| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Home Front: Culture Wars | ||
| Ray Bradbury Dismisses Internet as "Distracting" and "Meaningless" | ||
| 2009-06-26 | ||
| Something Demented this Way Comes..... One of science fictions last surviving greats sounds off with controversial opinions about the internet With the loss of Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton last year, the survivors of the elite group of twentieth century science fiction authors has dwindled. Such greats as George Orson Welles, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov had already passed away. One of the last surviving greats is Ray Bradbury, currently 88. Mr. Bradbury is known for such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, and The Martian Chronicles. Who in the name of Cthulhu is "George Orson Welles?" Hgeorge Gorson Welles? Recently Mr. Bradbury has taken his passion for books to new heights, campaigning for the Ventura County Public Libraries. He explains, "Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." "You punks get off of my lawn, goddamit! Turn the TV down? Hell, I can barely hear it and where are my pants anyway?" Perhaps out of concern that the internet is displacing printed works, he let loose some colorful comments about the internet and its worth in The New York Times this week. He comments, "The Internet is a big distraction. Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet`. It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere." A Yahoo spokesperson said they could not comment on the issue. They said they were unsure if Mr. Bradbury's account matched up to reality.
Bradbury's own distracting and meaningless website.
| ||
| Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy |
| #26 AC, It also depends on the particular magazine one read. Stories in Astounding (later Analog) tended to be uplifting human-triumphant stories, thanks to John Campbell, with some peculiar exceptions when Campbell was away. "E for Effort" by T.L. Sherred, for example. F&SF and Galaxy tended to have the more problematic stories. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2009-06-26 23:29 |
| #25 William Shakespear and dear Jane Austin still hold up well. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-06-26 21:58 |
| #24 David's law, crap today crap tomorrow, but yesteryears gems fade and tarnish with time. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-06-26 20:32 |
| #23 Sturgeons Law: 90% of everything is crap. |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-06-26 18:09 |
| #22 99% of books are crap 99% of internet content is crap Up to you to find the gems. Today your library will fit onto an USB stick. Enough to read for the next two or three depressions |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2009-06-26 16:48 |
| #21 IIRC Plato in his Dialogues cites Socrates as afraid that being able to write things down and read them later would dumb down the whole process and make people mentally lazy. Attitudes haven't changed much in couple millennium. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-06-26 16:10 |
| #20 Ray Bradbury's short stories were the first adult fiction I read back in the primary grades. I still like most of his stuff. I also admire old pharts who dare to flip off the world. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2009-06-26 16:05 |
| #19 He hasn't had a damn thing to say in what, forty-five, fifty years now? Ranks right up there with Kurt Vonnegut. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2009-06-26 15:07 |
| #18 George Orson Wells - the illegitimate son of Orson Bean and Herbert George Wells... |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-06-26 13:30 |
| #17 In summary, the author of this piece (Jason Mick) knows very little about science fiction, cares less, and is too lazy to do any research. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-26 12:51 |
| #16 The late Michael Crichton was another writer who achieved acceptance from the literary/media establishment by playing off the "not typical sci-fi" strawman. Unlike Bradbury, Crichton did routinely resort to scientific impossibilities and Deus Ex Machina devices that would normally result in instant rejection from experienced SF editors who were familiar with the field as it actually is, rather than as it is stereotyped among academic literary conformists and media critics. The former includes the whole premise of Jurassic Park, since it was already known at the time that viable DNA could not be recovered from amber. As for the latter, the ending of The Andromeda Strain, where a random mutation suddenly solves the problem by unaccountably affecting every individual virus, is classic Deus Ex Machina. Having a new invention as a central plot device is not necessarily a Deus Ex Machina unless one confuses the "god from the machine" with literal machines, as the lit-snob side of the Two Cultures dichotomy (another humanities strawman) is apt to do. 2 14 |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-26 12:23 |
| #15 I recently re-read Fahrenheit 451. After the election it seemed apropos. In the afterward Bradbury talks about changes in the decades since he first wrote the novel. He gets many letters from people suggesting ways to conform it with current notions of political correctness. I never get tired of remembering his response: "There is more than way way to burn a book!" Note that current editions of Heinlein and everything else have been expurgated by the PC gods. If you want to read what an author actually wrote you generally have to go to editions from to 50's or earlier. 0 18 |
| Posted by: Iblis 2009-06-26 12:08 |
| #14 "Saccharine happy endings" were no more the norm in SF during the heyday of Bradbury's career than were bug-eyed monsters and flying saucers. This is a literary establishment stereotype of the field, and Bradbury played to it. See Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations," Heinlein's original Starship Troopers, or practically anything by Alfred Bester, Fred Pohl (who is still with us btw) or A.E. van Vogt. This kind of sophisticated and balanced work was by no means atypical. Movie/TV scifi and printed SF are not the same and until very recently did not even resemble each other. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-26 11:44 |
| #13 In what respect does Orson Welles qualify as a science fiction author, let alone one of the greats? He didn't even write the radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, Howard Koch did. Perhaps like many other pop-culturists, the author does not know that Welles and H.G. Wells were different people. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-26 11:21 |
| #12 Bradbury's angle was that his stories usually did not have saccharine happy endings that were the norm in science fiction of the time, nor were the loose ends particularly wrapped up. He also avoided the "Deus ex Machina" problem of the new invention being central to the plot, and tried hard to avoid scientific impossibilities. Going way back, however, he has disliked television, which was central to several of his plot lines, such as "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Veldt". A very influential short story, "There will come soft rains", had a major anti-nuclear war impact both in the US and the Soviet Union, where in 1984 it was made into an animated short. Over here, it was most recently referenced in the 2008 video game Fallout 3. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-06-26 11:09 |
| #11 Internet Dismisses Ray Bradbury as "Distracting" and "Meaningless" |
| Posted by: spiffo 2009-06-26 09:47 |
| #10 Martian Chronicles was a pretty good book, but Bradbury was and is a terminal reactionary. He hasn't had a damn thing to say in what, forty-five, fifty years now? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2009-06-26 09:28 |
| #9 Ray Bradbury is a tedious writer. He is not a science fiction writer. He wrote fantasy. Jack Vance wrote better social commentary. |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2009-06-26 09:25 |
| #8 Not quite CF, what the media does is rewrite the way THEY think you should read. (Also called Propaganda) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-06-26 08:58 |
| #7 he'd envision a self-aware server that rewrote the stories you stored on it; fitting them to what it thought you should be reading. The media already does this. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2009-06-26 08:21 |
| #6 George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television, and radio. Welles was also an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years. Noted for his innovative dramatic productions as well as his distinctive voice and personality, Welles is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished dramatic artists of the 20th century. His first two films with RKO, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, are widely considered two of the greatest ever made. His other films, including Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight, are also considered masterpieces.[1][2] He was also well-known for a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds which, performed in the style of a news broadcast, reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that a real invasion was in progress. Wikipedia |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-06-26 07:22 |
| #5 I think I understand why he'd say that. His writing revels in the senses; in the smell and sound and feel of things. I'd read that he preferred a manual typewriter for the sensation of the keys moving to hit the paper. He wouldn't want to lose the sense of the weight of the book and the feel of the covers and turning the pages--they'd be integrated with the act of reading for him. I haven't read much of his recent work, so perhaps he's done it already, but I'd guess that if he were to write about books online he'd envision a self-aware server that rewrote the stories you stored on it; fitting them to what it thought you should be reading. The internet--distracting? Not possible. Let me go check my email again. |
| Posted by: James 2009-06-26 07:14 |
| #4 Herbert George Wells The Godfather of American Liberalism H. G. Wells: novelist, historian, authoritarian, anticapitalist, eugenicist, and advisor to presidents. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_HG-wells.html |
| Posted by: Large Snerong7311 2009-06-26 06:15 |
| #3 "Orson" Wells, of War Of the Worlds fame, was born with the Christian name George. Orson is his middle name. And personally, I enjoyed Fahrenheit 451, as I did everything else of Bradbury's that I've read. In fact, I'd say that he ranks only second to Heinlein, in the world of SF. Asimov? Now there's some seriously tedious writing! Outside of the occasional short story I never had the stamina to finish anything he wrote. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2009-06-26 05:57 |
| #2 Did spellcheck convert George Orwell into George Orson Welles? And why? |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2009-06-26 05:42 |
| #1 Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps the most tedious book ever published. But Liberals love the politics, so schoolchildren are made to study this piece of dross. |
| Posted by: Phil_B 2009-06-26 04:40 |