Ray Bradbury died recently. I thought the media treated it rather casually considering Bradbury was a baby boomer era author whose famous novels were required reading for generations of Americans. Of course it's another era now. Bradbury was the oldest of white males and to a modern media that sees everything through the cult of multicultism there is little for them to say about a man who lived his life in the traditional ways of his people.
Reading his biography I found out some fascinatiing things about the man. Bradbury was born in the Depression in Waukegan Illinois, one of his parents traced their ancestry to the Mayflower. Oddly enough (which may explain the medias lukewarm treatment of his passing) I found no jewish ancestry which is unusual in the fantasy/sci-fi genre of writers from the mid twentieth century.
The man was married for 65 years! His wife passing a few years ago. He was conservative in his politics (another reason for little love from the presstitute media) and was a bit of a Luddite in his beliefs--odd for a sci-fi writer, although he did not consider himself a writer of science fiction. He hated computers, cell phones, TV's, anything that removed the human element from life.
As befits a man who wrote Fahrenheit 451 (about book burning) he loved books. Never going to college Bradbury instead went to the library, 3 times a week for 10 years in his youth. He wrote the classic novel Farenheight 451 using a rented typewriter and paying 10 cents an hour at the UCLA library. It cost him $9.50.
A chance encounter with a British literary critic gave him the chance to put the Martian Chronicles into the hands of someone who could appreciate the book. It was my favorite book from my childhood. I can still remember the cover of that worn paperback I took out at the library and read and re-read. It was called sci-fi but Bradbury considered it fantasy.
He said: First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. It was named so to represent the temperature at which paper ignites. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time — because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.
On his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 many mistook it for a critique of state power because of the book burning but Bradbury disputed that, he meant it as a criticism of peoples dependence on television and mass media to inform and entertain themselves. In the world today with it's empty forms of entertainment, it's fixation on visual forms of media to control and manipulate an increasingly ignorant population of ever growing low IQ tan everypeople.
Bradbury no doubt realised at the end that it would not be necessary to burn books, but rather they will eventually become moldy from non-use and eventually serve as fuel for the fires that will warm the remaining population of societies as they complete the slide back into pre-historic living. During the looting after hurricane Katrina the only stores that remained intact were the bookstores. 50% of the citizens in Detroit cannot read. These people will never find it necessary to burn books except to light fires when the White man no longer delivers electricity.
Reading his biography I found out some fascinatiing things about the man. Bradbury was born in the Depression in Waukegan Illinois, one of his parents traced their ancestry to the Mayflower. Oddly enough (which may explain the medias lukewarm treatment of his passing) I found no jewish ancestry which is unusual in the fantasy/sci-fi genre of writers from the mid twentieth century.
The man was married for 65 years! His wife passing a few years ago. He was conservative in his politics (another reason for little love from the presstitute media) and was a bit of a Luddite in his beliefs--odd for a sci-fi writer, although he did not consider himself a writer of science fiction. He hated computers, cell phones, TV's, anything that removed the human element from life.
As befits a man who wrote Fahrenheit 451 (about book burning) he loved books. Never going to college Bradbury instead went to the library, 3 times a week for 10 years in his youth. He wrote the classic novel Farenheight 451 using a rented typewriter and paying 10 cents an hour at the UCLA library. It cost him $9.50.
A chance encounter with a British literary critic gave him the chance to put the Martian Chronicles into the hands of someone who could appreciate the book. It was my favorite book from my childhood. I can still remember the cover of that worn paperback I took out at the library and read and re-read. It was called sci-fi but Bradbury considered it fantasy.
He said: First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. It was named so to represent the temperature at which paper ignites. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time — because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.
On his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 many mistook it for a critique of state power because of the book burning but Bradbury disputed that, he meant it as a criticism of peoples dependence on television and mass media to inform and entertain themselves. In the world today with it's empty forms of entertainment, it's fixation on visual forms of media to control and manipulate an increasingly ignorant population of ever growing low IQ tan everypeople.
Bradbury no doubt realised at the end that it would not be necessary to burn books, but rather they will eventually become moldy from non-use and eventually serve as fuel for the fires that will warm the remaining population of societies as they complete the slide back into pre-historic living. During the looting after hurricane Katrina the only stores that remained intact were the bookstores. 50% of the citizens in Detroit cannot read. These people will never find it necessary to burn books except to light fires when the White man no longer delivers electricity.
Anyway RIP....
