He passed away during an astronomical event, a transit of Venus; with everyone looking towards space. I met Mr. Bradbury years ago at a book signing. Like him, I had never learned to drive a car. That's what we talked about. He spoke of his youth, of friends who never became adults because they'd died in automobile accidents. He was quite sincere and made me promise to never learn to drive. I still haven't. He was probably the most decent, wonderful person I ever met. The writing will endure.
His collections of short stories kept me in a dream for decades. The dreamer may have died... but, the dream carries on! What a great man. (He wrote a story or two for Twilight Zone and Star Trek back in those days.)
I have always loved his poems … he wasn't as well known for them, of course, and many people are surprised by it, but he is a never ending source of joy, wonder and creative expansion. You can feel the wonder in his voice and that is part of what I have always been so drawn to about him .. he is a little boy inside a man who never lost his childlike curiosity. That, and of course, he is just a terrifically talented writer!
Just found out about this great poem on the Nasa TV channel while watching a thrilling update on Pluto via the New Horizons spacecraft. Don't you wish all those scientists and Mr. Bradbury could see all the new data Nasa has collected?
Ray Bradbury was a friend. My late great aunt introduced me to him, as she used to drive him to the writers meetings in the 1960s since he didn't drive.
yes he was...my father met him many years ago...RayBradbury did a seminar in Denver and afterwards needed a ride to the bus as he didnt drive...that's how my father got to know him ...they kept in touch throughout the years.:)
Our magical and brilliant Magister has begun his journey through the rest of the Universe which he was born knowing so very well. The loss of such a man is enormous. His like had never been, and will never come again.
NO! I think he'd say we're waiting for the next person of this quality. It's true that I look around and I don't see such brilliance. We have to try, each one of us. That's the lesson..
It is a shame that I was not born in a time when Americans were still hopeful of the space program. To have such wonder and hope in the future is a feeling I have never known. Yet, Ray Bradbury's poem beckons me to find that inspiration and support it, to gently blow on the embers of the idea that someday we will have our Martian colony, our trips to Alpha Centauri and much much more.
Another good man. Thank you for your struggle, determination born of self-belief in writing 451. One of the important books. And should you're prophecy come true (and i fear it will) it will be a high compliment that those small minds will seek out 451 as one if the first books to be burned. Shine on Ray Bradbury.
This is the emotional thing you see, you must galvanise people- so they want to be completely alive and live forever, or the next thing to it, and out of that comes art then, and survival through emotion, no matter what happens, even though the world can try to crush you and put you down with facts, break up through the concrete, and say “dammit all, i’m a blade of grass and i will survive!” - Ray Bradbury on Day at Night 1975.
I was fortunate enough to have met Ray personally and to give him a copy of my first philosophy book. The next day I received a letter from him. I felt like I had met one of his Martians, and I was honoured. " It is good to renew one's wonder, " said the Philosopher. " Space travel has again made children of us all. " ( From 'The Martian Chronicles' by Ray Bradbury )
The fence we walked between the years did balance us serene. It was a place half in the sky wearing the green of leaf and promising of peach. We’d reach our hand and touch and almost touch the sky. If we could reach and touch we said, it would teach us not to, never to, be dead. We ached and almost touched that stuff; our reach was never quite enough.
I was 9 or ten when I read one of his books. In fact it was the first fiction novel I read all the way through. I bet there's a lot of NASA scientists and employees that read his books when they were 9 or 10 too. God's speed!
Does anyone know if the full version of the recording of the symposium exists? Or a version of the poetry reading without the music in the background? Thanks in advance!
I work for that, short man, large dream. I send my rockets forth between my ears, hoping an inch of good is worth a pound of years. Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall, “We’ve reached Alpha Centauri.. We’re tall... Oh God, we’re tall!”
lana mays : I can't remember if I read Dandelion Wine before or after seeing the tv-movie version of The Halloween Tree, but reading that book definitely hooked me for the long haul, and I remember it fondly. I was the only person in my seventh-grade reading class who wasn't horrifically bored with it. 😆
+SonOfTerra92 oh god!!! and he was completely eclipsed by Mr. Bradbury!! I have been crazy for Sagan all my life, but in this magnificent video his presence is a satellite. What a gathering of great personalities there
If only we had taller been and touched god’s cuff, his, his hem. We would not have to go with them who’ve gone before, who short as us stood tall as they could stand, and hoped by stretching, tall, that they might keep their land, their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul, but they like us were standing in a hole.
Oh Thomas, will a race one day stand really tall? Across the void, across the universe and all, and measured out with rocket fire, at last put Adam’s finger forth; as on the Sistine ceiling, and God’s hand come down the other way, to measure man, and find him good, and gift him with forever’s day?
That ten year old boy sure sounds like deGrasse Tyson and his fascination with correcting movies and television show.. even the terse "On page 92... Moons of Mars rising in the east.. No." sound like him.
