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Showing posts from June, 2012

Death and Hope

So, my favorite author died. I don't know when Ray Bradbury became my favorite. Fittingly, it was the public library that introduced me to his writing. There was Bradbury and Asimov, shelved next to each other, and their writing was so different and yet so wonderful. Isaac Asimov defined science fiction for me. I devoured the robot stories and novels, the Foundation series, and almost died with delight when he tied it all together into one cohesive timeline of awesome. Asimov wrote so clearly. He took mind-blowing concepts like psychohistory and gathered them into tidy conclusions. He made telepathy and seeing the future plausible. I reveled in the depth and breadth of his stories. Ray Bradbury was almost the opposite. He excelled at short stories. Even some of his novels are merely collections of short stories connected by setting and characters, or sometimes just setting. What he wrote wasn't really science fiction. (I think it still defies categorization. There should