Martians, robots, dinosaurs, mummies, ghosts, time machines, rocket ships, carnival magicians, alarming doppelgängers who forecast murder and doom — the sort of sensational subjects that fascinate children are the stuff of Ray Bradbury’s fiction. Over a 70-year career, he used his fecund storytelling talents to fashion tales that have captivated legions of young people and inspired a host of imitators. His work informed the imagination of writers and filmmakers like Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, and helped transport science fiction out of the pulp magazine ghetto and into the mainstream.
Thanks to its lurid subject matter and its often easy-to-decipher morals, Mr. Bradbury’s work is often taught in middle school. He’s often one of the first writers who awaken students to the enthralling possibilities of storytelling and the use of fantastical metaphors to describe everyday human life. His finest tales have become classics not only because of their accessibility but also because of their exuberant “Twilight Zone” inventiveness, their social resonance, their prescient vision of a dystopian future, which he dreamed up with astonishing ingenuity and flair. Not surprisingly he had a magpie’s love of all sorts of literature — Poe, Shakespeare and Sherwood Anderson (whose “Winesburg, Ohio” reportedly inspired “The Martian Chronicles”) as well as H. G. Wells and L. Frank Baum — and borrowed devices and conventions from the classics and from various genres. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” would win acclaim as a groundbreaking work of horror and fantasy.
“Fahrenheit 451” (1953) — Mr. Bradbury’s famous novel-turned-movie about a futuristic world in which books are verboten — is at once a parable about McCarthyism and Stalinism, and a kind of fable about the perils of political correctness and the dangers of television and other technology. “The Martian Chronicles” (1950), a melancholy series of overlapping stories about the colonization of Mars, can be read as an allegory about the settling of the United States or seen as a mirror of postwar American life.
“A Sound of Thunder” (1952) — a short story about a time-traveler, who journeys back to the dinosaur era and accidentally steps on a butterfly, thereby altering the course of world history — spawned many imitations, and in some respects anticipated the chaos theory concept of “the butterfly effect,” which suggests that one small change can lead to enormous changes later on. He also uncannily foresaw inventions like flat-screen TVs, Walkman-like devices and virtual reality.
by Michiko Kakutani, NY Times | Read more:
Charley Gallay/Getty Image
Thanks to its lurid subject matter and its often easy-to-decipher morals, Mr. Bradbury’s work is often taught in middle school. He’s often one of the first writers who awaken students to the enthralling possibilities of storytelling and the use of fantastical metaphors to describe everyday human life. His finest tales have become classics not only because of their accessibility but also because of their exuberant “Twilight Zone” inventiveness, their social resonance, their prescient vision of a dystopian future, which he dreamed up with astonishing ingenuity and flair. Not surprisingly he had a magpie’s love of all sorts of literature — Poe, Shakespeare and Sherwood Anderson (whose “Winesburg, Ohio” reportedly inspired “The Martian Chronicles”) as well as H. G. Wells and L. Frank Baum — and borrowed devices and conventions from the classics and from various genres. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” would win acclaim as a groundbreaking work of horror and fantasy.“Fahrenheit 451” (1953) — Mr. Bradbury’s famous novel-turned-movie about a futuristic world in which books are verboten — is at once a parable about McCarthyism and Stalinism, and a kind of fable about the perils of political correctness and the dangers of television and other technology. “The Martian Chronicles” (1950), a melancholy series of overlapping stories about the colonization of Mars, can be read as an allegory about the settling of the United States or seen as a mirror of postwar American life.
“A Sound of Thunder” (1952) — a short story about a time-traveler, who journeys back to the dinosaur era and accidentally steps on a butterfly, thereby altering the course of world history — spawned many imitations, and in some respects anticipated the chaos theory concept of “the butterfly effect,” which suggests that one small change can lead to enormous changes later on. He also uncannily foresaw inventions like flat-screen TVs, Walkman-like devices and virtual reality.
by Michiko Kakutani, NY Times | Read more:
Charley Gallay/Getty Image
