A Farewell to Ray Bradbury: 1920 — 2012

I've met Ray Bradbury only once in person. On November 20, 1996 I stood in line for several hours at BookPeople in Austin, Texas for a signing of his latest collection, Quicker Than the Eye. We were allowed two signed books, so I picked up a reprint of Fahrenheit 451 in hardback and he signed that one as well. The signing process took mere minutes. I may have mumbled something inane or just said “thank you,” but walked away with a cherished memory. Bradbury was a legend while he lived, and his legacy will stretch far beyond his death in 2012. Born in 1920, he lived nearly a century. Always associated with science fiction through his book, The Martian Chronicles, he lived through the birth and ascendancy of science fiction, from the pages of pulp magazines to reality.

I trace my first memories of Bradbury's fiction to “The Sound of Summer Running,” and other childhood tales like Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Later I watched episodes from The Ray Bradbury Theater, and read more of his stories and books in the early 1990s as I immersed myself in early sf. The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and numerous short stories remain bright in my memory. This year I've made an effort to read all his books that I has set aside in the “to read later” pile, and to locate those books that I never bought.

Bradbury's insight into humanity's dark nature always surprises me. Layers of our memory tend to obscure this fact, like strata of dirt covering ancient cities under centuries of time and memory, only for someone to unearth them and rediscover their true meaning. Re-reading about the eradication of Martians, or the savage beating of someone as a result of their tattoos probably doesn't sink through as deeply into the mind of a teenager as much as an adult, who sees the fiction reflected in the annals of history: the destruction of the American West, the distrust of strangers.

As readers we tend to adopt our own interpretations of certain books. Whether or not Bradbury intended for Fahrenheit 451 as a warning against the destruction of books and ideas, I embraced that view, and it remains deeply ingrained in my interpretation of his book. He has on many occasions argued with readers about their interpretation of his classic book. The idea of individual liberty appears in multiple Bradbury tales, such as in “Usher II,” “The Pedestrian,” several of his Martian Chronicles stories, and elsewhere. Bradbury combined the Renaissance and Enlightenment, both in his fiction and persona.

“A Sound of Thunder” and “The Crowd” are well-known classics. Meanwhile, “The Veldt,” “All Summer in a Day” and “The Small Assassin” show that human cruelty is not the sole domain of adults. Yet he also wrote poignant stories about the joys of life and pleasures in the small things, as well as love and kindness. He was both a child and a man, someone who never forgot what it meant to be young. While adults see innocence in youth, Bradbury knew we are never truly innocent, young or old. We bear all the ranges of emotion, from fear to love, kindness to wanton cruelty.

Since the moment of Bradbury's debut in 1938, his imagination, lyrical prose, and grasp of what it means to be human has reached deep into the souls of readers, young and old. There is a little piece of Bradbury in each of his stories. For someone who could sit down and hammer out a story in two hours, then revise this over the course of the week, and write a short story every week for 52 weeks a year, this is no surprise. Various episodes from his life seep into the stories. Without having read a biography of Bradbury one might not realize how closely some of his stories are taken from real life and turned into a Bradbury tale. He mined the rich veins of his past, spun characters out of family, friends, chance passers-by he met on trains or on the street.

There will be no more Ray Bradbury stories, no more acerbic wit, no more brilliant words like the colorful leaves of fall swirling in a bright October sky.