine in the morning, Roy Neal from NBC News came by and held this microphone in front of my face. He said, "Mr. Bradbury, you've been writing about Mars and its civilizations and cities for all these years. Now that we're there and we see that there's no life, how does it feel?" I took a deep breath - I'm so proud I said this out loud to him - and replied: "You idiot! You fool! There is life on Mars - look at us! Look at us! We are the Martians!"

His writing has been so influential, a fiction work he created, “Dandelion Wine” was used as a name for a cosmic-crater “Dandelion Crater.”

Right before his death, Ray Bradbury would go from everything to Comic Con convention to College Lectures. He reluctantly released his Fahrenheit 451 in Ebook format. He died after his wife, who died in 2003. His legacy has been acknowledged from Obama, to Stephen King to Ursula Le Guin. He said if he had to be remembered for anything it is being “a lover.” He would've loved that.

Things to Ponder:

I think therefore...

1: Fantasy and science fiction has been known as "escapist." Fahrenheit 451 is known, by Bradbury himself, as his lone science fiction. He admits it is one of his stories that could actually happen--and that the rest of his fiction is actually 

"[fantasies]." What would you classify Fahrenheit 451 as? Would you agree with Bradbury it as the only science fiction he wrote--even though he predicted Mars being explored in his "Martian Chronicles?

2: Ray Bradbury never drove a car, yet wrote these scientific-epics. Does a writer need to live out his writings?

3: (Nuanced Global Question) Ray Bradbury has said of Obama: "“He [Obama] should be announcing that we should go back to the moon. We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever,” he said. “There is too much government today,” he later added. “We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people and for the people.”  Obama said on Ray Bradbury's death, "Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values.  There is no doubt that Ray will continue to inspire many more generations with his writing, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends." Do you think Space Exploration is still an important issue in our day and time--realistically? Or is it naive to assume we could fund NASA or even colonize Mars? 

4: Ray Bradbury studied the Bible when he was growing up, but he became a man of various believes. One man, James Blake, paraphrased Bradbury saying: "The guy [Bradbury] keeps writing about Jesus, but he doesn't consider himself a Christian … He says faith is necessary but that we should accept the fact that when it comes to God, none of us know anything." Bradbury carries a Christian fervor to him, does he communicated the teachings of Christ well? Or perhaps is he somewhat misguided? Perhaps better then Christians?

(The Official Fahrenheit 451 Graphic Novel Click me if you can't see it)

Extra Videos:

In The Caves of Steel, Asimov is writing in the early’50s, and yet, some of his discussion mirrors closely the ideas we see in the media and news today: conservation, “green living”, etc. The relationship of the people to Nature in the book is somewhat alarming at first, especially when we learn that Elijah Baley has only rarely seen rain, for example. The Commissioner clearly spells out that “the troubles from modern life come from being divorced from Nature” as compared to earlier times in Earth’s history when “people lived in the open…when it rained…they gloried in it. They lived close to nature.” What earlier time in history is he referring to? Is he commenting on his society in the post WWII America? Does this still speak to us somehow today?

God calls us to be stewards of the blessings he has given us, including Creation, does He not? The Commissioner also says that “the difference between us and the Spacers [is]…we reach high and crowd close. With them, each family has a dome for itself.” It seems clear that the Spacers have a different relationship with the land, and a different relationship with others in their society. What is Asimov trying to say do you suppose? What value judgment is he trying to impose? What does he imply, through description and characterization, about the Spacers? About the humans in the ‘caves of steel’? Do we agree? What does this ultimately say about us? About our relationship to God, others and Creation?

The Hobbit #1

I hadn't read the Hobbit before, but in anticipation of the upcoming movie adaptation I quickly read it last weekend. Yes. I started it on Saturday night and finished it on Tuesday.


I thought I might start off this first post by mentioning how much more enjoyable the book was because it fit into the framework of Medieval legend and lore I've gained through my study of history - as well as other literature like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books.


Dragons, wizards, treasure, fate, courage... there are a lot of crossing paths between these stories.


As you read, I'd be interested to hear your comments about places where you find similarities with the books I've mentioned as well as others you might have read. Are there certain things we know about dragons? Or wizards? Or courage? Do knowing about them add to or take away from your reading of the Hobbit?


If you've not read other stories that feature these things, please add your thoughts on your first impressions of them.

The Count Of Monte Christo #1

When I read The Count of Monte Christo, I can't help but be drawn into the story by Dumas' descriptions of his characters - not only their initial appearances but their countenance and expressions throughout conversations.


One of my favorite descriptions of Dumas' that can be found throughout the book, beginning in Chapter One - is that of a 'dark cloud passing over someones brow'.


What are some of your favorite descriptions so far, and how have they helped you understand the emotions a character is having in the scene?

The Great Gatsby and the Hunger Games?

The Great Gatsby...and Hunger Games*? 


* Well Sorta. (Its called a hook)

"Don't Judge a book by its cover" is a funny idiom, because we all do it; we all jump to random conclusions when we see boring prose or something we don't understand. 

Don't Judge Me Bro!

On NPR, there was this thing called, "Let's Rush to Judgement." Where they make assertions based on a fresh movie trailer. When the First "Hunger Games" Trailer came out, NPR's Linda Holmes dove into it, phrophesizing (based on first impressions) whether the movie would be good or not.  


Often times in books, we read the first sentence and we have convulsions or we want to cringe. It is said 80% of what people think of you is based on first impressions. And often times, like an acquiantince, we discover the aesthetics--and literary style--go deeper then looks. 


If any of you are bored enough, or watches trailers on Hulu, you would discover that there is a new Great Gatsby movie, fresh and hip (or what ever you hipsters say nowadays) movie coming out.




So. I want you to check out this video, right before watching the trailers. This video is a rather shocking video! I can understand if you all want to chicken out of it (if you can't tell, I was using reverse psychology and sarcasm).

 

Then notice the difference between each trailers of the Great Gatsby and how the directors cut-and-paste specific clips to get your attention--stimulating you in ways to make you want what they want you to want. 

Cover

Alternate Cover

   You all should know that what a creator does, a writer a director, attempts to stimulate people. 


Everyword, and image, whether in books or movies, is a move to stimulate you. 


    When you read the Great Gatsby or any other book, even boring, understand a message and feel for the aura of the book. What message is being portrayed through buzzwords or imagery? Then  riff and build off that idea. 
   




Some cool things to understand when you read and watch things...

1. Don't judge based on first impressions (but remember how you feel originally about the book/movie in the beginning, then watch your opinion be changed or verified)
2. Understand an idea is being impressed into you.
3. Find what is communicating those ideas. 
1. Buzzwords
2.  Imagery 
4. Write 'em down.

Agree? Disagree? Anything to add? Comment.