Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

06. June 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Wow.  Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest writers of our time, just passed away at the age of 91.  The news is affecting me a lot more than I thought it would.

My first exposure to Bradbury’s work came in seventh grade, when I read Farenheit 451 as part of the required summer reading.  Most of the books I read in middle school and high school were quite forgettable, but that one stuck with me, especially the scene with the professors scholars sitting around homeless in front of the fire.

Later in college, when I was just starting to find my footing as a writer, I read Zen and the Art of Writing, and it had quite a positive impact while I was still largely insecure about my own writing.  The most memorable piece of advice I gleaned from it was to write about the stuff that really moved me–to infuse all my writing with passion, and not give a damn about those who told me otherwise.  That helped give me the strength to tell the stories that I love, which is now a huge part of everything I do.

My favorite Bradbury work is his collection The Martian Chronicles.  The stories in that book are just amazing, and infused to the core with passion.  I remember breathlessly reading the one about the astronauts who land on Mars, only to find a beautiful Ohio village populated with all of the friends and family that they’d left behind.  Wow.

Whenever I pick up a Bradbury story, it’s like having this little old man clasp his hands on my shoulders and, with a gleam in his eye, shake me until I’m sure I’ll never forget it.  Every story is like a roller coaster, with stunning heights, beautiful views, and drops that make you scream for your life.  It’s awesome.

It brings tears to my eyes to know that he’s gone, but they’re bittersweet tears of the best kind.  The man had a rich, full life, and lived to see his work appreciated for how great it truly is.  At 27 novels and over 600 short stories, with more than 8 million copies in print in at least 36 languages, he has truly left us a great wealth of literature.  Some mourn that the world is a poorer place because of his passing, but I rejoice for how rich the world is because he lived at all.

Goodbye, Ray Bradbury.  Your stories truly changed the world.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

24. May 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet.  For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate.  Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

I first picked up this book two and a half years ago, when I was still trying to read a novel a week.  I’ve got to be honest; this was the book that made me break that new years resolution.  It is freaking huge, and some points are more interesting than others.

That said, this is an awesome piece of hard science fiction.  Lots of people have written about Mars, but very few have done it believably.  Kim Stanley Robinson does an job here–you can tell that he put in a ton of research, both into Martian geography (areology?) and feasible technology.

When I read science fiction, however, that’s not what I generally read for.  I’m more interested in characters, conflict, and thematic elements–in other words, the stuff that makes for a good story.  As far as that stuff goes, my opinion of Red Mars is somewhat mixed.

For example, the first chapter starts out with a murder, as seen from the point of view of the murderer.  Right away, I’ve got a reason not to sympathize with the main viewpoint character.  When we get into his mind and I see his motivations for killing the character, I like him even less–and he’s one of the main, driving characters.

Some of the characters are more sympathetic, and I enjoyed the sections in their point of view.  Others, however, were just plain boring–I neither loved them nor despised them.  Because of this, a lot of the character drama early in the novel didn’t engage me much; stuff was happening, but I didn’t really care.

When it comes to setting, Red Mars is also somewhat mixed.  Robinson goes to great depths to describe the Martian landscape, and several of his setting descriptions were quite interesting and wonderful.  At the same time, he explains everything in a very clinical, scientific way–his imagery is never as poetic and captivating as Ray Bradbury’s, or Ursula K. Le Guin’s, or George R. R. Martin’s.  I came away with a lot more knowledge about Mars, but not quite as much of a sense of wonder.

Things did get interesting once the political tensions started to come into play.  Robinson’s portrayal of the colonization of Mars raises a lot of interesting questions about the political relationship between Earth and Mars once those colonies start to become self-sufficient.  He follows things through right to the war for independence, and the implications of the conflict are quite interesting.  I finished the last hundred pages or so at a sprint.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you’re already a fan of hard science fiction.  Like most hard sf, character and conflict plays second string to scientific plausibility.  Within its sub-genre, however, Red Mars is awesome.  Let’s just put it this way: even though I got bored with it the first time, I knew I would one day pick it up and finish it.  I don’t regret that I did.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

27. March 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Mars, a magical world of ancient ruins like giant glass chess sets and canals of wine and sandy desert seas. A world inhabited by golden eyed people who can telepathically project hallucinations–some of them still live up in the hills. A desolate, empty world, the next frontier for a new generation of pioneering spirits, each with different dreams, different reasons, different goals and outlooks on their new life in the new world. Some come with respect and reverence to the ancient world, while others come to exploit it. But no matter why they come, everyone is deeply and profoundly changed. Some never return.

Ray Bradbury is one of the biggest names in science fiction, and this book is one of his greatest works. A lot of my friends really love Bradbury, but strangely, I haven’t read a lot of him (Fahrenheit 451, way back in Middle School, and a few essays, but that’s pretty much it). After putting this book down, all I can say is wow. Now I know what my friends were talking about.

The Martian Chronicles is more of a collection of short stories than anything else. That’s understandable, when you consider that science fiction began with short stories, not with novels. Keep that in mind as you read it, too. This is not a book you can read all in one go; you have to take time between the chapters to let each one soak in, otherwise your mind will just get overloaded. Bradbury delivers a bang! ending to just about every story in this book, and some of them are really deep. My favorite one was the one with Sender, and how the fourth rocket discovered that all the Martians were killed off by the chicken pox. There are some really profound ideas in that one, and I loved reading it.

A lot of hard sf purists tend to call Bradbury a writer of fantasy disguised as science fiction, and I can see where they’re coming from. There’s nothing really scientific about this book; the Mars of Bradbury’s stories is a purely fantastic invention (even for the 50s). I remember the story about the third rocket, and how it landed on a grassy green lawn, and all the crew stepped out and found themselves in a little Ohio town, and all I could think was “what??” It was very fantastic, very surreal and even trippy at parts, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. And really, I’d argue with the whole “Bradbury = fantasy” thing–I think some of the ideas in these stories definitely blur the line between fantasy and science fiction.

One thing Bradbury is fantastically good at is infusing all of his writing with passion. There wasn’t a moment in this whole book when I couldn’t envision Bradbury himself, his eyes wide and bloodshot, gripping me by the shoulders and shaking me. His imagery was amazing, and his twist endings were incredible. You really read Bradbury for his prose and for his ideas; everything else takes a back seat, but he does so well with the first two that that’s ok.

These are the kinds of stories that stick with you long after you’ve read them. They might not be consistent with each other or follow in a coherent, logical order, but they will deeply and profoundly move you.