I was a kid who loved watching movies, especially movies with surprise endings, a twist that might knock you off balance and cause you to stumble in your reasoning because, 'you didn't see that one coming.'

I was also the kid who was 13 and hated to read. I mean I read my assignments and I read my home work, and I could read anything they made me read, but I had to be 'made to read'. I had to have a teacher standing over me threatening my recess or after school imagination fun time. Pretend adventures with G.I. Joes and Major Matt Mason and models of plane, tanks and anything else that wandered into the story at the time. My friends and I hadn't heard of Star Wars, but there had been a TV show called Star Trek that had come and gone. We saw men walk on the moon and watched rockets launch and bring men back, but we had not yet seen Space 1999 and Dr. Who was still a rarity seen only now and then on Public Television.

And then that summer it happened. Someone gave me a copy of, "R is for Rocket". I was unaware that I was reading stuff that had been written twenty years earlier. It didn't occur to me that it was somehow 'out of date'. Each story touched my imagination like nothing before ever did. I sped through the stories, one after another, like someone who had been starved might devour the food they had been dreaming about during their starvation. Before I was aware of what I had done, I was on the prowl for something else, and I found, "S is for Space", "I Sing the Body Electric", "The Illustrated Man" and "The Martian Chronicles".

Like someone who had nothing to drink for days, I soaked up each one. Sure this was the beginning of a lifelong love of Science Fiction, and it would be the fuel that would propel me through my Aerospace Engineering studies with my dreams of being an astronaut. But more than anything it awoke the part of my imagination that up until then was dormant and sleeping. I was seeing in my mind's eye and feeling with a heart full of empathy the experiences that Ray Bradbury was describing to me new, even though he had written them some years before I was born.

This experience also began my life's love of books. I mean the physical thing that is a book. They way its heft feels in my hand, they way the page turns, the somewhat musty way it smells when it has been in the shelf for a couple of years patiently waiting for me to rediscover its secrets and rewards in the faithful telling of the author's stories.

And then one summer night, late on a Friday when the local television station showed movie re-runs, I encountered the movie that both frightened me and fascinated me. As Science Fiction goes, I remember thinking it showed it's age. The color was grainy and the sound wasn't clear. The 'special effects' seemed really hokey to this now, sophisticated 14 year old. But it was the story that got me. I couldn't take my eyes, my mind, my imagination away from the story.

Holy goodness, they were burning books. They were burning them because society thought that only snobs and the elite used this archaic method of gaining information or entertainment. Who would want to read a book, especially in the face of the current (then future) technology, entertainment offerings and how it all was packaged. The need for books, the content, the experience of reading and reasoning through an author's thoughts and coming to a common understanding was being questioned and in a 'visual' experiment, was being presented as a shocking concept. The irony was that my first encounter with the 'concept' was a movie of an idea from a book. I watched as Montag, for love of the literature itself and the creative thing it was, became "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by Edgar Alan Poe.

I rushed out that Saturday morning to the book store. I went to a place where they sold used books, paperbacks in particular. I remember rushing into the section for Science Fiction and Fantasy. There were a few of Mr. Bradbury's books there and right in the front was, "Fahrenheit 451". I felt as if I was about to commit a crime, or join that group out in the woods in the movie, who had dedicated their lives to being the banned books, until books could exist again. I ate the book up. And my life was never the same.

My beloved wife endures a front room that is full from wall to wall and wrapping around again with shelves. And the shelves are stuffed full of books. Hardbacks and paperbacks. New and old. Some previously owned and lightly used, some suffering for their age. Some very old and rare now. All loyal friends waiting for the moment I reach out and open them to read what the author would say, and to start a dialog separated in time and space. Even thought the authors cannot hear me, I do hear them and I question what I read and reason with the thoughts written in their books.

There is so much more to the story, but the point of this effort was to pause and say, "thanks" to one of the people who help push a young punk away from the TV and Movie screen and to go wandering in to the stack and shelves and to learn to love to read, and think, and imagine with some of the most fantastic minds with which God has graced the earth. Thank you, Mr. Bradbury.

Hi Mvallen60, and welcome. Your story has resonance for many of us, I'm sure. (I am with you on Major Matt Mason!)

Wow Phil,
I look on what you posted and am overwhelmed with both an affectionate reminiscence and an embarrassed sense of covetousness if in fact that photograph is an actual copy of the toy in question. I played with mine until the wire in the arms snapped and the string of the 'jet pack' tangled irreparably. Thanks sir for the substantive reinforcement of my recollections and adding some meat to the dream that memory seems to be sometimes. In purchasing a recent copy of "Fahrenheit 451" from the Folio Society for my beloved wife, I had cause to think back and share my 'story' with my son, who is also a reluctant reader, even now at 18. It caused me to seek out Mr. Bradbury's website where I found this forum.
I saw so many interesting comments I was compelled to add my own. I think it is only proper to thank people when they have had such a positive impact on your life, intended or not. And this thanks was long past due. Hope it was a fun read for some.
But your response Phil, made the whole effort worth it. If you actually own that little bit of fond nostalgia, well done in deed and my gentle envy goes to you. Throw in my admiration for not opening the package all these years as well. If not, nice picture all the same and thanks for the kind words. Take care. I am undertaking to re-read Mr. Bradbury again, and if it is no great burden, will post my impressions here where people of like precious affections can be shared and enjoyed. I have enjoyed reading so many shared thoughts already. Take care. And Thanks again! - Mathew from Phoenix.

Hi Mathew. I'm embarrassed to admit that I DON'T still own Matt Mason in the original packing - the image is one I found by doing a Google Image search!

I DID own the Major (and one of his colleagues) back in the day, and vividly remember their little rocket sleds and the string-operated jet packs. My astronaut fellows also suffered from snapped wires in the arms; surely a design flaw.

And they say nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

Hi,

While I agree that Fahrenheit is a fabulous story both in imagination and its accurate portrayal of society's undercurrents, I, too, was inspired by R is for Rocket and S is for Space. The Fog Horn is the saddest story I have ever read. I cried in the end! You think YOU know loneliness?!? That poor millions-year-old deep sea monster. And to think of all those ships he saved, during that night, crying his loneliness...it STILL makes me cry!

quote:

Originally posted by markiv:
Hi,

The Fog Horn is the saddest story I have ever read. I cried in the end! You think YOU know loneliness?!? That poor millions-year-old deep sea monster. And to think of all those ships he saved, during that night, crying his loneliness...it STILL makes me cry!

Some of Ray's stories that I read in high school didn't make me cry ..... then when I read them again a few decades later, they did. In 2002 at a book signing in Orange County, CA, the only time I met Ray, I told him while getting a book signed that some of his stories made me cry. He slammed backwards in his seat, looked surprised, and barked a laugh.

Hello Markiv,
I fully agree. It was The Foghorn that really got me reading. I remember the idea of rejected love that hit me as a kid struggling to make new friends in High School and getting that first crush. Ok we are not talking unrequited love, but the issues of loneliness, hurt and all the angst of young life. The story stayed with me. Later when the trials of adult life struck in the form of an unexpected and sudden divorce, I shared the story with my Son, then 16 and a reluctant reader. He got the point of the story. Of course the story was an analogy, not a parallel to my situation, as it were. At any rate, the story still moves me in some sense I can't perfectly explain.

I remember my Senior year English Teacher in high school getting all passionate about Don Quixote and I remember feeling almost embarrassed at how emotional she became concerning some aspect of the story. But she sincerely felt what the author was trying to communicate, the scenario hit her as though Miguel de Cervantes had written the piece just for her. Ok, so Mr. Bradbury wrote stuff that hits us where we live. That makes him a good author. But it persists as we move through our lives. I think that moves him into the next category, in my humble opinion. And if it can speak with some authority that may be beyond my scope as primarily a reader, if the author can speak to and move people across generations, I think the author enters into the 'great' arena.

I don't mean to sound like a sycophant, and I love many authors, but Mr. Bradbury's work ages well, even if the details of the 'science' show their charming anachronisms, the concepts translate from year to year, from decade to decade. Maybe from century to century. Time will tell.
I share your enthusiasm for "The Foghorn", plain and simple.