The South Pasadena Public Library and the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library remind everyone that throughout the month of March they are presenting a “One Book, One City” Project focusing on Ray Bradbury’s enduring masterpiece Fahrenheit 451.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was born in Waukegan, Illinois to a family that moved to LA in 1934 in a jalopy. In 1947 Ray started publishing his stories and his second book The Martian Chronicles gained a following among Science Fiction readers. In the early 50s, he wrote Fahrenheit 451 in UCLA”S Lawrence Clark Powell Library, named after the South Pasadena native. The book came out to rapturous reviews, became a classic, and still sells more than 50,000 copies per year. Bradbury went on to write more than 50 acclaimed books and 200 short stories. In Ray’s later years he visited South Pasadena many times for events at both the Fremont Centre Theatre and South Pasadena Public Library.
Community-wide Reading Programs create opportunities for readers to enjoyably explore a great work of literature together.
Presentation of Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”Play, March 16 at 7 pm in the Library Community Room* with the Pandemonium Theatre Company.
Reading and Discussion of “Fahrenheit 451” Book, March 20 at 7 pm in the Library Ray Bradbury Conference Room** with renowned Actor and Author Duffy Hudson.
Performance by acclaimed ActorBill Oberst, March 24 at 7 pm in Library Community Room* of Ray Bradbury’s “Pillar of Fire”, a precursor to “Fahrenheit 451”.
Screening of classic 1966 “Fahrenheit 451” motion picture,March 30 at 7 p.m. in Library Community Room*. Directed by Francois Truffaut and starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner.
Many copies of the “Fahrenheit 451” book, as well as many other books and other materials by and about Ray Bradbury, are available for checkout at the South Pasadena Public Library.
(*) Library Community Room– 1115 El Centro Street (**) South Pasadena Public Library (including Ray Bradbury Conference Room — 1100 Oxley Street
The “One Book-One City” Reading Project of the South Pasadena Public Library and the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library will focus on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
On Thursday, March 2 at 5:00 p.m., the Kickoff for the Reading Project will take place at the South Pasadena Fire Station. It will present Micah the Magician from the World Famous Magic Castle in Hollywood. Special guests will also offer some Ray Bradbury reminiscences.
Micah will be performing a magic show for all ages in honor of Bradbury who wanted to be a magician while growing up – before he decided on a writing career. It will be presented at the Fire Station because firemen play central roles in the Fahrenheit 451 plot.
Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a rental typewriter in the basement of UCLA’s Lawrence Clark Powell Library, where he had taken refuge from a small house filled with the distractions of two young children. Ballantine editor Stanley Kauffman, later the longtime film critic for The New Republic magazine, flew out to Los Angeles to go over the manuscript with Bradbury, plying the sweet-toothed perfectionist author with copious doses of ice cream. The book came out to glorious reviews. To this day it sells at least 50,000 copies a year and has become a touchstone around the world for readers and writers living under repressive regimes.
Lissa Reynolds of the Fremont Center Theater helps Ray Bradbury read his 90th birthday card.
Ray Bradbury’s plays were performed at South Pasadena’s Fremont Centre Theatre for many years by his own Ray Bradbury’s Pandemonium Theatre Company. He also appeared for two Author Nights for the South Pasadena Public Library, including for his 90th Birthday Celebration which attracted hundreds to the Library Community Room and Library Park. At that event, he exhorted his fans to “Do what you love and love what you do!” Ray had done just that, until his death at age 91.
The South Pasadena Fire Station is located at 817 Mound Avenue. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m.
John King Tarpinian and Robert Kerr receive proclamation.
By John King Tarpinian: Today, February 15, I was honored to accept a Proclamation from the City of South Pasadena on behalf of the Bradbury family. March 2 will be Ray Bradbury Day. There will be a ceremony held at, of all places, the fire station. As things are more solidified there is expected to be a reading from the Fahrenheit 451 play, a screening of the movie, panel discussions of Ray’s body of work, and the dedication of a mural in the previously dedicated Ray Bradbury conference room of the library. The library is one of the few remaining Carnegie libraries left in the state.
(1) ASIMOV ON THE AIR. BBC Radio 4, as part of their 15 Minute Drama series, will be adapting five of the stories from Asimov’s I, Robot. Original broadcasts will run from February 6-10. As usual, episodes will be available for online listening “shortly after broadcast”.
A couple of clips promoting the series are already online –
Actor Nick Briggs introduces his characters and tells us what he finds appealing about Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi stories. He also explains why he doesn’t think we should fear a future dominated by robots.
The rise of robotics in the 21st century, told through the poignant and mysterious story of enigmatic lawyer, Stevie Byerley. Starring Hermione Norris.
Episode One : ROBBIE As a child, Stevie Byerley is raised by Robbie, a robotic childminder, because her parents are too busy working. The powerful bond she forms with the robot is unbreakable. Their relationship will change the course of Stevie’s life.
Originally written over 60 years ago, Isaac Asimov’s stories are becoming truer with every day that passes. The world that he imagined is now upon us.
(2) BURNT ENDS AND ZOMBIES. In Episode 28 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic he feasts on BBQ with Craig Engler, Co-Creator/Writer/Co-Executive Producer of the hit zombie TV show Z Nation.
Join us as we discuss what life’s like when you’re a professional game player for Nintendo, how running the Syfy Channel’s digital side led to him getting a shot at writing TV movies such as Zombie Apocalypse, why he wrote Weight Hacking, his geek guide to losing weight and getting fit, plus much more, including behind-the-scenes secrets on the past, present, and future of his hit zombie TV show Z Nation.
You don’t have to read many of my posts to know that The Princess Bride is pretty well my favourite movie. And though I love the sword fighting scene between Wesley and Iñigo, and the later one between Iñigo and Count Rugen, they are not actually my favourite sword fighting scenes. In both cases, it’s really the dialogue that makes the scenes memorable. So what movies would I rank above The Princess Bride in sword fighting wonderfulness?
Here they are, in the order in which I thought of them.
The Three Musketeers (1973, directed by Richard Lester)
One of the great things about this movie, along with its sequels The Four Musketeers, and The Return of the Musketeers, is that they all feature the same cast. There are good fight scenes in all the films (Oliver Reed is more impressive in the sequels), but it’s the first one I know the best. I particularly like the fantastic opening sequence, where D’Artagnan’s father teaches him the “secret thrust.” Anything between D’Artagnan (Michael York) and Rochefort (Christopher Lee) is well worth watching. There’s also some terrific ensemble fighting, notably the scene between the four leads and the Cardinals’ Guard in the convent courtyard. It should be noted that Christopher Lee was a fencer IRL as well…
In 2016, 43% of all traditionally published books were purchased online. Now, THAT is a reason to break out the champagne! Why? Because most readers pay little to no attention to the publisher. As long as the small press or self published book looks professional and has a professional looking cover, it’s competitive with books from the ‘bookstore’ publishers. If your ebook or print book includes those 5 critical elements for success and looks like the other professionally published books out there, readers don’t care who published it. They’ll look at price.
Aha! That might just be the reason that self publishing authors sell almost as many ebooks as the traditional publishers. They can usually price their books lower.
But what about print books?
2016 Self Published Print Book Sales
In 2016, 21,800,000 self published print books were sold, mostly published through Create Space. The average price was $10.34. Amazon imprints sold another 959,000 copies.
That’s a lot of print book money!
(5) NEW EDITION FROM PENGUIN. Here’s the version of George Orwell’s book for the alternate timeline you’re living in.
(6) COMPLIMENTING SMUGGLERS. Nigel Quinlan writes, “I would like to selfishly draw your attention to the new issue of The Book Smugglers’ Quarterly Almanac. It contains a fun Mid-Grade fantasy short story by me, ‘The Gobbleens,’ which is featured on the utterly gorgeous cover.”
I’m happy to give it a mention, in part for the beautiful cover, and in part because I owe them thanks for sending a copy of the first one, which had a great story by Tansy Roberts.
Collecting original short fiction, essays, reviews, and reprints from diverse and powerful voices in speculative fiction, THE BOOK SMUGGLERS’ QUARTERLY ALMANAC is essential for any SFF fan.
IN THIS VOLUME (JANUARY 2017): BECKY CHAMBERS, SHERRI L. SMITH, A.E. ASH, KATHERINE MACLEAN, NIGEL QUINLAN, ZETTA ELLIOTT, ALLIAH/VIC, KATE C. HALL, NICOLE BRINKLEY, ANA GRILO AND THEA JAMES
(7) OCTAVIA BUTLER. Maura McHugh reviews the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred on Irish national radio, now up as a podcast on this page — “Arena with Sean Rocks, Monday, January 30”
Maura McHugh reviews the sci-fi graphic novel “Kindred” by Octavia E Butler which has been adapted by writer Damien Duffy and artist John Jennings (published by Abrams ComicArts)
Ray had one of his copies with burn marks on it because he would hold a lighter to it to show people it would not burn.
(9) TO THE STARS. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination has released the fourth episode of is podcast Into the Impossible, about “How to Make a Spaceship”.
How do you jumpstart the private spaceflight industry? Passion, commitment, bold risk-taking, some inspiration from Charles Lindbergh, and a little luck. On today’s show, we hear from Peter Diamandis, whose XPRIZE Foundation launched the competition that gave us the first private manned spaceflight–and paved the way for Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and his own Planetary Resources, among others–along with the prize-winning pilot, Brian Binnie, and the writer Julian Guthrie, who chronicled their stories along with those of the other teams from around the world inspired by this unprecedented challenge. Also on this episode: convincing Arthur C. Clarke to buy your college friends dinner and a nearly disastrous incident with a mother-in-law and a cup of coffee.
Be sure to check out Julian Guthrie’s book, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight, for the rest of the story!
(10) QUOTABLE QUOTE
“The next time you’re abducted, just steal something off the ship.” — Neil DeGrasse Tyson
(11) TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF THINGS YOU NEVER HEARD OF
February 3, 1993: Dystopian satire Acción Mutante opens in its native Spain.
Ever noticed that most of the locations in the Star Wars universe wouldn’t pass a basic safety inspection? A number of characters plummet to their doom throughout the series, and the risk of accidentally falling on The Death Star or in Cloud City, or even tripping into that floor hatch on the Millennium Falcon, seems incredibly high. A new episode of the official web series The Star Wars Show explains that this was by design: George Lucas was against building guardrails on Star Wars sets.
(14) THE OUTFIELDER WHO WOULD BE KING. San Francisco Giants baseball player Hunter Pence posted a great photo of him wearing a Hakuna Matata t-shirt trying to free Excalibur from the Sword in the Stone at Disneyland. He couldn’t do it! The throne rests easy tonight.
In the late 1800s, London was swept up in the new craze of visual, satirical journalism. When Judy magazine, a twopenny serio-comic, debuted a red-nosed, lanky schemer named Ally Sloper who represented the poor working class of 19th-century England, it was one of the first recurring characters in comic history.
But credit for that character has long gone to the wrong person. Two people were responsible for Ally Sloper—and one of the creators has only recently been rediscovered by academics and comic fans.
Wearing a shabby stovepipe hat and carrying a rickety umbrella, the iconic and popular cartoon is often credited to Charles H. Ross, a playwright, cartoonist, and eventual editor of Judy. However, Ally Sloper was actually illustrated and developed by two artists: Ross and his wife, actress-turned-cartoonist Marie Duval—who was responsible for the bulk of the Ally Sloper comics.
(16) SPEAK UP. This LEGO Batman Movie promo clip introduces the voice actors behind the characters.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Nigel Quinlan, Bruce D. Arthurs, Cat Eldridge, and Martn Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]
(1) DYSTOPIAS SELL LIKE INFERNAL HOTCAKES. The Washington Post’s Ron Charles notes that sales of dystopian novels, including Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and The Handmaid’s Tale, are soaring under a Trump presidency. He interviews Orwell biographer Gordon Bowker about what 1984 (Amazon’s #1 bestseller) tells us about a Trump administration.
President Trump may not be a big reader, but he’s been a boon for sales of dystopian literature. Amid our thirst for adult coloring books and stories about missing girls and reincarnated puppies, some grim old classics are speaking to us with new urgency. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451 ,” Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World ” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale ” have all risen up the latest paperback bestseller list.
Soon after senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Sunday that the administration was issuing “alternative facts,” Orwell’s classic novel spiked to No. 1 on Amazon.
(2) MIND MELD. Ken Liu, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Helen Lowe, T. Frohock, Mur Lafferty, and Margo-Lea Hurwicz participate in “Mind Meld: Alternate Histories We Love” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
Alternate history can be a thrilling, but daunting, subgenre of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to dive into; there are seemingly endless possible “what-if,” timeline, and story combinations for readers to try. This month, Mind Meld asks writers:
What is your favorite alt-history novel?
What about the author’s treatment to the particular time period and story made you fall in love? What about the alt-history subgenre draws you in, as an author or a reader?
Before Cernan and his fellow moonwalker Harrison Schmitt finished their final moonwalk, as a salute to the Apollo Program and a reminder to others of where we came from and how far we could go, Cernan positioned his camera so that Schmitt and the American Flag were framed in the black sky with the flag pointing to the distant blue Earth. Cernan’s own reflection can be seen in the visor of Schmitt’s helmet.
That’s Earl Harbinger, mid transformation into werewolf (spoiler alert).
Devon Dorrity is a fantastic sculptor, He likes to listen to Audible while working, and had gone through the MHI series a couple of times. Alpha inspired him to create this.
(5) OVERFEASANCE. While we’re still flailing to catch up with last year’s award-worthy fiction, Jason has already evaluated this month’s new stories from semiprozines and other free sites in “Summation of Online Fiction: January 2017” at Featured Futures.
I tried forty-three stories of 176,695 words from thirteen January 2017 pro-rate webzines (Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Diabolical Plots, the final issue of the now-defunct Fantastic, Flash Fiction Online, Lightspeed, Nature, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Terraform, Tor.com, and Uncanny)….
(6) PRINCE OBIT. Sarah Prince, a longtime fan who started receiving File 770 in 1978, passed away at the beginning of the week. Exact details are not immediately available – she was found when a friend asked someone to check on her.
Prince was a talented artist and potter. She was a resident of Columbus, OH when I first had contact with her in the Seventies, but has lived for many years in New York state. Prince ran for TAFF in 1999. Her website is here.
Are people getting scammed by Angry Goat Productions, or is this simply a case of Angry Goat Productions being really bad at this….
We can confirm that the photos posted to the event’s page are stolen. The examples come from an event held in Japan last year, and that in itself is a pretty big red flag. Taking an image from someone else’s business and misrepresenting it as your own is a big no no pretty much everywhere, but it’s considered an especially egregious sin in the cosplay and convention world.
I know quite a few people who would boycott an event just for that.
The warning also links to a Who Scammed You? page, which claims that organizer Ray Jelley isn’t a real person. Now, I’ve had some experiencedealing with people pretending to be other people online, and while Mr. Jelley does occasionally use an Errol Flynn photo on social media, I can honestly say that he appears to be a real human being.
A real human being with an interesting history….
(8) COMIC SECTION. John King Tarpinian recommends this installment of Brevity, with a Star Wars twist.
According to an email subscription version of February 5th’s NY Times Best Sellers List, “Beginning with the advance BSL edition that will be delivered today for February 5, 2017 there will be revisions to multiple categories in the publication. These changes will span weekly and monthly lists.” One of these changes appears to be the deletion of the hardcover graphic novels, softcover graphic novels, and manga Best Seller lists, as none of these sections are included in the document that we have reviewed.
ComicsBeat had further comment here and here, in which an unnamed spokesperson for the Times cites that “the discontinued lists did not reach or resonate with many readers.”
(10) MARCHING INTO PREHISTORY. If you’ve got six minutes, you can see how a vast number of dinosaur species compared in size to modern humans.
(11) REPEAL. The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America reports –
Assembly Bill 228 has been introduced by California State Assembly Members Gloria and Chiu. If passed, this bill will provide significant relief from the most troubling and onerous provisions of AB 1570, California’s new autograph law.
…The legislative process is long and complicated. Bills pass through policy committees in each house of the legislature and the process takes many months. What AB 228 needs to help ensure that it becomes law is your support. Right now, the best help you can provide is to:
Write a letter of support for AB 228 addressed to the bill’s primary author:
Assemblymember Todd Gloria
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0078
Make sure you have added your name and comments to the change.orgpetition.
(12) DON’T DRINK AND CRUNCH. All that and a bag of chips – they may have too much sodium, but otherwise a bag of Tostitos keeps you out of trouble.
Frito-Lay unveiled “Party Safe” Tostitos bag for the Super Bowl that detects whether its holder has been drinking and can even order an Uber.
The limited-edition “Party Safe” Tostitos bag, designed by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, contains a sensor connected to a microcontroller that detects trace amounts of alcohol on a person’s breath, turning the front of the bag red and showing an image of a steering wheel and the message, “Don’t Drink and Drive.”
The bag also flashes an Uber code and contains technology that allows the holder to tap their phone against it to order an Uber for $10 off during and after the Super Bowl Feb. 5.
“We’re proud to introduce to the world the first bag of chips that gets you home safe,” Roger Baran, a Goodby Silverstein & Partners creative director, told Adweek
Fifty years ago, a fire broke out during a test of the rocket that would take men to the Moon. Three astronauts died on the launch pad – but their deaths were not in vain.
As countdown resumed, the air in the capsule was replaced with pure oxygen. The oxygen was maintained at higher pressure inside the capsule than outside. This simulated the increased pressure of the spacecraft in orbit and allowed the astronauts to breathe comfortably.
Both the single-man Mercury and two-man Gemini capsules had followed the same procedure without incident. It was so routine that the safety manual for testing the spacecraft made no reference to the hazards of strapping a crew into an experimental space capsule in a pressurised oxygen environment.
17:40, Apollo 1 spacecraft
There had been problems all day with communications between the ground and spacecraft, which was only a few hundred metres away from the control centre on the launch pad. As the countdown continued and more systems were switched across to Apollo 1, at times it was impossible to make out what the astronauts were saying. “I remember Gus Grissom got very exasperated,” recalls Griffin. “He was really mad.”
“Jesus Christ,” Grissom exclaimed. “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings?”…
In the 19th century, book collecting became common among gentlemen, mostly in Britain, and grew into an obsession that one of its participants called “bibliomania”. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, an English cleric and bibliographer, wrote Bibliomania, or Book Madness: A Bibliographical Romance, which was a gentle satire of those he saw as afflicted with this “neurosis”. Dibdin medicalised the condition, going so far as to provide a list of symptoms manifested in the particular types of books that they obsessively sought: “First editions, true editions, black letter-printed books, large paper copies; uncut books with edges that are not sheared by binder’s tools; illustrated copies; unique copies with morocco binding or silk lining; and copies printed on vellum.”
(17) NO ALIEN SEQUEL. Alien Theory analyzes the fate of the series – “Alien 5 Cancelled: Where Does This Leave the Series? And Ripley?”
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Hampus Eckerman, Martin Morse Wooster, and Jason for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
(2) ADD THIS WORLDCON BID TO YOUR SCORECARD. Kevin Standlee reports that, at the request of this bid, he has added UK in 2024 to the Worldcon.org list of bids. The link is a Facebook page. Kevin notes, “They did say to me when they contacted worldcon.org that they plan to have an actual web site eventually as well, not just a Facebook page.”
(3) PREDICTING THE PRESENT. In “The Celebrity Campaign” on National Review Online, Kevin D. Williamson summarizes William Gibson’s Idoru and explains why Gibson’s work is important for understanding the vapid, celebrity-driven campaign we have this year.
Even though I finished work at 5.30AM in London on a mild autumnal Saturday morning, within a few hours I was in the Camden Court Hotel in Dublin’s city centre, amongst friends and fans at Octocon. The enthusiasm and excitement then carried me through until I hit the sheets at 4.30AM on Sunday morning, fed by the energy of the convention, dancing well past midnight and imbibing great cheer.
This year’s committee is youthful, bucking a trend with similar conventions in the UK, and possess a dynamism that brought together a nice programme, good fun social elements and of course overall a very enjoyable convention. The Guests of Honour, Diane Duaine and Peter Morward and Rhianna Pratchett, allowed much ground to be covered and attracted great audiences. With over two hundred people in attendance, the five-stream programme was busy.
(5) SETTING THE STUPID AFLAME. This Bradbury-related tweet went viral.
tfw your kid's school makes you sign a permission slip so he can read Fahrenheit 451 ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/t9lmD8vKTu
I love this letter! What a wonderful way to introduce students to the theme of Fahrenheit 451 that books are so dangerous that the institutions of society — schools and parents — might be willing to team up against children to prevent them from reading one. It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could never really happen,’ but pretending to present students at the start with what seems like a totally reasonable ‘first step’ is a really immersive way to teach them how insidious censorship can be I’m sure that when the book club is over and the students realize the true intent of this letter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accepted it as an actual permission slip. In addition, Milo’s concern that allowing me to add this note will make him stand out as a troublemaker really brings home why most of the characters find it easier to accept the world they live in rather than challenge it. I assured him that his teacher would have his back.
(6) REMAINS OF THAT DAY. The demolition of Ray Bradbury’s house inspired Joshua Sky’s Omni story “The House Had Eyes”.
The exterior was yellow with a brown triangle thatched roof and a thin brick chimney. The windows had been destroyed—the frames, like the living room, were gutted. Their remains tossed into a large blue dumpster resting on a hillside covered in dying grass. All that was left were two large cragged square shaped holes that bore inward yet outward all at once. Inward, laid the wisps of soot polished ruin. Hardwood floors, a mantle, masonry, some shelves and dust. Outward—the structure telepathically transmuted its emotions of loss and sorrow. She knew she was dying.
I was transfixed, my eyeballs locked with the house’s. It was like something straight out of a Bradbury story! My hands tightly gripped the fence, chain-links dug into my finger tendons. Focused on the yellow lawn, my mind pictured a phantom montage of Bradbury, time-lapsed: Watering the grass. Reading on the steps. Puttering about. Stalking the sidewalks. Talking to the neighbors. Talking to himself. Writing. Staring at the sky. Staring at the stars. Staring beyond. Marveling in awe. Downright dreaming—of rockets and Martians and technicolored time travelers.
It all felt so cosmically unfair. Why’d they have to tear it down? Why’d they have to piss on a legacy? It felt like we were all losing something—even if we didn’t know it. That our country—the people—the vanishing literate—were losing not only a landmark, but a sense of our collective wonderment. That we were continuing a bad trend that had no hint of ending—swapping our heritage for a buck. That’s the American way some would say. Some—maybe—but not all.
It’s Halloween time again, and as it has been for the past 50 years, a Star Trek costume is a safe bet for anyone looking to dress up. But do you want to be a Starfleet captain in 2268? A ship’s doctor in 2368? For the uninitiated, deciphering the language of colors and symbols that place you in the show’s universe is a crapshoot.
Luckily, Atlas Obscura is here to help, with a bit of cosplay codebreaking….
The most recent Star Trek television series, 2001’s Enterprise, was actually a prequel, taking place in the mid-2100s, and strangely, their uniforms take cues from every era of the Star Trek franchise. Taking place prior to the formation of the Federation Starfleet seen in later incarnations, the uniforms of the very first space-faring Enterprise, were once again standardized into a purple workman’s jumpsuit (echoing the red-washed uniforms of the later Original Series films). Position on the ship could be determined by the color of a seam that ran along the shoulder of the jumpsuit, with the colors corresponding to the original command gold, science blue-green, and operations red.
And then rank was indicated by the number of silver bars over the right breast, just like the pips used in The Next Generation. While not everyone’s favorite, this suit kind of had it all.
(8) NEXT AT KGB. The Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series will present John Langan and Matthew Kressel, on Wednesday, November 16, beginning at 7p.m. in New York’s KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street, just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
John Langan
John Langan is author of two novels, The Fisherman and House of Windows. He’s also published two collections, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. He is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards and he currently reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine.
New and forthcoming are stories in Children of Lovecraft, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Swords v. Cthulhu, and Children of Gla’aki. In February of 2017, his third collection of stories, Sefira and Other Betrayals, will be published by Hippocampus Press.
John Langan lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and teaches classes in creative writing and Gothic literature at SUNY New Paltz. With his younger son, he’s studying for his black belt in Tang Soo Do.
Matthew Kressel
Matthew Kressel is the author of the novels King of Shards and the forthcoming Queen of Static. His short fiction has been twice nominated for a Nebula Award and has or will soon appear in such markets as Lightspeed, Nightmare, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9.com, Apex Magazine, Interzone, and the anthologies Cyber World, After, Naked City, The People of the Book.
From 2003-2010 he published and edited Sybil’s Garage, an acclaimed SF magazine. He also published the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Paper Cities and for his publishing work, received a World Fantasy Award nomination for Special Award Non-Professional. He co-hosts the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series alongside Ellen Datlow. When not writing fiction he codes software for companies large and small, studies Yiddish (Nu?), and recites Blade Runner in its entirety from memory.
One of the most buzzworthy releases of the whole show, this title sold out by 3pm on the first day—a whole hour before Ars even arrived. The one table that FryxGames ran with a playable copy was booked every day. Fortunately, Ars US staffers already got their grubby little hands on the title and gave it a thorough—and hugely positive—review.
You’re playing as a futuristic global megacorp attempting, as the title suggests, to terraform Mars. Your tools are lots of plastic cubes, which track your resources and which are traded to in for asset cards, which get you more cubes. (The game is a total engine-builder.) Though the art isn’t terribly exciting, this is a terrific thinky Eurogame of interlocking systems and finding the most efficient ways to exchange one set of numbers for a higher set of numbers.
(10) HE MADE IT SO. In a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by Mike Moffitt called “The Real James T. Kirk Built the Bridge of the Enterprise – In the Sunset District” profiles a guy named James Theodore Kirk, who was born a month before Star Trek went on the air and who built a replica of the Enterprise in his house. He also is a Trekker who once won a chance to meet William Shatner, but he was dressed as the villianous reptile Gorn and wouldn’t tell Shatner his name really was James T. Kirk.
Captain’s log, Stardate 21153.7: After straying into a wormhole, the Enterprise has somehow crash-landed on Earth in early 21st-century San Francisco. We are attempting to effect repairs from a location in the city’s Sunset District.
James T. Kirk commands the Starship Enterprise from the captain’s chair of the ship’s bridge, conveniently located in the back of his house in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset.
The bridge is equipped with a wall of computers blinking with colorful lights, a transporter room and the main viewer, which would toggle to show flickering stars, sensor data or the occasional Romulan or Klingon message demanding the Enterprise’s immediate withdrawal from the Neutral Zone.
There is even an “elevator” in the back that makes a “whoosh” just like the one on the classic 1960s show “Star Trek.” Of course, the bridge is not an exact duplicate of the show’s — it’s a smaller area, so the key fixtures are a bit crammed and the helmsmen seats are missing altogether. But the overall impression is clearly Mid-century Modern Starship.
(11) KUTTNER. You can find Stephen Haffner hawking his wares this weekend at World Fantasy Con. Or you can order online today!
Haffner Press does it again! In 2012 we included a newly discovered Henry Kuttner story—”The Interplanetary Limited”—in THUNDER IN THE VOID. Now, with the upcoming release of THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR: THE EARLY KUTTNER, VOLUME TWO, we are pleased as pandas (!) to announce we have discovered ANOTHERunpublished Henry Kuttner story!
MAN’S CONQUEST OF SPACE or UPSIDE-DOWN IN TIME is an early gag-story (featuring pandas) supposedly written for the fanzines of the 1930s. It likely predates Kuttner’s first professional sale in 1936. “And how can I get a copy?” you ask? Well, we made it simple. So simple that it’s FREE* if you place (or have already placed!) a PAID preorder for THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR: THE EARLY KUTTNER, VOLUME TWO. We’re printing a limited quantity of this new Kuttner story, so Do. Not. Delay.
(12) KEEP WATCHING. Martin Morse Wooster recommends an animated short, Borrowed Time.
A weathered Sheriff returns to the remains of an accident he has spent a lifetime trying to forget. With each step forward, the memories come flooding back. Faced with his mistake once again, he must find the strength to carry on.
“Borrowed Time” is an animated short film, directed by Andrew Coats & Lou Hamou-Lhadj, and produced by Amanda Deering Jones. Music by Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla.
[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
“‘Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.’”
Following Bradbury’s 2012 death, the collection grew to include his personal library, writing desk, and 40 years of correspondence with presidents, filmmakers, and other writers. Much of the archive temporarily languished in storage: 20,000 pounds of boxes and furniture stacked floor to ceiling.
This month, the Center celebrates its move to a space three times larger in Cavanaugh Hall with a show at IUPUI’s Cultural Arts Gallery, Ray Bradbury’s Magical Mansions, which draws from the Center’s extensive collection. It’s an unusual repository for this or any university campus. Aside from smaller science fiction collections at a few college libraries, and occasional class offerings, academic acceptance of Bradbury’s genre has been scarce. Archives like the one at IUPUI could change that. Bradbury’s chance meeting with Eller all those years ago gave the professor his life’s work. In return, Eller is giving Bradbury what science fiction writers never had: a place of honor in academia.
…[Jonathan] Eller, with now-retired IUPUI Professor William Touponce, co-wrote the first university press book on Bradbury. Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (Kent State University Press, 2004) laid the groundwork for founding the Center and archive in 2007. Though the 510-square-foot basement location wasn’t set up for tours, Eller would often drop what he was doing to show curious visitors around. This summer, Eller began the laborious task of moving the archive to an impressive new 1,460-square-foot location in Cavanaugh Hall. It includes a room for Bradbury’s recreated office: a blue metal desk and work table, a globe of Mars given to him by NASA, and a Viking 76 paperweight made with material from the lander. Bookshelves and file cabinets line every wall. Eller and his wife, Debi, spent months readying the space: hanging pictures, cleaning shelves, and cataloging the large book collection. “At this point in most academics’ lives, they’re getting ready to retire,” Debi says. “But Jon is trying to preserve the effects of a man he respected so much.”
The Center’s new outpost offers room to shelve the 20,000 pounds of materials previously stacked floor to ceiling, and perhaps more importantly, a much more public face. Eller sees the Center as a resource for teachers, librarians, and scholars who want to pass on Bradbury’s importance to future generations, and it gives Bradbury and science fiction academic credibility. And it might be just be the beginning: In addition to finishing the third volume of his biography, the professor eventually hopes to acquire even more space and funding to expand the Center into a full-fledged museum.
Ray Bradbury, by David Seed, is published by the University of Illinois Press.
As David Seed observes in this meticulously researched and affection tribute to the author, ‘Bradbury conceived his early science fiction as a cumulative early warning system against unforeseen consequences’. As the author himself said: ‘technological science fiction, as put in motion by human beings, can either shackle us with the greatest totalitarian dictatorship of all time, or free us to the greatest freedom in history. I mean to work for the latter in my science-fiction stories.’
Like the best writers who imagine the worlds of tomorrow, Ray Bradbury talks to contemporary society. The Martian Chronicles features a tale of America’s ‘niggers’ parting en mass by rocket to the Red Planet to escape racism and servitude in the United States, in their own kind of ironic Mayflower. This story speaks to readers now as much as it would have 70 years ago. While the recurrent themes in The Martian Chronicles of environmental catastrophe and the perils of colonisation will resonate with concerned minds today, they spoke foremost to 1950s readers for whom the Dust Bowl was in living memory. It’s no coincidence that Bradbury gives his colonies on Mars mid-Western names such as Ohio or Illinois.
(4) RAY ANTICIPATED LIFE ONLINE. You may have thought that Ray Bradbury had nothing to say about the rise of social media and the way the virtual world often obliterates the real one. Financial Times columnist Nilanjana Roy, in “Back To Virtual Reality”, would disagree:
Perhaps an internet historian could better pinpoint when the digital world became the real world, but the truth is that our “real”, physical-world selves are so intimately, inescapably layered with virtual experiences that it may no longer be possible to split the two. The price you pay for digitally detoxing is to step outside the mainstream, and that has profound consequences. An obvious example might be that I feel less connected to old friends who are not on Facebook, for example, because I don’t see them, or see pictures of their kids. More subtly, if you unplug from the running streams of news, you also disconnect yourself from dinner-party, workplace, or even friendly conversation.
In Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian” (1951), a man arouses police suspicion because he is the only person to take walks while his neighbours stay at home, the flickering blue light of televisions playing on their walls. If he’d been writing today, Bradbury might have made more of the disconnect between the walker and his neighbours, the widening gap between the few who turn away from news-streams and social media immersion, and the many who are shaped by these.
(5) A SPIRITUAL MAP OF BRADBURY. J. W. Ocker just completed a week of superb blog posts inspired by and about Ray Bradbury.
September 26, 2016 — It was night, and the thunderstorm that followed me from the hotel had calmed into light rain and thunderous sky flashes. My hair was sodden, my shirt and jeans were sticking uncomfortably to me, and I was at the slippery edge of a black ravine, ready to disappear into its depths. All for Ray Bradbury.
September 27, 2016 — This was a big one for me: Waukegan, Illinois—the hometown of Ray Bradbury. But it was more than just his hometown, more than the mere place where he was born. It was the very geography of his imagination. The place where so many of his stories were set. So many of his characters lived. On his pages, he rechristened the city Green Town. And I was going to see it all, both the real Waukegan and the fictional Green Town. We’ve got a lot to pack into this one, so let’s get going.
…But the one thing I didn’t find was a statue of him. I mean, there was one of comedian Jack Benny, another Waukeganite, but not one of Ray Bradbury. And that’s because I was in town too early. The city’s been working on a statue project for him for about a year and half and, by the time of my visit, had narrowed the 40-odd submissions it had received to three. In fact, mere days after I returned from my trip to Waukegan and other points along the shores of the Great Lakes, the city announced the winning design.
September 29, 2016 — I don’t know if Ray Bradbury ever visited Salem, Massachusetts. But I can tell you that a piece of his life did. Because I took one there myself. I brought it with me during my Salem October last year. And good thing too, as that piece, of its own power almost, provided an anecdote that allowed me to write the name “Ray Bradbury” a few times in my account of that Salem October, A Season with the Witch. Below is the relevant excerpt from the book:
September 30, 2016 — In this episode of Strange Stuff from My Study, I dig into my Ray Bradbury collection to show you an original 50-year-old sketch by an artist named Joseph Mugnaini, a sketch that he did as a test layout for one of the fantastic interior illustrations for Bradbury’s 1972 book, The Halloween Tree.
Unlike his peers, Bradbury didn’t care much for the future either. Though The Martian Chroniclesdeals ostensibly with a future inhabitation of Mars, Bradbury’s tales are clearly a lens through which to study the past. He is not interested in the mechanics of space flight or the geographic terrain of the Red Planet. Technology is laced through the book, but it is the technology of a Flash Gordon comic strip, not based in actual mathematics and engineering. These stories are not realistic in the least. They are metaphors.
“Do you know why teachers use me?” Bradbury once said, in an interview for the Paris Review. “Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember.”
However, I have to say Miller is thoroughly wrong when he says, “Sherwood Anderson, Shakespeare, St. John Parse, Ernest Hemingway. These were hardly the writers inspiring usual 1950s science-fiction.” Plenty of them tried to tap into Shakespeare and Hemingway — Papa’s economical prose was regarded by many as the ideal 50 years ago.
Fahrenheit 451—American science fiction meets French New Wave cinema
As a highly visual writer, Ray Bradbury’s works have frequently been adapted for film and television. One of the most stylized and haunting dramatizations is François Truffaut’s 1966 film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. For this fifth volume of The New Ray Bradbury Review, guest editor Phil Nichols brings together essays and articles that reflect upon Bradbury’s classic novel and Truffaut’s enduring low-tech science fiction film, fifty years after its release.
French film director and writer François Truffaut was a major force in world cinema. Beginning with his first days as a firebrand film critic and early years as a highly original director, Truffaut sustained a career that brought him numerous accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. Yet Fahrenheit 451—his only film in English and his only foray into science fiction—is often overshadowed by the considerable triumphs of his other works, like The 400 Blows,Jules and Jim, and Day for Night. Similarly, while science fiction scholars often present the film as a significant work, they sometimes see it as a flawed adaptation, somehow less than its source, Ray Bradbury’s classic 1953 novel of book-burning firemen.
The articles in this volume represent the first scholarly investigation of Truffaut’s film and Bradbury’s novel together. They lay out the key critical issues in comparing book and film and novelist and filmmaker, discuss various aspects of Bradbury’s and Truffaut’s narrative strategies in creating a world where books are systematically burned, consider the film’s screenplay and Bradbury’s own creative reactions to Truffaut, and examine the reception of the film among various audiences and critics.
Ray Bradbury: science fiction author, namesake of a patch of Mars, and Last Interview series participant. In 1950, a twenty-nine-year-oldBradbury published There Will Come Soft Rains, which would become one of his signature short stories. It depicts a California morning in the year 2026, as a robotic house wakes itself up and begins preparing its residents for a busy day: making them breakfast, laying their clothes out, and so forth.
There is, naturally, a twist, and one fun way of learning what it is (besides reading the story), is to watch this Soviet cartoon adaptation, Budet Laskovyj Dozhd’, made by the Uzbekfilm studio in 1984, and directed by Nazim Tulyakhodzhayev. It’s a beaut — austere, creepy, and oddly warm. Do yourself a favor:
At the post are links to both videos on YouTube.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, J. W. Ocker, and Martin Morse Wooster for these stories.]
BRADBURY EXAM. HowStuffWorks challenges fans to take “The Ultimate Ray Bradbury Quiz”, 30 questions that look easier than they are.
He wrote outlandish stories that taught concrete lessons in critical thinking and morality. How much do you know about Ray Bradbury?
IN THE BACKGROUND. J. W. Ocker sent a screengrab from the “Jeepers Creepers” episode of the MTV series Scream.
Two of the characters talk in front of a marquee that advertises Something Wicked This Way Comes. It foreshadows a climax at a closed-down carnival after dark.
When a great American author recommends a bookstore to you, you would be well-advised to listen. When he does it with enthusiasm and passion, which was the only way Ray Bradbury ever did anything, you would be well-advised not just to listen, but to take note — in indelible ink on acid free paper, on any recording device you have handy, and by any method of mnemonics you practice.
“Steve, you and Amanda must come to my book signing next Wednesday. But not just for me, it’s at one of the best bookstores ever, Mystery & Imagination in Glendale, great name, huh? It’s from Poe!”
In a glass case at the front of Bookfellows used bookstore in Glendale, a plush kitten once owned by Ray Bradbury is displayed beside a bottle of dandelion wine, and an autographed photo of Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen and Forrest J. Ackerman all together on the same stage. Next to that is a brick — one recovered from the ruins of the late author’s house after it was demolished.
One has to wonder if anyone will save a brick from Bookfellows when it no longer exists. The staircase in the back is a treasure trove of autographs from famous authors who’ve dropped by, from Mickey Spillane to Alan Young. Bradbury, disappointed that Harryhausen hadn’t drawn a dinosaur when he signed, drew a rough doodle of one next to the legendary animator’s name to put things right.
These days, directors are expected to talk up their films, and for good reason: it’s likely that François Truffaut’s remarks about his 1966 film “Fahrenheit 451” (which I discuss in this clip) are in large part responsible for the film’s wrongly low reputation. The film was something of Truffaut’s white whale: it took him four years to put the production together; along the way, he turned down some other significant projects, including “Bonnie and Clyde,” which the screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman had written with him in mind. The shoot of “Fahrenheit 451,” which took place mainly in Great Britain, proved difficult for Truffaut, in part because he didn’t speak English, but above all because he had trouble working with the lead actor, Oskar Werner (who had played Jules in Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim”). Instead of keeping their conflicts out of the tabloids, Truffaut aired them himself: he kept a diary of the shoot and published excerpts from it in Cahiers du Cinéma.
HAWKING COFFEE. Believe it or not, Kirk Douglas and Ray Bradbury appeared together in a Japanese coffee commercial, filmed in Ray’s Beverly Hills office (probably 1981).
ON THE FRONT. Right after Bradbury passed away in 2012, Irene Gallo put together “Picturing Ray Bradbury”, a collection of cover art from his work, for Tor.com.
Ray Bradbury’s passing was a loss for everyone who enjoys storytelling in all of its forms. Not the least of which are artists and illustrators. Bradbury’s tone, the poetry and atmosphere of his worlds, have inspired artists for decades. Looking at his book covers, extending back over many printings, you see generations of artists reinterpreting the same works for their own era.
TONIGHT SHOW. John King Tarpinian recently saw a rerun of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show first aired on March 1, 1978; Ray Bradbury was one of Johnny’s guests.
So was insult-comedian Don Rickles.
Tarpinian tells the story:
What is really impressive about Ray on Carson is…it may be the first time Rickles asked a serious question of a person on a panel.
On that show was Don Rickles, Ray was disappointed that Rickles did not give him a zinger. Afterwards Ray asked why he did not insult him, as anybody would have wanted. Rickles said he respected Ray too much and his final words were, “You hockey puck!” Ray walked away floating on air.
This unique film imagines a future world where books are banned, and shows one man’s journey from book-burning fireman to book-loving rebel. This British science fiction film was the only English-language work from prolific French director François Truffaut, and is one of the best adaptations of the work of American author Ray Bradbury. To celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary, Phil Nichols will introduce the film and reveal the findings of his research into its unusual origins. The screening will be followed by a discussion.
It’s never dull when we dive into BookFinder.com‘s dusty archives of digital data to compile a list of the most searched for out-of-print books from the previous year. Sex, religion, quilting, gardening, swimming, pike fishing, cooking and UFOs, you can find all the important aspects of life in this selection of literature.
Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival is #42, Isaac Asimov’s Nine Tomorrows is #100 — but wait there’s more!
The May 1991 issue of The Cable Guide is chock-full of vital information, like time and channel listings for both Bloodfist II and the tape-delayed World Professional Squash Association Championship. Also included in this ephemeral TV encyclopedia are charming and prickly interviews with Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury. The visionary authors sat down to talk about—what else?—television.
The interviews are presented as dueling, short features, and they are published under the auspices of promoting the authors’ upcoming cable specials—Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House on Showtime and Ray Bradbury Theater on HBO. Even when doing PR work, they remained their true, sardonic selves.
“I’m sorry television exists,” Vonnegut told the interviewer. According to him, TV is “like a rotten teacher in high school, except it’s everybody’s teacher.”
With the help of the art teachers and 10th grade English teachers, the decision was made to work with acclaimed community muralist Richard Wyatt Jr. As the novel was being taught in classes, students had the unique opportunity to create a work of art that would honor an famous author, paint a scene from the novel while learning art concepts and techniques in genuine apprenticeship capacity.
The out of school community also played an integral part in the entire process. With the support and funding of the the school’s Harrison Trust, ARC after school program and a dedicated alumni group, the project would not have been possible. They provided everything from art supplies, after school student supervision, and community outreach on a larger scale to making the students feel and know that there can always be a connection between art, literature and the greater Los Angeles community. The students were able to see that their work and dedication matter to the literary world as well as to other students in the school who may not have been interested otherwise.
As a teacher librarian, each step of this experience was a learning opportunity. The end product was bigger than I imagined. I thought collaborating and co-teaching different parts of the novel along with facilitating the Book Club meetings was good enough. I had not thought about reaching out to other members of the community. This project made the school library a more welcoming space to reluctant library users and a tourist attraction for Bradbury lovers.
Now the bar is set high as to what can happen in a library. The Bradbury library is now a place for students to access all of the resources they may need for their academic work, check out and read books, work collaboratively with classmates but also admire a brilliant work of art.
(5) ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT. The city of LA is using The Big Read for many things, like the draw for people to attend a presentation on the Essentials of Fire Fighting at a local library.
Safety first! Do you know what to do in case of a fire? Unlike the firefighters in Ray Bradbury’s make-believe world where fire was created on purpose (to destroy books), the Los Angeles Fire Department has teamed up with the Library to help you learn how to prevent fire danger and take precautions with everything from smoke detectors, candles, to outdoor grilling. Join us for this important and potentially life-saving presentation about safety and health, led by Sargent Stewart. For more information, please call 818.352.4481.
Ray Walters at geek.com explains why this book was influential on not just literature, but also science:
“The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely related fictional stories depicting humanities struggle to flee from the potential of nuclear war on Earth to try and find refuge on the Red Planet. Many of the ideas Bradbury put forth in the novels seemed fantastical at the time, but modern day efforts to explore Mars smack of the science fiction writer’s vision of what it would be like to visit there.
“While Bradbury is seen primarily as an author who had a profound effect on his literary genre, in reality his reach has been much wider. While his novels may not be required reading in our schools anymore (which blows my mind), his ideas are talked about everyday with the people uttering the words usually not knowing the origins of the topics they are discussing. Ray Bradbury will certainly be missed, not just for his amazing science fiction writing, but also for his visionary foresight into cultural phenomenons.”
NASA put a burned DVD containing The Martian Chronicles on the hull of the Phoenix Martian Rover.
(1) Bradbury is the centerpiece of another Big Read in Kansas City. Biographer Sam Weller helps launch the event in ‘Fahrenheit 451’ forever: a literary classic’s uncanny cultural longevity.
In 1953, a little-known 33-year-old writer named Ray Bradbury wrote his first novel.
Sixty-two years later, “Fahrenheit 451” is a bona fide international classic.
The masterwork about a dystopian society where books are contraband is a staple of school curricula. It has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world and is, today, one of the most selected titles in community reading programs across the nation (along with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”).
The Kansas City area this week joins the list of community celebrants. The Mid-Continent Public Library system has kicked off a series of events surrounding the book in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” initiative. Having worked closely with Ray Bradbury for over a decade as his authorized biographer, I am thrilled to participate.
“Fahrenheit 451” is one of those rare books that transcend time and generations. But why? Why does this short 50,000-word novel continue to have such cultural relevance?
Even Ray Bradbury was somewhat vexed by the waxing success of his novel over the decades.
“I was just writing an adventure novel,” he told me on multiple occasions. Bradbury described his book as “a fugitive chase disguised as literature,” in reference to the plotline of a fireman who burns books for a living and one-day decides to take one home to see what all the fuss is about. When Guy Montag discovers the magic, wonder, philosophy and poetry inside books, he leaves his life as a book burner behind and becomes a bibliophilic fugitive in a society where books are illegal.
Like Bradbury, whose work Woolston honors both in the title and as a running theme, this author has a knack for finding just the right details to flesh-out a world without bogging down the action in reams of description. Take, for example, this nugget: ‘‘I won’t have a vote to sell until my eighteenth birthday, and that’s 619 days away.’’ Not only do you learn Zoë’s age but you also learn reams about the world that surrounds her. MARTians is a marvel of linguistic economy.
(3) Bidding is open and lively for the strongest rare book auction Heritage has offered to date, Auction #6155.
Many excellent copies of Bradbury works with personal inscriptions to Bob O’Malley are also present here, such as Dark Carnival (Lot 45014), Fahrenheit 451 (Lot 45016; minimum $1250), The Martian Chronicles (Lot 45021; minimum $1250) and The October Country (Lot 45024; minimum bid $500).
And it informs us about bad potential futures. Reading science fiction allows one to think about a range of bad potential futures. The dystopian future genre, particularly for younger readers, has been popular of late. But this is not new. Whether it is King’s The Stand, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Matteson’s I am Legend, or Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, science fiction has always dealt with futures where society breaks down or must deal with a far more pessimistic view of the future. Some even deal with the end of the world, with a recent example being Stephenson’s Seven Eve’s. It is good that military officers should read such descriptions of alternate futures; it is the first step in us ensuring that they do not come to pass.
