We lost a titan today. Ray Bradbury dead at 91.
I very rarely read a book more than once. In fact I’ve done so less than a half dozen times. There are so many incredible books out there that I just don’t re-read books. I often want to, but always find something new. Half of the books I have re-read have been Bradbury’s.
Farenheit 451 is my favorite book of all time. His books have been integral in the formation of who I am and what I believe. Setting aside Farenheit, go back to Junior High for a moment and recall The Martian Chronicles. As adults now we’d all be much richer to read many of those books that are so rusty from our youth. MC touched on racism, jealousy, loneliness, ambition, censorship, and despotic bureaucrats; we would do well to turn off what the politicians and the pundits tell us about these things and maybe see them on a cleaner slate.
Bradbury was also backbreakingly hilarious. <SPOILER> I remember a story in Chronicles where a man comes down from the mountains to find that everyone had left Mars and returned to Earth. He spends weeks pouring over every number in the phone book desperately trying to find another soul before he finally hears a voice: a woman’s. He races across the planet to meet her and discovers a foul, obese creature with chocolate cake all over her face. He then spends the remainder of the story running away.
I say it often enough: Sci Fi matters. It matters because of men like Bradbury.
A repost, but awesome(word on the street is that he saw and approved):
