Tapping that vast wellspring of love for the author, “Viewing the Remains of Bradbury’s Home” went viral, receiving 10 times more hits than anything ever posted here before. John King Tarpinian’s story and photos about the teardown of Ray’s house were picked up by the LA Times, LA Curbed, NBC Los Angeles, and Architect.com as well as forums on Reddit and Metafilter, and were linked by any number of Twitter users.
Any other month, Brad Torgersen’s announcement of Sad Puppies 3 — that miserable effort to reduce the Hugo Awards to a left-right fucktard slapfight — would have been the top post. Even so, it ranked second and carried two related posts into the Top 10.
Apart from the Chip Delany tribute anthology, you might have been hard-pressed to find any “happy news” in this list had not a three-way tie for tenth place lifted the Lovecraft Beer story above the event horizon…
Here are the top 10 posts for January 2015 according to Google Analytics.
- Viewing the Remains of Bradbury’s Home
- Torgersen Volunteers To Be Leader of the Pack
- Letter To A Higher Critic
- Did Sad Puppies Save Worldcon?
- FJ Bergmann Defends Against WisCon Harassment Complaint
- The Demolished Fan and Other Bradbury News
- What Stories Are In “Stories for Chip”?
- Cops Bust Fans With Fake Guns On Their Way To Canadian Anime Convention
- Melissa Conway Retires from the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy
- (tie) O Sasquan, My Sasquan
- (tie) Joe Franklin, R.I.P.
- (tie) Lovecraft Beer Premieres 1/19
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
That line almost deserves a nomination for Best Related Work all by itself, and qualifies you for another nomination as Best Fan Writer.
I think the concern over the Bradbury house is in part “the illogic of waste”, as Kirk said to Spock in the climax of “Mirror, Mirror” by Jerome Bixby. The photos of it indicated a serviceable residence perfectly capable of providing for another bachelor, a couple, or a small family — and the house was just pretty to look at — few houses look as invitingly warm and visually balanced as the front view was.
Also, Mr. Bradbury did openings for his anthology television series from his desk at his typewriter, so the house had that going for it as well.
And he was just beloved. While some women had a problem with what they saw as sexist in some of the things he said in a couple of public appearances, but it clearly was (to me) from his upbringing, from something old-fashioned, certainly not out of any conscious bigotry (something of which I suspect he simply was not capable). For everybody else, he was your good uncle, and later your good grandfather, the one who encouraged your dreams and took pride in your accomplishments, and was never, ever mean.
As I said, people loved him — Rachel Bloom’s video is a concrete, if bawdy, expression of that genuine love. The loss of the house represents the hole in our lives left by his passing, so of course we mourn it — it’s as if he died all over again.
I met him three times, not in circumstances in which he would remember me from one to the next, but that was okay. He made me feel like I had just met a new friend each time. I never for a moment did not consider these encounters as anything but a rare and precious privilege.