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?
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.
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
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:
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.
I saw what you did there.
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.
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.”
To the best of my knowledge (and per ISFDB.org) 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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?