A product of the intersection of an idyllic, Midwestern,
small-town life for his first six years, he then bounced back and forth between
that same town and a desert southwest life until he finally washed up on the
shore of a different American backdrop: La La Land.
Enamored by “movie stars” that he actually saw and spoke to,
he became a writer through a contest – where his winning story was pulled from
the slush pile by Truman Capote. He met people, wrote for people, and grew up with
his feet firmly planted in his birth world whilst he lived in a world so
different from the one we live in today that there is no connection between “us”
and “him”.
The differences between mid-20th Century and the
second decade of the 21st Century are so great that THIS future is
completely divorced from the futures he wrote as a young man.
Besides, he never saw HIMSELF as a science fiction author
which many in the SF community claimed he was. In his own words: “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. It was named so to represent the
temperature at which paper ignites. 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.” While at the same time trumpeting his long-lasting he eliminates himself as an influential SF
writer.
He has been feted
by the speculative fiction community (which encompasses SF, F, H as well as
weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian
fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history) as “one
of our own”, receiving the SFWA Grand Master Award, his body of work hardly
supports this contention. More like – he humored a fan base who really only
focused on his speculative fiction rather than the entire body of his work
which included plays, poetry collections, scripts, and children’s books.
While he has also
been proclaimed as the first writer to propose “the idea of banking ATMs and
earbuds and Bluetooth headsets…and the concepts of artificial intelligence” –
these two “inventions” rose from two works – the one book he claimed was SF and
a short story, “I Sing The Body Electric”.
Even so, Bradbury’s
intent never seemed to be to explore the interaction of science and humanity
but rather look at the human condition. In this he has far more connection to
the world of “literary fiction” than of any sort of genre fiction. In fact, he
has been honored by the two most recent presidents of the United States –
neither of which (I feel confident in guessing) has ever read either him or any
other speculative fiction author – and who were most likely directed to do the
act on the grounds that their PR people were more interested in tying their
political bosses to a Famous Person Who Does Stuff With Words And Is Somehow
Vaguely Connected With The Future – than in any way, shape, or form of “recognizing
his literary greatness”.
I’m just sayin’.
Anyway, as for
saying anything important to the current crop of speculative fiction writers –
I would venture that he has not a coherent thing to say to us. I base my
conclusion on the following:
1)
Most
people are born in, grew up in, and live in urban areas.
2)
Most
people who write could never in their wildest dreams imagine roller skating
ANYWHERE in an urban area and seeing movie stars.
3)
Bradbury
went so far as to “stat[e] in 2010, ‘We have too many cellphones. We've got too
many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many
machines now.’”
4)
He
remained married to one person for some 46 years.
5)
He
appeared in several media adaptations of his writing.
6)
If I
were to write THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES today, I would be unable to find a
publisher. The SENSIBILITY of the stories is firmly based on the monoculture of
white male supremacy of the mid-20th Century. That culture neither
exists today nor will it ever return.
7)
Information
today is both instantaneous and easily corruptible, it was not in the middle of
the 20th Century.
Therefore, while
I will read Bradbury for entertainment, I will not be looking to him as an
influence for my writing.
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury,
http://www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury/books.htm,
No comments:
Post a Comment