Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury, the first celebrity on our flight, grew up in Illinois. Bradbury has influenced writers for over 50 years. He even referred to himself as a magician. "People call me a science fiction writer, but I don't think that is quite true. I think I am a magician who is capable of making things appear and disappear right in front of you, and you don't know how it happened."
Since he was a child of an impoverished family, Bradbury knew he would never sit in a college classroom, yet he was determined to earn a stellar education. Several days each week, before or after work, he spent time reading books at the public library until Bradbury claimed he had read them all. When asked, "Libraries and librarians play an important role in your stories. What were your formative experiences with libraries?", he replied: "Well, that's my complete education. I didn't go to college, but when I graduated from high school I went down to the local library and I spent ten years there, two or three days a week, and I got a better education than most people get from universities. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight years old."
As a passionate supporter of libraries, he called them "the center of our lives." And once, he once said, "Books are the building blocks of the soul and are to be defended at all cost." How have books and libraries impacted your life so far? You can see a photo of Bradbury's home library on his website.
Bradbury's life experiences, his love for books, and his desire to write about the future in space aided this famous author to create, in the 1950s and long before we landed on the Moon in July of 1969, some of the best, if not the best, science fiction ever written. It was no coincidence either, that Ray Bradbury wove current social issues on Earth into his stories of space exploration, creating a word he would not have used but would definitely understand, dystopia.
Bradbury's Books
In Unit 10, the last leg of our journey, you will have an opportunity to choose one of Bradbury's complete novels such as Fahrenheit 451 or Martian Chronicles for independent reading. The flight attendants have a long list of page turners for you to choose your favorite, but we'll talk more about this project later. We need to make some new friends, first.
Ray Bradbury was fascinated with the future in space on such planets as Venus and Mars. He convinced us readers we could not only travel there but, actually, live on these planets in the future. On June 5, 2012, a scientific event took place that scientists claim will not re-occur for 100 years. I, along with everyone around the world, was able to watch, with special protection for our eyes from the rays of the sun, the Transit of Venus. It was remarkable to me but not as remarkable as the news I learned the next morning. Ray Bradbury had passed away at the age of 91, the very night countless followers of his science fiction saw Venus in transit.
Type of Literature
Literature can be divided into two categories: .
- Escape Literature, which takes the reader away from real life (fantasy), and
- Interpretative Literature, which takes the reader deeper into the real world.
In Bradbury's world, the ability to fantasize creates the ability to survive for many of his characters. Hope is what they have to hold onto in their horrible world. Since Bradbury was obsessed with the Rocket Age and created imaginary stories, he wanted his readers to escape to his world. For example, his short story "All Summer in a Day," as the title even suggests, is escape literature.