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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | The death of Ray Bradbury is a sad loss to science fiction.Along with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury was a major attraction for me to get into reading SF.A superlative short story writer,and famous for The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451,his lyrical style was unmistakeable. He seemed to be particularly beloved by the young,and I have fond memories of the excitement I felt as a teenager stepping into his fascinating,often bizarre,witty world.Rest in Peace,Ray. | |
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Member
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| I also started with the Princess of Mars at age 12. I must admit the Chronicles of Mars was a definite step up. I also liked his Dandelion Wine which reminded me of my MidWest boyhood. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Huh,dont believe it,I went into our library this morning to get a Bradbury book to read in honour of his memory,and was annoyed to find the branch does not stock even one Bradbury book.Every single Dean Koontz and Stephen King known to man but not one Bradbury.I thought his books had escaped the SF stigma,still in force to this day,and was looked upon as literature,but nope,they have binned the books with all the other SF.I believe there is a serious SF hater in the central library! :0) | |
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Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Interesting that this combination of Burroughs and Bradbury got people into SF at a young age. I had the same experience! I wonder why that happens? It seemed like a fairly random discovery to me at the time...
It's got to be a pretty rare library with no Bradbury. I remember checking out lots of them way back when. I suspect he's on the shortlist for the next genre writer to be "canonized" in the Library of America series, following on from PKD, Lovecraft, Vonnegut, and Shirley Jackson. He did make it out of the ghetto fairly early, being published in mainstream magazines early in his career. His books and stories are taught in public schools... | |
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Member
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Location: Glasgow, Scotland | Hi all, I'm new to this forum and site so hoping to be contributing as much as I can. So, I thought I would begin with my 1st post to pay tribute to one of my favourite science fiction writers; Ray Bradbury. I still cannot believe it!! Fahrenheit 451 remains top of my list in his works, I think I may just read it again. Looking forward to more chat and discussion soon | |
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Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Welcome, scifigal! Just reread F451 as part of the Grand Master reading challenge here. It was an interesting book to return to after a long time...
This is a bit of a tangent, but if this thread is still active, there is something I'm wondering... Last night I read Jack Vance's first story, The World-Thinker, which was published in 1945, which, combined with Bradbury's death, got me thinking about "Golden Age" writers. Frederik Pohl's first story was in 1940, and Bradbury's in 1939. Now that Bradbury is no longer with us, and aside from Pohl and Vance, are there any SFF writers still living who published in the 1940s? I can't think of any. On Pohl's blog, his reaction to Bradbury's death was that it made him feel lonely... Such an important/influential generation of writers... | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | I was thinking that Brian Aldiss might have been another? | |
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Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Hi, Emil. According to ISFDB, Aldiss' first story was in 1954, so that puts him in the same generation with Ellison and Silverberg... | |
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Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Aha, so Pohl is very well the last of that generation. I guess if you reach the 90s the odds of being a last "survivor" are very much in your favor. | |
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Location: Gunnison, Colorado | And Jack Vance is still with us, at age 95... | |
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| Watch video of grandmasters of sci fi at Brian Aldiss's induction in 2000: Pohl, Simak, Haldeman, Clarke, Farmer, Spinrad, Del Rey, Knight, Bradbury, Wolfe, Vance, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHNSm4Mu2-s | |
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Uber User
Posts: 456
| Bradbury was such a beautiful, generous writer. I've got his From the Dust Returned enqueued and am looking forward to experiencing his magic once again. @ Scott, I was another Bradbury/Burroughs whelp - I think it might be a generational thing.
On Golden Age writers, according to ISFDB, James Gunn (89) was first published in 1949, so he makes the cutoff, along with the aforementioned Vance (96) and Pohl (93). Just missing out are Richard Matheson (86) and Frank M. Robinson (86), both first published in 1950, Harry Harrison (87), Gene Wolfe (81), and Julian May (81), all first published in 1951, and Daniel Keyes (85), first published in 1952. Other "elder statesmen" authors who published in the 1950s or later are Mary Stewart (96), Doris Lessing (93), Richard Adams (92), Carol Emshwiller (91), Brian Aldiss (87), Kate Wilhelm (84), Sheri S. Tepper (83), Ursula K. Le Guin (83). Some other living "associational" people are Martin Greenberg (94), Betty Ballantine (93), Ray Harryhausen (92), Christopher Lee (90), Stan Lee (90), Chuck Yeager (89), Christopher Tolkien (88), Alvin Toffler (84).
May they live all the years of their lives! (Stolen from Swift  )
If I were voting for next year's Grand Master award, Gene Wolfe and Richard Matheson would be my top candidates.
@jervalaw Thanks for the link, that was a great video. | |
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Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Thanks very much for this, @Engelbrecht! I'm also holding thumbs for Gene Wolfe, although the rule that someone previously pointed out for making the grade as Grand Master - that of still being alive at the time of the award - may start to count against him, and against some of our other elder statespeople we may want to see honored. I'm just amazed how old some of them are, considering I "grew up" with them. They will probably never really grow old and are immortalized by the vast body of work they have all crafted. | |
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Member
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| I chuckled over the fact that editor Fred Pohl rejected Ray Bradbury's early submissions. I definitely started out with Tarzan/John Carter and then went on from her. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Thanks for all that information, Engelbrecht. If we're going into the '50s, there's an interview with William F. Nolan in this month's Locus, where he discusses his role as one of the last of the old guard, talking about his friendships with Bradbury, Matheson, Charles Beaumont, etc. His first story is listed as 1952. He's still working, as I think are Pohl, Matheson, Emshwiller, and Tepper, Wolfe, Le Guin...
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2012/06/william-f-nolan-last-m...
jervalaw: Thanks so much for pointing to that video--fascinating stuff! Most of these writers I'd never seen on film, and it never occurred to me to look for something like that on YouTube!
As for the Grand Masters, it must be difficult to make the choice each year, since you would want to choose the most deserving person who still doesn't have it, but would also have to contend with the morbid thought that maybe someone should be chosen because they're not likely to survive much longer. Of these older writers, I agree that Gene Wolfe seems the most obvious candidate who hasn't gotten it yet, and I'd also like to see Kate Wilhelm (for a start). Maybe the one-per-year to a living writer conditions ought to be modified... | |
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Posts: 4005
Location: Dallas, Texas | I should have paid more attention to this thread - so much great stuff. I've only read The Illustrated Man by Bradbury but I really liked it. Not sure why I never read any of his other stuff. Just one of those "holes" you find in your reading when you stop to consider. I should move him up my list. @dustydigger and others: I managed to miss out on Burroughs in my youth too! Not sure how that happened. I guess because I started reading on my own without much adult guidance. And I'm a pretty old fart myself. I did make up for lost time in the last few years reading Barsoom and loving every cheesy minute of it. @jeralaw: That's a fantastic video, indeed. I should add that to the site. It's fun to see the Grand Masters in their prime like that! @Englebrecht: That's a nice bit of research that makes me desperately want to build a SF/F author timeline showing all the WWEnd authors in order of their first publication! Some kind of scrolling timeline with author pics and dates picked out. The pics would link to the author pages and the dates would link to a search result list of all the books published that year in our database. I'll have to noddle on that for a bit. Too bloody cool not to do! @Scott Laz: You can go to YouTube for many more of those kinds of videos but don't forget to look at our massive list of over 400 videos here on the site: Author Videos We've been combing through YouTube for you! The videos can be found on the author pages too. Its about time I made another update to the list it seems. The whole stipulation that the author must still be living is a bit silly to me. It means that at the blistering pace of one award per year (at least for the last few years) they are going to be leaving off a lot of deserving authors through attrition. There was a good discussion of this very topic on the Coode Street Podcast where they talked about the jury not wanting to make the obvious choice in a given year thinking the next jury would give it to that obvious author and then the author passed away. They make an argument for giving more than one award a year because of the aging authors mentioned in this thread. Give it a listen. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Wow, how incredibly cool is that video. And how filled with a sense of wonder does Aldiss appear at the end! | |
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Ray Bradbury 1921-2012