Friday, June 8, 2012

Ray Bradbury RIP

In 1953 Ray Bradbury wrote FAHRENHEIT 451 at a rented room at UCLA's Powell Library. The total cost for rent and typewriter was $9.80. The title was in reference to the temperature at which paper ie a book is combustible. "In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleep walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction." This story comes from Wkipedia. The novelist will be missed by his fans, but his books live on. They just have to be read, for as Ray Bradbury said, "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

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