# Fuck you, Ray Bradbury **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 6, 2010, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785 "2010-09-06T12:33:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/21 "2010-09-06T21:08:15Z")
I read a couple of Phillip K. Dick novels recently (The Man in the High Castle and We Can Build You). He seems like a caricature of an author with attention-deficit disorder. “Ah, this story’s getting boring. I’m gonna make one or more of the main characters suddenly be insane and deal with that for the last third of the book.” ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/22 "2010-09-06T21:42:27Z")
> [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > I read a couple of Phillip K. Dick novels recently (The Man in the High Castle and We Can Build You). He seems like a caricature of an author with attention-deficit disorder. “Ah, this story’s getting boring. I’m gonna make one or more of the main characters suddenly be insane and deal with that for the last third of the book.” Didn’t Dick\* actually write\* Man in the High Castle according to the input of the I-Ching? ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/23 "2010-09-06T21:56:01Z")
I’ve also never read any Ray Bradbury, and as an English Major, I almost feel cheated. Until I realize he writes science fiction. I think I was assigned Fahrenheit 451 in some Summer Reading program in high school, but I totally skipped it, if that’s the case. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/24 "2010-09-06T22:04:01Z")
Put me down in the “Bradbury is overrated” camp. I had a friend who was nuts for Bradbury and was always preaching his gospel. He finally wore me down and I bought a collection of short stories. Dry as dust. You want an introduction to science fiction, try: [Adventures in Time and Space](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_Time_and_Space) ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/25 "2010-09-06T22:19:03Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > Ray Bradbury is a difficult person to categorize. Although many of his stories are set in an SF environment, they are not really hard science fiction like Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov. His use of prose is better than the average bear, and some of his earlier works are quite interesting. > > Some of his horror is quite good. Something Wicked This Way Comes is a classic. Agree, and I just sent my brother-in-law a box of books (laid up for 6 weeks, said he’d love something to read). And I included: [Dandelion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelion_Wine) [Wine](http://www.amazon.com/Dandelion-Wine-Grand-Master-Editions/dp/0553277537/ref=sid_dp_dp). One of the best depictions of growing up “back in the day”. And i DO mean “back”: 1920’s Illinois small town. It’s refreshing. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/26 "2010-09-06T23:00:20Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > On the gripping hand, add some early Niven as well. I saw what you did there. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/27 "2010-09-06T23:36:15Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Dry as dust. Perhaps. But Bradbury the man is a fascinating storyteller. I’ve had lunch with the man on several occasions, and he was never less than charming, generous and riveting. ---
**Author:** ![Jormungandr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@Jormungandr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jormungandr)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/28 "2010-09-06T23:50:42Z")
The only mention of Bradbury in my schooling was “Fahrenheit 451” when censorship was discussed and it was offered as a choice for a report my junior year. My first contact was “Something Wicked This Way Comes” because of the movie. I could never really get into the books. Sort of “I’m missing something here.” ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/29 "2010-09-07T00:18:56Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > I see that recent editions of the Martian Chronicles don’t include my favorite: _Night Call, Collect._ One of the humans abandoned alone on Mars devises a project to keep his sanity: recording a series of harassing phone calls to himself, all time-delayed to go off years later, calculated to drive him crazy. To the best of my knowledge ([and per ISFDB.org](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58411)) it never appeared in Martian Chronicles. There’s about 8 stories set on the same Mars that weren’t collected in Chronicles. Another is “The Fire Balloons” from Illustrated Man. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/30 "2010-09-07T00:47:20Z")
I really liked _Kaleidoscope_, which when you get down to it is a pretty basic story about the stages of death. But I really like his prose and imagery. > [@Bradbury](#): > > The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun. Granted I read a lot of his stuff in a more angsty time (read: high school), but I think he has staying power for those who like the genre. He’s on a different end of the genre than most authors, which is why he’s not appealing in general to everyone who likes SF. > [@GESancMan](#): > > I’m a sci-fi fan. The only thing I’ve ever read by Bradbury was _Fahrenheit 451_, assigned when I was a freshman in high school. I found the premise to be utterly ridiculous Really? You can’t conceive of a heavily-censored, controlled society? Do you lack empathy for the North Korean people, for example? Do you hate all dystopian novels equally, then? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/31 "2010-09-07T00:49:25Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > To the best of my knowledge ([and per ISFDB.org](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58411)) it never appeared in Martian Chronicles. There’s about 8 stories set on the same Mars that weren’t collected in Chronicles. Another is “The Fire Balloons” from Illustrated Man. You are right. My dad has a first edition that Bradbury signed in the 70’s and 90’s, and I just looked and it ain’t there. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/32 "2010-09-07T00:51:47Z")
There was supposed to be a “Complete” Martian Chronicles at some point with those extra stories added as an appendix or something, but it doesn’t seem to have ever been made. ---
**Author:** ![Electric\_Warrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Electric\_Warrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Warrior)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/33 "2010-09-07T00:58:15Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > Really? You can’t conceive of a heavily-censored, controlled society? Do you lack empathy for the North Korean people, for example? Do you hate all dystopian novels equally, then? Well it’s not so much that they heavily censor the society, it’s that they don’t allow people to think. In any case, I don’t know about **GESancMan** but the main reason I hated Fahrenheit 451 and never tried to read any other Bradbury is because every word of that book was dripping with self-importance. This wasn’t a beautiful, poignant social commentary, it was a text written by someone who thought that the only requirement for being able to write beautiful, poignant social commentary is having read some. So yeah, (I wouldn’t) fuck Bradbury. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/34 "2010-09-07T01:37:12Z")
F 451 wasn’t his best work in terms of aesthetics. To me, he’s a much better short story writer. But that wasn’t the criticism that **GESancMan** leveled at it, to which I was pretty damn surprised. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/35 "2010-09-07T01:39:36Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > > [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > > > I read a couple of Phillip K. Dick novels recently (The Man in the High Castle and We Can Build You). He seems like a caricature of an author with attention-deficit disorder. “Ah, this story’s getting boring. I’m gonna make one or more of the main characters suddenly be insane and deal with that for the last third of the book.” > > Didn’t Dick\* actually write\* Man in the High Castle according to the input of the I-Ching? Yes, but as the book goes on he seems to try less and less to hold a coherent story together. In hindsight, it feels like it was a collaboration, where each chapter is written by a different author, and they all hate each other. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/36 "2010-09-07T01:55:12Z")
> [@Dave\_Hartwick](#): > > When I saw the phrase, “fuck you, Ray Bradbury”, I thought of what I considered to be his betrayal of the genre. > > … > “First of all, I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time—because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.” “Betrayal of the genre”? It would never have occured to me to characterize it as that. What you quoted agrees with what I’ve seen other writers say about Bradbury’s work. It all depends on how you define “science fiction”; but by some relatively mainstream definitions, something like the _Martian Chronicles_ wouldn’t qualify—not that that says anything for or against it as a work of literature. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/37 "2010-09-07T02:02:00Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > There was supposed to be a “Complete” Martian Chronicles at some point with those extra stories added as an appendix or something, but it doesn’t seem to have ever been made. I think the company that was publishing it ran into financial troubles. The recent Harper Collins version that came out also cut out “Way in the Middle of the Air”, which is a shame, because it was a good story, but I guess it’s kind of racially dated. ---
**Author:** ![Sateryn76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/38 "2010-09-07T02:03:10Z")
I just re-read The Martian Chronicles again, and I still think it’s fantastic. I also likes F451, and some other short stories I’ve read of his. I hate Sci-Fi books (but not TV/Movies). I think that’s the key - he’s not a sci-fi writer. He is a storyteller, and just happens to use fantasy/future settings to tell them, in the same way that Star Trek is just a frame for a good story. Or ER is a good frame for a story. Or a police procedural, etc., etc. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/39 "2010-09-07T08:44:47Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > > [@GESancMan](#): > > > > I’m a sci-fi fan. The only thing I’ve ever read by Bradbury was _Fahrenheit 451_, assigned when I was a freshman in high school. I found the premise to be utterly ridiculous > > Really? You can’t conceive of a heavily-censored, controlled society? Do you lack empathy for the North Korean people, for example? Do you hate all dystopian novels equally, then? Reading a little much into what I said, aren’t you? What I found ridiculous was the idea that American society would get to the point where reading was outlawed, and the job of firemen was to burn books. That’s the kind of idea for a story I’d expect an eight-year-old to come up with - and it might have sounded cool at that age, but by fourteen it was totally absurd. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785/40 "2010-09-07T11:23:31Z")
All you said was that the premise was ridiculous. Bradbury said nothing about America. The metaphor between burning books and government controlled societies seems apt to me. So the premise that firemen burn books was too far a leap between that and Nazis or Christians burning books? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ray-bradbury/552785.md?page=3)