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Ray Bradbury, R.I.P.

Posted in Pulps on June 6, 2012 @ 10:56 am

I’ve just read that Ray Bradbury died this morning in Los Angeles at the age of 91. He had been in failing health for several years now, but he never lost his zest for life or his enthusiasm for the genre he helped shape. I imagine most folks today remember Ray for his SF works, including The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but in his salad days as a penny-a-word pulpster he turned out some terrific fantasy and horror stories for Weird Tales and some neat mystery yarns for Popular Publications’ detective mags.

I don’t have the time or, frankly, the knowledge to do Bradbury justice here, so I’ll just say that his loss is a major one — not only to science fiction, but to American popular culture in general.

I’ll try to put a more fitting tribute together for Blood ‘n’ Thunder‘s Summer issue. Anyone with ideas along those lines, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

One thought on “Ray Bradbury, R.I.P.

  1. Somewhere in America, a boy tap-dances a on a tuned segment of discarded wooden sidewalk, calling his friends to run over the hills by moonlight…

    Out on the Veldt, the animals pause for a moment, as though something unseen had passed through their midst…

    Somewhere on Mars, a new silver fire is burning to welcome him…

    By the river, a Book stops it’s recitation for the day, to remember a fine man who wrote such fine, fine things.

    Thanks be, for Ray Bradbury, who taught me that there could be poetry in prose.
    I first discovered his work in 1956 when I bought a copy of The October Country on my way home from school. I remember reading the entire book that evening. There were so many stories that enchanted me that night and have stuck with me all these years later.
    It is no coincidence that the first copy of Weird Tales I bought had a Bradbury story in it.

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