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June 8, 2012 at 11:00 AM
How Ray Bradbury Changed The World

With Jacki Lyden in for Tom Ashbrook

How the amazing Ray Bradbury changed science fiction, literature, and the world.

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury sits in front of a photo of Mars, presented to him during an 83rd birthday party in his honor on, Aug. 23, 2003, at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. Special Pulitzer Prize citations were given to Bradbury and famed jazz saxaphonist John Coltrane, Monday,April 16, 2007.(AP)

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury sits in front of a photo of Mars, presented to him during an 83rd birthday party in his honor on, Aug. 23, 2003, at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. Special Pulitzer Prize citations were given to Bradbury and famed jazz saxaphonist John Coltrane, Monday,April 16, 2007.(AP)

Guests

Sam Weller, professor of fiction writing at Columbia College in Chicago. He’s the co-editor of the upcoming anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

Gary Wolfe, award-winning science fiction editor, critic, and biographer. Professor of humanities at Roosevelt University.

C-Segment: Peter Dinklage at Bennington College

You can read more about the address here.

From The Reading List

io9 “His grandson, Danny Karapetian, shared these words with io9 about his grandfather’s passing: “If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone’s memories about him.”

RayBradbury.com “Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.”

The Washington Post “Ray Bradbury, the prolific science fiction and fantasy writer who mixed social commentary with warnings about modern technology’s dark side in short stories and novels such as “Fahrenheit 451,” has died. He was 91.”

 
  • Sam

    Hi.
    I am a HUGE sci-fi fan. The hard core, classics type of science fiction – the Asimov, Bradbury, Phillip K Dick, Douglas Adams, etc kind.

    I will never forget reading a short story by Ray Bradbury about a blue bottle, which once opened would grant you your most deepest desires. But whenever the characters in the story found the bottle and opened it – they died. And the point was that our deepest desire as humans is to die.

    It was mind boggling.
    Not in a morbid and depressing kind of sense, but in the “wow, lets think about this” kind of sense. :)

    Thank you for doing this show.

    • ConstanceDuke

       Two recommendations of newer writers that you would probably like just as much and possibly more.
      Neil Stephenson
      Carlos Dwa

      If you are actually looking for profound metaphorical depth, Dwa is hard to beat.  I can’t think of anyone I have ever read who is in the same league, and this is not hyperbole. Think a cross between Ekhard Tolle and Michio Kaku wrapped up in something captuously entertaining – if Ekhard were for real (which is hard to believe since his description of his own “enlightenment” experience was lifted whole cloth from the biographic words of the late Ramana Maharshi.  If you don’t know who that is — just think classic archetype of Vedic enlightenment.

  • Terry Tree Tree

    Live Forever!
        Ray Bradbury WILL live forever, in the hands of Science Fiction readers!
        His depth and variety of stories, and the lessons to learn, will be pertinent to the end of mankind?

  • http://www.facebook.com/jim.castronovo Jim Castronovo

    I read Fahrenheit 451 in 7th or 8th grade. It was the book that put me marching down the road of critical thinking. I haven’t stopped since. Thank you Ray.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6CO5C2HE4WM2OYGCDVWGPRXXM oldman

    Ray Bradbury was one of my first SF reads and started me on a lifetime of reading science fiction. But books like “October Country” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” to the last book I read of his, “Green Shadows, White Whale” reminded me there is more to read than SF.

  • Gerald Fnord

    Something he got exactly right, and which tends to be forgot:  in the world of “Fahrenheit 451″, books started to be burned because the populace demanded it.  

    • Zig

       Democracy works! ;-)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511883019 Suzanne Colligan

    I was never been much of a science fiction fan. As a newly minted librarian, a lot of people asked, “have you read “Fahrenheit 451″? I replied that I hadn’t and the questioner would go on to extoll its virtues. I finally read it a few years ago. Besides the book burning angle, I couldn’t get over how prophetic he was! He predicted the Ipod, huge TV’s, and more importantly how we relate more to who is on TV (“reality” TV stars) than who is in the room! Thank you Mr. Bradbury!

  • Wbarnes07

    One of my favorite authors, “Something Wicked This Way Comes” which I read as  young teen, is still one of the scariest books I have ever read.

  • Guest

    PLEASE, Jacki Lyden, STOP talking over the callers, cutting them off, and putting words in the mouths. I want to hear what they say, but you don’t even give them a chance ….

    • John

      Agreed. This is a tedious, facile, simplistic interviewer. And, by the way, Bradbury did not “pass away.” He died. Since when did serious journalists use euphemisms in his way. I know Orwell would be disgusted. I suspect Bradbury would too. Geeeeez!

      • http://riversong.wordpress.com/ Robert Riversong

        Actually “he died” is a relatively modern reductionist perspective, and euphemisitic in that it oversimplifies and sanitizes what has always been understood as the passing away of one’s essence into another level of being.

        If Ray Bradbury lives on in his readers, then he has certainly not died, but merely slipped out of his body into our hearts and minds.

        • ClemCummings34

           I really hate it when people give their subjective opinions as if they were some kind of wisdom. You talk like you “know” but you don’t. Fear of death motivates a lot of absurd beliefs. Bradbury is dead. He exists nowhere. The memories people have of him, no matter how precious, do him not one bit of good because he has ceased to exist. People die, get over it and stop playing on their psychological weaknesses.

          • http://riversong.wordpress.com/ Robert Riversong

            I do know, as did every indigenous person for millennia, until the very modern materialist, reductionist, dualistic paradigm became so addictive that few can see outside of that narrow box.

            The real psychological weakness is the false belief (not even recognized as just another belief) in a dead universe, as it leads to a spiritual emptiness which deadens the soul and leaves people like you “hating” when other’s speak the simple truth.

        • Zig

          “..what has always been understood as the passing away of one’s essence into another level of being.”

          Another lovely nugget of truth from the Riversong Bible, eh?

  • Steve_T

    Truly a man of great vision, and thoughtful imagination. Thank you for sharing your gifts. R I P 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6CO5C2HE4WM2OYGCDVWGPRXXM oldman

    Bradbury, I think more than most writers, understood that  sci fi, fantasy, and horror genres are all sides of the same coin, which made him such a versatile writer.

  • Tom from Manchester NH

    Amid the talk of “Fahrenheit 451″ being about censorship, Bradbury himself said it was about the re-discovery of self through reading and the effects of TV and mass media on the reading of literature.  As a teacher I am constantly urging my students, in the words of Faulkner, to “Read, read, read everything”, only to be met with apathy.  Perhaps it is because, as in the novel, the flat screen TV’s and ipods are taking over. And as in the novel, if they do win, it is because we have allowed them to.

    • http://riversong.wordpress.com/ Robert Riversong

      It’s not just a different technology that’s taken hold, but a different way of processing information, in bits and bytes and hyperlinks that demand short attention spans and little depth of comprehension, confusing information with knowledge. It is actually rewiring our brains to suit the technology, rendering humans the tools of our own technology.

  • Alan in NH

    Bradbury’s short story collections, “Illustrated Man” and “Golden Apples of the Sun” were some of my first voluntary reads outside of comic books. At 13, I found them amazing, challenging, frightening sometimes, intriguing, thoughtful and thought provoking…many thanks, Mr. Bradbury.

  • Willdancemore

    I heard Ray Bradbury speak in the early 70s at Antelope Valley College, Lancaster Ca. He spoke of us as being people of three frontiers. The first frontier was crossing the Atlantic ocean. The second was crossing the continental US from east to west. And the last was the frontier of space.
     

    • http://riversong.wordpress.com/ Robert Riversong

      Each of those movements were ways of escaping the mess we’d created. Thankfully, we are discovering that there is no more escape from the consequences of our actions and folly, and that the last true frontier is that of our own humanity.

  • Doc Djimbo

    His concern for the human condition as examined in his reach beyond the stars, is mirrored in his love and concern for those in his own community. I would cite his play “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”. I would also like to note a TV interview during an earth-shaking race riot in Los Angeles in the 60′s… in which he spoke to the urban decay and desolation which was pre-existing for decades in south-central L.A….. no movie theaters, no parks, no libraries, no work, …only a crushing and extinguishing sense of hopelessness of life in a barren dead-end. His fearless and provocative insights are a beacon! Bon voyage Ray Bradbury!

  • Blaidd

    This fellow Riversong has become tiresome.  Such prattling reminds me of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:  “When I was a child, I used to talk
    as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put
    aside childish things.”  Bradbury had put aside childish things.  Better to follow his example.  Better yet to follow the Tao.

    • Warren

      This guys violent and I’ve asked him to stay away from me.Mr Gore’s guru Mr.Lovelock(the father of the Giaists)says he was wrong and appologized for creating the Riversides,of the world

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/BLCBGZFODHZFKSN5TTKS4SBA6M Raymond

    i have to agree with Mr. Riversong on most comments and really say that some of these people live in a dark hole. i have never been interested in space travel and always  felt that we cannot even clean up our own garbage on this planet and stop our destructive ways or come up with better transport than automobiles/  how can we even imagine space ships and startrek fantasies about ourselves.? the frontier that needs to be conquered is our own egos and vast ignorance. we seem to be going farther toward selfishness and delusion rather than perfecting ourselves. the stress of modern life does a great job of calcifying the mind and soul and destroying the human body.

    • Grandpadewey

      You’re the epitome of why we won’t ever leave this earth and the reason why the human race is doomed. Of course, everything dies, even us.

  • Slipstream

    Jackie Lydon – shouldn’t it be a requirement for radio hosts that they not have an annoying speaking voice and to come across as unpleasant people?  I realize that she may in fact be a wonderful person off the air, and she and I might get along great in real life, but I would much rather listen to Tom.  Jane Clayson is good too.  I was starting to like Mike Pesca more as well, even tho I wasn’t a fan right off the bat.

  • Michael

    Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and Pipers Little Fuzzy, were the books that led me down the road to a lifelong love of classic science fiction. RIP to all of them.

  • gwwalden

    In the early 70′s, there was a Saturday morning show called The Old Curiosity Shop. They did a Halloween show hosted by Vincent Price and they had a reading of Ray Bradbury’s poem “The Groon”. It was simply amazing. I only wish this TV “curiosity” would reappear on DVD somewhere…

  • B T
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