Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

By way of a tribute to the late Ray Bradbury, I can describe his effect on me as a reader. I remember exactly where and when I was when I encountered his collection The Illustrated Man (1951). I was 11-years-old, living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for a few months with my family. It was summer: warm, humid, and tropical. The first story I read was "The Veldt" in which young children experience the wilds of the African veldt. It was unforgettable, as were several of the other stories in the collection. It was some of the first science fiction I had ever read.

His story titles were breathtaking: "The Million-Year Picnic," "-- And the Moon be Still as Bright," and "There Will Come Soft Rains."

Within a few years I had read The Martian Chronicles (1950), The October Country (1955), Dandelion Wine (1957), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) . Curiously only the last one is actually a novel, the others are collections, or in the case of The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine, what are pejoratively called fix-up novels, made up of previously published stories that may or may not have been originally intended to fit together. The kinder term is story-suite and Bradbury created two of the best examples of the form. The Martian Chronicles was produced at a time when very few science fiction novels were being published in book form, the flip-side of today's publishing marketplace where the magazines are few and books (and ebooks) proliferate.

These books solidified Bradbury's place in my pantheon of great genre authors. In the 1960s, before the New Wave, there was no mystery who the major science fiction authors were: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein. Of these four men, Bradbury had the most range, across fantasy, science fiction and horror, and across a wider emotional register. His prose had the most poetry.

I've read a few of his books since then. Not too many. His work belongs to a certain time and place for me.

Links in honor of Bradbury's passing:
Locus Online has a collection of Bradbury links in its Blinks section.
Locus Roundtable has a good discussion of Bradbury's work and influence.
LA Review of Books: The Bradbury Era by F. X. Feeney
LA Review of Books: Fairy Tales about the Modern World by Jonathan R. Eller, Neil Gaiman, Robin Anne Reid and William F. Touponce
LA Review of Books: Nightmarish Glimpses of Our Inner Selves by Brian Attebery, John Clute, Rob Latham and Gary K. Wolfe

Early influences

At the Locus Roundtable, Adrienne Martini asks what title pulled you into the science fiction and fantasy genre and what made you stay?

I’ll take the opportunity to get nostalgic:

My earliest memories include reading (or being read to) Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (1852), a rewriting of Greek myths, and Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (1902). These remain some of the greatest fables for young readers I have encountered. There was a volume of tales about Robin Hood for young readers, which edition I don’t know.

I have very clear memories of my father reading C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), to me and my older brother at bedtime, when I was age five or six, and how desperate we were for each new chapter. A couple years later, my grandmother brought us Turkish Delight and we finally tasted the exotic treat with which Edmund had been tempted.

At age 11, I borrowed Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man (1951), which my brother had been reading. I enjoyed it, even though parts of it were a bit too scary.

When I was 13, a friend at school recommended a book he had found in the school library, Robert Silverberg’s The Gate of Worlds (1967), which is perhaps Silverberg’s best young adult book, and remains overlooked by many, I believe.

That same year, over dinner, my mother (who had been a science fiction fan since long before I was born) and brother discussed a book they were both reading. It was about a desert planet, giant sandworms, and a mysterious drug called “spice” that was in all the food and turned the whites of people’s eyes blue. I borrowed it next, even though Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) was larger in scope and scale than anything I had read before. After that I was off to the races, reading voraciously.

Please add your own early reading memories in the comments here, or at the Locus Roundtable.