Remembering Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012
Ray Bradbury Pour out some dandelion wine Web editor Paul Adams ruined my morning by walking over to my desk to inform me that Ray Bradbury had died at age 91. The news was unpleasant, but I appreciated the face-to-face exchange rather than getting an email. Bradbury, a writer oft-gripped by the talons of nostalgia who disliked modern technology such as computers, deserved a meatspace delivery of the news of his demise. Bradbury's work was some of the first speculative fiction that I ever read, years before I was mature enough to really appreciate just how humanistic his writing was. Back then, it was "holy crap, ghost people on Mars!" or "holy crap, carnivals are creepy" or "HOLY SHIT, they burned books!" But going back and reading some of his work as an adult brought a better understanding of his dedication to depicting the fervor of young friendships, or the...