The Gun Counter

Ray Bradbury died last night. A great loss.

Oh, sad now.

VERY NSFW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

I loved his work, The Martian Chronicles is probably my favorite. I still have a copy.

Reading his published obituary that Rod linked to, revealed he and I had a connection. We both had ancestral paternal grandmothers hanged at Salem (now Danvers) Mass. for witchcraft.

He will be missed.

A real loss to the Sci-Fi community and a great writer. May he rest in peace. I wonder if he's gonna' have his ashes blasted into space?

Interestingly, he seems to have been a bit of a Luddite - “I don’t try to describe the future, I try to prevent it.”. He really seemed to have a visceral dislike for the Internet, and "Giant Screens"(I"m guessing the rise of cheap, large flatpanel displays/TVs).

I didn't know he was still around. He will be missed for all the work he did.

You have to admire a man who keeps all the stories that were rejected when he was starting out so he could have them published when he got famous.

Little Sister wrote:I didn't know he was still around. He will be missed for all the work he did.

You have to admire a man who keeps all the stories that were rejected when he was starting out so he could have them published when he got famous.

You have to remember WHEN he tried to publish those stories - it was all TYPEWRITER stuff, and NOT word-processor supported. When he printed stuff, it came out ON PAPER, *NOT* on a computer screen. So saving his previous works wasn't too difficult, only a matter of where to put/file it!

308Mike wrote:You have to remember WHEN he tried to publish those stories - it was all TYPEWRITER stuff, and NOT word-processor supported. When he printed stuff, it came out ON PAPER, *NOT* on a computer screen. So saving his previous works wasn't too difficult, only a matter of where to put/file it!

Not only that, but if you wanted multiple copies of something, your only options were carbon paper, mimeograph, or professional printing. Back in the day, if you wanted to submit a manuscript to a publisher, you sent out one of your few, if not only copies with return postage. If they didn't buy it, they would hopefully send it back and you would start the process over with another publisher.

I too, was unaware that he was still around. I have heard several independent sources say that Dandelion Wine was their favorite book of his. I'll have to pick up a copy.

Pretty amazing to read that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 on rented typewriters for $9.80. They were $.10 per half hour, meaning that he typed the entire book in 49 hours. Granted, there would have been hand-written pages produced in-between typing sessions, but that's still really cool. 46,118 words in 49 hours... metered out that equates to 15.7 wpm. Kinda makes me wonder how long it took Ayn Rand to write the 561,996 words in Atlas Shrugged.

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. "
Ray Bradbury

How many of our youngest generation don't read books?

My own favorites were "Martian Chronicles" and "October Country".