To look upon Bradbury's collective work is to stand in the brown soil of Illinois and gaze up at the red speck of Mars, realizing that because of the human foot on the ground and the human eye watching the sky, the two locations are one in the same.

Though Green Town and Mars may seem like two disconnected places, Bradbury is, by his own admission, first and foremost a magician; what seem to be two devices of opposite intention are actually--when the smoke and mirrors are removed--reflections of the same theme.

This is Bradbury's legacy. He taught me to look to the future to find ways to deal with problems of present-day society. On Mars I found wisdom to heal Earth's ills. In the literature of science fiction, I discovered Truths of the human spirit. His legacy is a following of writers who cling to optimism, who see Truth in the unreal, who know and write about the importance of a good pair of sneakers and what it feels like to shake down autumn's first apples from the tree.

LANCE....
AMEN AMEN AMEN
you are sooo right.
I am at a loss of words right now of how Ray Bradbury's books affect me.
Someday I will unloosen my tounge and it will come out,but right now its just alllll swelling up and jumblig and aakkkkk'but you are so right.!!!!

Gave me the will to live, the result of which is I'm still here.

His work keeps turning my embers, and stoking
new fires.

please keep at it, Dandelion

[This message has been edited by uncle (edited 12-18-2001).]

[This message has been edited by uncle (edited 12-18-2001).]

Thanks, Uncle. I would like to think my life is worth something even now and may grow to be worth more. This quote from the "Twilight Zone" version of "I Sing the Body Electric" best sums it up for me:
"As of this moment, the wonderful Electric Grandmother moved into the lives of children and father. She became integral, important, she became of the essence. As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues, without thinking of her. Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel, would remind them of her. She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical, like Grandma."
To which I would only add that the story which I did not understand AT ALL on first reading has now become the central philosophy for my life's work: "Powerhouse." In other words, having once discovered Bradbury, at the very age of those kids in the story, for ever after all of my life's perceptions are filtered through his lens, which gives it meaning and purpose. To some extent, everything from me, no matter in what far-flung reaches it ends up, will to some extent originate from him as interpreted through me. His influence is helping me survive this whole Harry Potter hoopla and I hope to go on and strive for better things.

Ray's influence is so far and vast, that his works will be around as long as there is...

Readers!

Or......there will always be a play of his to go and see....

If movies are no longer in fashion....there will be recordings to hear, for those who cannot comprehend the dynamics of reading...

There will always be other Green Towns across the world ...(as long as heaven is letting a little glimmer out ...to be seen by others)....This special summer day found in years thruout history, but now has been chiseled into our psyche...dated 1928.

His works create worlds in which we choose to live. The fantasy becomes a sort of reality through his words. I have been emersed in not only his writings but his outside achivements for many years. I have always loved the original Tomorrowland and the Main Street of Disneyland. Originally never realizing Ray Bradbury's influence. Yestermorrow (to me)revealed his fantastic dreams becoming reality. "Becoming lost" in Horton Plaza as a child and even today reminds me of the fact that we really are living in that world.

In past posts I have commented on thoroughly enjoying Mr. Bradbury's essays and forewords (to his own works and those of so many other authors and for topical collections).

Yestermorrow, and a book by A.C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future and similar essays, should be required reading for all engineering and civic design students coming out of our finest universities. They deal with imagination and ethics, not just corporate growth and product development. These, the motivations of the 90's, seem to have blinded us (society) to the truer Spirit of American enterprise.

The following passage is taken from the collection of artwork by astronauts and comsonauts entitled "In the Stream of Stars." In view of many of your Columbia posts and the question of where our creative aspirations should now take us, I thought it fitting:

"We Are the Carpenters of an Invisible Cathedral"

We cannot stay home. We did not sit on the front porch of 1492 Spain...
The universe listens for our cry.
The universe waits the arrival of our eye to see, our blood to stir to worship.
For if the voids were not terrifying and empty and beautiful, we'd need not go there to fill it. We would stay home and mend our socks.
I would not do that. I cannot sleep without dreams, I cannot dream without doing.
The carpenter in me spits nails, the hammer in me would run up that cathedral arch and bind it in place.
If we must die, let it be from a high place where we will be seen and the structure stay long after our death.
For who will little note nor long remember if we fall out of bed, dead long years before we hit the floor?
Choose. Where would you wish to die?
Why not up there on the beams and the catwalks which "the pioneers of space have dreamed and built?"
Shall we go?

-from Soviet/American Space Art Book
Ray Bradbury June 21, 1990

(Workman Publishing, NY, 1990)


[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 02-06-2003).]

You'd think it hard to mistake Sacramento, Ca. for Greentown, Ill. or some small town in Ohio, but at times I DO feel far removed from this grimy city and can feel, see, and smell the grass of Greentown under my feet rather than the concrete of Sacramento.

[This message has been edited by grasstains (edited 08-19-2004).]

Same here, only I live even farther away! As a reader you automatically fill in the gaps with images and ideas you know, hence the feeling that the author in question 'speaks' to you and to you alone.