Ray? Mr. Bradbury? How does one greet another who has never been met but who has issued decades of engraved invitations to peer into the innermost depths of the soul?

I hang out at the nice little sci-fi discussion site at www.bureau42.com and read there you had received a Pulitzer Citation. Congratulations! I wanted to share with you what I posted there, as my small way of saying Thank You:

I am an old-school sci-fi fan that grew up on the ABCs of the genre - Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke. Each of these dealt brilliantly with different aspects of our relationship to the universe.

Asimov dealt with humanity - what does it mean to be human in the metal shell of a robot or as a citizen of a galactic empire or on an operating table with a blood clot and a submarine in your brain. Clarke dealt with the alien - monoliths and the next steps in human evolution and all the wonders we would pass by in space along the way.

But Bradbury dealt in dreams, and what dreams they were. He never forgot that thirteen was the most special age to be. When you read Ray Bradbury at age thirteen like I did, with Neil Armstrong stepping down to the surface of the moon on the television in the background, your life is changed forever.

Thanks for the dreams, Ray Bradbury. I dream them still.