R.I.P. Ray Bradbury
Iconic Science Fiction Writer Ray Bradbury Dies
In Memorium: Ray Bradbury
A lot of people are going to be saying "Ray who?" when they hear the news of this prolific author's death, but Ray Bradbury is one of the best and the greatest sf, fantasy, and horror novelists of his time. One of the first books of Bradbury's that I read was The Martian Chronicles (1950), and it remains to this day one of my favourite sf books of all time. I'm also a huge fan of his work Fahrenheit 451 (1953), which changed my whole outlook on books in many ways, and also loved his works The Halloween Tree (1972) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990). Among my favourites of his collections, The Illustrated Man (1951), The October Country (1955), I Sing the Body Electric (1969), and Dinosaur Tales (1983), and Driving Blind (1997) rank up there as some of my favourites. His story "A Sound of Thunder" (1952), found in several collections including A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005), was one of the earliest tales that I read when I was around six or seven years old that hooked me forever on dinosaurs and sparked my interest in all things palaeontological. Though there were several other authors whose works on dinosaurs and all things Mesozoic increased my interest in the field, it was Bradbury's story that first sparked me in this regard, and I will be forever grateful to him for this particular piece of fiction.
Kip Russell, one of the posters over on the io9 website has summed it up for me the best right now:
Wed 06 Jun 2012 7:22 AM
Somewhere in America, a boy tap-dances a on a tuned segment of discarded wooden sidewalk, calling his friends to run over the hills by moonlight...
Out on the Veldt, the animals pause for a moment, as though something unseen had passed through their midst...
Somewhere on Mars, a new silver fire is burning to welcome him...
By the river, a Book stops it's recitation for the day, to remember a fine man who wrote such fine, fine things.
Thanks be, for Ray Bradbury, who taught me that there could be poetry in prose.
Goodbye, Ray Bradbury. Rest In Peace. You were one of the best of the best in this field, and you will be *sorely* missed.