I’m going to postpone the writng update I said I would do today. I haven’t tabulated the numbers yet.
But since this is January 2, there are two birthdays I want to mention, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) and Charles Beaumont (1929-1967). Continue reading
I don’t know what the temperatures have been like where you are, but around here (west central Texas), It’s been hot. You know it’s been hot when the highs are in the low to mid nineties and it feels cool. Most of the last month has seen temperatures aourn one hundred four to one hundred six, with some days hitting one ten or more.
What has that to do with autumn? Continue reading
There were a lot of birthdays yesterday, but I was up late getting things ready for the first day of class today and wasn’t able to get a post up. Fortunately, I don’t have to do that tonight.
And that’s a good thing because today, August 22, is the birthday of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012).
I had seen some of Bradbury’s paperbacks in the children’s section of the public library in Wichita Falls when I was in fourth grade. They were the editions with a sktech of Bradbury in front of a horzontal illustration of something in the book. They were on a spinner rack with some Twilight Zone collections, James Blish’s Star Trek novelizations, and other books. I remember that was the rack I found Planet of the Apes on.
But I digress. Continue reading
Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was born today, May 5. He’s been my favorite science fcition and fantasy writer ever since I read “Mimsy were the Borogoves” in The Best of Henry Kuttner the summer before I started high high school.
I was going to read and review Lands of the Earthquake (thanks for sending me a copy, Deuce), but I’ve been on the road with one of the dayjobs most of the past week. It took me all week to read “The Brood of Bubastis” for the Robert Bloch post, and I was falling asleep over the keyboard as I wrote it. So, obviously, I didn’t get to it. I’ll try to read it and post something in the next few months. Continue reading
Today as I write this is August 22. Ray Bradbury was born on this date in 1920. I’m not going to look at any of his stories. As I said on this year’s Lovecraft birthday post, I’ve been kind of busy.
But I did want to take a moment to acknowledge him and the impact his work has had on my life. Bradbury was one of the greatest short story writers the world has ever produced. There are still a number of his stories I’ve not read.
Yet.
Especially from the last couple of collections. I was busy trying to keep up with a toddler when they came out. I’m hoping to do a deeper dive later this year when things slow down. Until then, I’ll raise a glass tonight in his memory.
Let’s talk about cycles and rhythms of life, shall we? If you are fortunate to have enough stability in your life, then life will begin to develop cycles and rhythms. For example, it’s August. Summer classes are over, but the fall semester hasn’t started yet.
For a number of years now, I’ve read something by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) and posted about it on this date, August 22, in honor of his birth. The fact that the high temperatures for the last couple of days have been in the 70s (in Texas in August!!), making me think of fall and October and Bradbury. Continue reading
Today, January 2, is the birthday of Charles Beaumont (1929-1967). Beaumont was one of the writers of the original Twilight Zone. The reason Rod Serling asked Beaumont to write for him can be easily seen in Beaumont’s work.
One of Beaumont’s mentors was Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wrote in the introduction to Best of Beaumont (1982) that he and Beaumont lived in the same part of Los Angeles and used to pass a cemetery that had a sign advertising FREE DIRT. Continue reading
In addition to looking at Bradbury’s short stories “The Illustrated Woman” and “The Illustrated Man” in the previous post, I wanted to look at a pair of stories that might not be familiar to many of you. Those stories are “The Pendulum” and “Pendulum”. The former was written by Bradbury alone; the latter in collaboration with Henry Hasse. These could be a bit of a challenge to track down, although “Pendulum” is currently in print in The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury. Continue reading
Yes, the title of this post says “woman”, not “man.” No, that’s not a typo. Most people who read this blog are familiar with The Illustrated Man, a short story collection in which the framing device is a tattooed man whose tattoos show the stories. That’s not what this post is about. Bradbury also wrote a short story titled “The Illustrated Man” which probably served as the inspiration for the framing device in the collection of the same name.
Patience, please. We’ll get there. Just not yet. Continue reading
Today (August 22, 2020) marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ray Bradbury. If you’ll indulge a bit of nostalgia, I’m going to discuss the impact Ray had on my life.
It must have been the 6th grade, but it might have been the 5th. It’s been too many years now to be sure. One day in Mr. Thayer’s reading class, there was a guest waiting when we arrived from whatever class we’d been in before.
I don’t recall the gentleman’s name, but he was there to read to us. He told us was going to read a story by Ray Bradbury, who was a science fiction writer. Continue reading