But he talks like an excitable kid with an old man's voice. Each Christmas, Bradbury asked his wife to give him toys in place of any other gifts.
Bradbury was raised as a Baptist in Waukegan, Illinois, by his father, a utility lineman, and his mother, a housewife. Both were infrequent churchgoers. His family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression to look for work. When he turned 14, Bradbury began visiting Catholic churches, synagogues and charismatic churches on his own to figure out his faith. I do it. That's Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down. Bradbury started writing for pulp magazines like "Weird Tales" and "Thrilling Wonder Stories" at the beginning of his career.
But even then, faith was an important theme. In his story "The Man," Bradbury tells the story of a rocket crew landing on Mars, only to see their thunder taken by a Christ-like figure who had arrived only hours earlier. Allusions to Christianity are common in his stories, but Bradbury doesn't define himself as a Christian. He considers Jesus a wise prophet, like Buddha and Confucius. The Rev. Calvin Miller, author of the New Testament novels "The Singer Trilogy," sees an optimism in Bradbury's stories that's reflected in the Judeo-Christian belief that there will be a "new heaven and a new Earth" one day.
Miller once wrote an essay about Bradbury's "Christian positivism," titled "Hope in a Doubtful Age," that was published in "Christianity Today," an evangelical magazine. After the essay appeared, Miller says, he was sorting through mail at home when he noticed two thank-you letters from Bradbury -- one written when the author was headed to Paris for vacation and another when he arrived.
Bradbury has been a relentless supporter of space exploration. Ascending to the heavens won't destroy God; it'll reinforce belief, he says. Space travel will increase our belief in God. As he approaches the end of his journey, Bradbury is still conjuring his monsters and angels. His latest book, "Summer Morning, Summer Night," was released last month. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book.
Space travel and religion seek the same goal -- immortality, Bradbury says. If humanity remains on Earth, it is doomed because someday the sun will either explode or flame out. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves. Bradbury spoke often of the night visions that kept him sweating and sleepless in the first decade of his life.
Writing became a release valve of sorts. He often told, and elaborately embroidered, the story of the epiphany that led him to become a writer. A visit to the carnival at 12 brought him face to face with Mr. Electrico, a magician who awakened Bradbury to the notions of reincarnation and immortality. You died in my arms in , in France.
I stood by the carousel and wept. From then on, he spent at least four hours a day every day, unleashing those night visions in stories he wrote on butcher paper. After a series of moves, the Bradbury family settled in Los Angeles in Ray dabbled in drama and journalism, fell in love with the movies and periodically sent jokes to the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio show. He read constantly and his writing output steadily increased and improved. Ackerman, a founder of the society, said in a Times story.
He was loud and boisterous and liked to do a W. Fields act and Hitler imitations. He would pull all sorts of pranks. Bradbury graduated in , with not enough money for college. Poor eyesight kept him out of the military, but he kept writing. His stories began to appear in small genre pulps. That year he also began putting out his own mimeographed fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia. And a rave review from novelist Christopher Isherwood in Tomorrow magazine helped Bradbury step over the threshold from genre writer to mainstream visionary.
Love interrupted by the vicissitudes of time and space. There are people who love the written word. That is true in most of his stories. He has deep faith in human culture. Besides books and short stories, Bradbury wrote poetry, plays, teleplays, even songs. But as he garnered respect in the mainstream, he lost some standing among science fiction purists.
Bradbury had very strong opinions about what the future had become. In the drive to make their lives smart and efficient, humans, he feared, had lost touch with their souls.
Over the years he amassed a mantel full of honors. Even in his later years, Bradbury kept up his 1,words-a-day writing schedule , working on an electric typewriter even when technology had passed it by. He began dictating his work over the phone to one of his daughters, who helped to transcribe and edit. In he began pulling rare or unfinished pieces from his archives.
Most Americans make their acquaintance with Bradbury in junior high, and there are many who revisit certain works for a lifetime, his books evoking their own season. If you write in metaphors, people can remember them And Americans are often displaced from their origins and carry an anxious memory of it, of losing their origins.
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