Ray Bradbury: Beyond Science Fiction
Once in ninth-grade theater, we read short stories aloud. Mine was "Kaleidoscope" from Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. It drags on for pages and pages of marvelous description of men falling through space from their scrapped rocket. As they drift apart, each to die alone in a different corner of the sky, the men talk about life, settle their grudges, and accept their fates. It's not a good thing to read to ninth-graders. Here I was lost in words that I still catch my breath to recall. Here were my classmates, wishing the rocket men would shut up and die. Well, I showed them. I read all of it. And among the many reasons that I didn't get dates in ninth grade, this stunt takes a prominent place.
If Bradbury was no good for my social life then, he made up for it later. I started to realize in college that most of the people around me who liked books, liked his. And this was a bit of a revelation, because the authorities hid Bradbury from us. The words "science fiction" and "fantasy" got attached to his work, and those were enough to keep him out of textbooks, off reading lists, and away from classrooms, except where one of his more boring books is concerned. The Pulitzer board is right to recognize him, but it awards him a special citation in a way that still cheapens his legitimacy: "A special citation to Ray Bradbury for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy." The poison is still there. We can't simply call him an author of fiction, someone who made up things that often don't fit a category.
Look at a sample of the other stories in The Illustrated Man. "The Other Foot" shows what happens when blacks and whites come separately to Mars. "The Veldt" describes two children who use the household entertainment system to kill their parents. "The Man" treats the arrival of a Messiah from the perspective of one who just missed him. Yes, many take place in the future, on other planets, on rocket ships, but many also take occur in the small towns of ’20s and ’America. His theme is not gadgets or magic; it is the glory and the horror of being human.
I say give him a prize, but don't give him a label. What do you think?
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10:39 am
You seem to view the Science Fiction label is a stigma. I think anyone with more than a passing interest in literature doesn't think Science Fiction = SciFi (e.g. Stargate SG-1 or whatever) and I don't see it as a stigma. Authors like Phlip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., George Orwell, and so on are clearly (or at least often) well within that realm and few would argue against their importance.
This genre, in the hands of a skilled author, creates a platform for exploration of ideas and hypothetical situations that don't exist in the construct of our lives. Science Fiction authors have predicted and explored social and political situations in ways that wouldn't have been possible without the other planets or future times or whatever.
Anyway, I have no problem with labeling great authors as Science Fiction writers - it's a perfectly legitimate and in fact necessary framework for great writing.
12:35 pm
Let me second Jamie's sentiment with a quote from Vonnegut about science fiction writers:
"I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the
only ones who'll talk all about the really terrific changes going on,
the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and
not a short one, either, but one that'll last for billions of years.
You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future,
who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what
cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous
misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're
the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without
limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are
right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion
years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell."
11:12 am
I didn't make my argument clear enough. I don't care personally whether we call things "science fiction" or not. What I mean is that nearly all of Bradbury's books (except Fahrenheit 451) got ignored in my high school and college English classes and whenever I read criticism. And the reason textbook-writers, professors, and critics could mostly ignore him was that his books had this label. The Pulitzer board recognized his achievement, but they kept the label. I think he would have more readers if the board and other ostensible authorities stopped using it.
1:59 pm
If works by Bradbury or any other "Science Fiction" author were ignored in favor of other, lesser works, then that's your teacher's fault, not the Pulitzer board.
This sounds more like a matter of style on the part of your teachers. Is it reasonable that more than one Bradbury novel be taught in a given survey course? What other books were taught? Why is Bradbury more important than whoever else he's competing with?
I am sure that there are plenty of professors who teach books by the authors we've mentioned. I simply don't accept that the reason why (you perceive) "Science Fiction" as being ignored is because it's called Science Fiction. Anyone actually teaching, especially at a college level, would not be so simple. Maybe the guys who you had just chose other books, but I'm sure they give plenty of respect to these authors we've been talking about. There are so many great books, you can't teach them all.
I read a couple Kurt Vonnegut Jr. books for a high school English class, FWIW, alongside Catcher in the Rye and Cannery Row and Lord of the Flies and all that crap.
3:05 am
Let's try to think of Ray as a writer who lived on Science Fiction Street, but occasionally ventured out of the neighborhood.
'Fahrenheit 451" was a warning on the evils of suppressing free speech, while "The Martian Chronicles' bypassed hard science in favor of the human connection if we ever visit other worlds and cultures. You cannot really pigeonhole Bradbury...not completely.
I congratulate Ray on receiving the Pulizer award. And like the author of this article, I think they should give him the CATAGORIZED award for literature. They could base this on '451' alone, since it is in the Top Three of 20th century books on future social commentary. The other two being: '1984' and 'Brave New World'.