I truly hope that Mr. Bradbury sees this! I truly would like to know........HOW Diddddddd you see it coming!?
I have read your book Fahrenheit 451, recently because of my interests.

I "had" to read Fahrenheit 451 in High School. My numbed youthful mind could not perceive the true meaning between those covers. I recall seeing the movie on TV many years ago and still could not get the whole idea, but the woman standing in the midst of the books as they burnt was embedded in my mind. Having read your book last week, and purchased the movie on DVD - the movie is lacking, miserabley so!

During my youth - caught up in the Black Panther Movement,I carried Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver just to look "in". Superficial me.

I am fifty now......I have many things to ask you (Oh, if only I could)of your particular insights to TODAY!!!!!! How? How did you know? The fall of us will be US. Yes, and what a Great Fall. First Christendom (already in progress, in her winter season) and then the nations.

Mr. Bradbury! Are you out there? I am so glad you are yet alive! When I read your book - "My goodness" I thought, "surely he's gone by now!" And you are not! I typed in www.raybradbury.com, just for the heck of it! And here you are! Yet alive! Looking entirely well and Oh if only we could chat a while on that "Prophetic" book! I have so many things to ask you.

Hoping to hear from you!
Trish

He is alive and well, but, from what I hear, not an internet partcipant. He told me he is doing three books this year (A new anthology and a collection of graphic stories -- both due in August, I think) and a third that I don't know about. There is a biography being developed on him, but I don't know when that is due, either.

If all you've read is F451 (a fantastic book, the book that turned me on to reading in 9th grade) you need to RUN, RUN, RUN to a bookstore and get his other works -- short story collections (October Country, The Illustrated Man, the Collection) and novels (Dandelion Wine, Martian Chronicles, etc.).

Hurry, don't wait!

Thanks a lot, both of you! I think I will venture to write him.

Re: Ray's other books, I purchased, Something This Way Wicked Comes, in addition to renting the movie (love Jason Robards sp?).
It's the precision of Mr. Bradbury
s insight to this Age we are in now, that is so astonishing. Captain Beatty's tirade on how it all began "everybody just wants to be happy!....We are the Happiness Boys". There is a lot of truth of his little lecture to Montag.

I wonder is he astonished at his own accuracy? Children killing each other! The "Thought Police", Politically Correct rules today. I hear on colleges they some have a particular area where Free Speech can be exercised. And Christendom is being systematically dismantled (the churches themselves having done most of the work themselves). Well! I just wonder how he feels seeing actually seeing things coming to pass as he wrote. About the book burning,hopefully I am so wrong......but as it looks right now, it is the Bible that will be first to go. If any book it will be That! book. In case you are unaware of those who are on the roasting pan now. The Christians, or let me clarify that more, the Bible-believing Christians. There Is a difference. The Preachers who preach against sin. Eh? What's that you say? SIN. But their total focus is not the sin of fornication which in the church are many of those! No, their focus is not on their own crimes against the Word of God, but of those of the Homosexuals. Hate Speech! Homosexuals are abominations! Hate Speech!

The bible believeing Christians are the new bigots, intolerant and a thorn in the side of the Homosexual community who want to advance their "rights" on society, i.e., Marriage. Well I won't go on with it here. Controversial within and without the church. But my point is, that troublesome Bible! It if any book will be the first one to go! Especially if the homosexuals have their way, at least one would think. After all it is the Biblical foundations of this nation that has made restrictions for what is right and wrong in a civilized society! Right.

Thanks for your responses.
It is my hope, my opinions have been "tolerable".
Ta! Ta!
AlienOne

Oh Oh!


[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 07-21-2003).]

The bible was written to enable it to survive into a future time when Man can come to understand the true meanings underlying the surface stories and lessons. It will survive. The Jewish people kept it alive for now close to 6,000 years. As we slowly grow up and move into the solar system as enhabitants of other worlds, our Childhood over, I feel sure that we will come to understand more of the meaning. Ray has done much to prepare us for the journey in his stories and his boundless optimism that Man's place is in the stars. Would it not be curious if Man were to meet others who came with their own "bible".

patrask:

Actually, the Bible can really be found today ...on another world, besides Earth.
For real !
Col. Jim Irwin, one of the last men to walk the moon, was also one of the few astronauts that drove the Rover on the moon. One of the last things he did before leaving the moon, was to place a 'red-lettered edition' of the Bible, open to the book of John, on the seat of the Rover. It's there today...on the moon.....

That's good to know, Nard--kind of comforting.

Well at least when we do go back, I know where one copy will be to read.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:

Oh Oh!


[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 07-21-2003).]

The real Jesus is soon to come and He won't be that Peppermint Stick the churches have concocted. They've quite completely tucked the Genuine away - hidden from public view. But He can still be found in the Bible. Certainly not on any TV show of the hucksters and vaudeville peddlers of a polluted message from a non-existant person whom they call "je$u$".......but these things must needs be so.

He Himself predicted it. Without starting a flame war here, I expect certain denominations are in for a bit of a housecleaning around now.

'Judgment begins in the house of God.'

I always found that verse interesting, because so many people think you are not to judge another.
But it says not to judge an 'unbeliever'.
If you are a believer, (in the house of God) that's a different story, for it's where judgment begins, usually by God Himself.

Dandelion: Yep. In this case, lots & lots of churches are going to eventually get a great big sweeping....

We're a bit off-topic here, but will it (the final judgement) be by denomination or church; or will it be applied to individuals regardless of affiliation?

Be careful here . . .

:-)

Mr. Dark:
The post, way above near the top, was talking about Christiandom and Fahrenheit 451....
Relax.
If I start talking about the whorls of genetic info at the bottom of an octopus 'foot', then maybe we're a little off the topic...

Since I come from the school that ...'God knows my sitting down and standing up, and surrounds me in all my comings and goings'... then, as scripture discloses "...who is there to know the ways of His judgments?" (In the church, or what denomination, etc?) God has taken me out to the woodshed more than once. And His ways can be VERY private and personal....
I'll leave it like that....
Actually, I don't recall ever reading anything in a Bradbury story that talks about God doing something. Usually it's up to 'man'. And judgments? Nah!
(unless You recall something...)

Well, I think Bradbury sees "god" as being in a kind of symbiotic relationship with man -- he creates and we observe.

On the question of who does what?

"Einstein? Or Christ? My prognosis?
Dichotomy? Symbiosis?
What's clearly seen, or just half-seen
And Man trapped somewhere in between.
. . .
Now with God's priests do we mock fact?
Or with great Physics dare attack,
Shake stars, knock moon, then smite the Sun.
And only with pure Reason run?
To which the bio-chemists boast:
'We've trussed and laid the Holy Ghost!'
Church pew? Pure Lab? My last prognosis?
Dichotomy or symbiosis?
To pick just one? I find me loath,
Try this for size;
A bit of both?"

(from: "The First Book of Dichotomy, The Second Book of Symbiosis")

So, I think Bradbury sees the "work" of the universe as being something initiated by God, responded to by man, and then the relationship contines in a mutually beneficial way. Also, he seems to see the dichotomy between science and religion as unnecessarily strained, and feels that neither operates without the other.

From "Dandelion Wine":

"It's not you I worry about," said Douglas. "It's the way God runs the world."
Tom thought about this for a moment.
"He's all right, Doug," said Tom. "He _tries_."