Ray Bradbury

Here's a good article about Ray Bradbury on Slate that was linked on Arts & Letters Daily. When I was a kid, I read everything by Bradbury I could get my hands on. I first read The Illustrated Man when I was about twelve or so, and probably read it two or three times more over the course of my teens.I can remember very clearly both the copy of The Illustrated Man I used to own - it had an oddly textured cover, part of a series in fact that included Golden Apples of the Sun and The Dragon Riders of Pern.

I read it again last year (not that copy, of course) in the course of my degree, and it stood up to my childhood recollections admirably. There's not a single dud, and even if his subject matter and approach seemed rather old fashioned today there are a handful of timeless gems like "The Rocket", "Kaliedoscope", "The Veldt" and the "The Long Rain". The last two were part of the movie version with Rod Steiger, which used to turn up on TV from time to time, late at night during school holidays. I remember thinking it was a bit stodgy at the time, but maybe it would be more appealing to me now I'm older.


I bought my copy of The Martian Chronicles as part of a three-for-a-fiver deal at Whitcoulls one August holiday along with Timesnake and Super Clown by Vincent King (great title , but I never read it, I don't think) and Fratricide Is A Gas by Lindsay Gutteridge (I eventually read all three of this trilogy about a guy who gets shrunk down to the size of an ant has to fight his way across the garden to safety, all of them purchased as remainders, if I'm not mistaken).

Mum and Anna and I took the bus to Auckland, where we spent the night in a hotel and visited the tourist hotspots. I read The Martian Chronicles in one go on the way up and then again on the way back. The girl a couple of seats back from me was sick and I remember the smell of puke and the pungent floral perfume of disinfectant to this day.

I like how the article describes his stories: "Bradbury is an optimist at heart, but his head knows that hope may not be enough. ... You read Bradbury with a growing sense of wonder and joy. It's only on reflection, after the stories take up residence in your head and crawl deep into the dark cracks and corners, that the wonder mutates into something closer to dread."

Yeah, that's what he feels like, and some of his stories stick with me still.

Tempus Fugit

So, I've been meaning to post for a while about We3, Civil War and my post man, but it's been a busy week, with the Clarke Awards on Wednesday night and lovely big gobs of day job stuff to deal with.

Now, I hate link posts (although, of course, some of my favourite sites a just link sites, like Arts & Letters Daily) but, well, here's a couple interesting links (erm, vai Arts & Letters Daily).

First off, this nifty review of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci. I used to describe myself as a skeptic, until the likes of Pigliucci infested the scene with a kind of agressively triumphalist scientism that rubs me the wrong way. I think skepticism is about doubt, and Pigliucci's stuff has always had insufficient doubt in it for my liking.

As I get older, I think of myself as increasingly Fortean, partly because I am interested in the social phenomenon of wierd phenomena, and partly because I have doubts about the non-reality of both spirtism and the ETH UFO thing. I mean, they're both highly unlikey, and I don't think either is true in anything like the popular conception, but from time to time, I get the notion of explanations that don't cntradict known science or the available evidence.

Second link is a depressing article about the US national debt, and, by extenstion, the debt of all dveeloped nations (the developing world has its own hair-raising problems).

I take some comfort in the fact that money and value are entirely social constructs, that don't have any objective reality outside that which we care to give them. Regardless of the mind-boggling levels of debts that modern nation states accrue, people still live and work and trade and things are okay for most people most of the time.

Whatever disaster awaits, I think that we can, we the time comes, define our way out of the corner. Although, some rich people might end up less rich than they thought they were (by whom I mean the lower middle classes and above of all the western nations who are - often without understanding it - a global financial elite that most of the world's population couldn't even dream of joining). The question is, can we manage the redefinitions without a global war? I hope so!

Finally, take a look at my new blog, State of Change. This is going to get cracking next week (perhaps not 1 May as planned, as it's a ballet day etc) but expect weekly episodes of my amazing first novel coming soon!