WITH ZEST AND GUSTO, THE WORLD WAS SAVED
While the world slept soundly in their beds, he saved the world from the domination of extraterrestrial life. While others went along their day to day business, he fought censorship and breathed life into the classics. While you and I sat dully in front of a TV set, he brought us back to a happier time, Greentown, Illinois, where children knew what it meant to be children, and trolley cars still regularly rolled down the streets. He brought back antique words such as “gusto” and “zest” and reminded us that our muse is what truly rules our imagination.
His name is Ray Bradbury, and he reminded Americans to come alive when they needed to hear it the most. While we questioned everything in life, he laughed at us and told us to, “Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.” He was the one to remind us about life when we faced death from every direction. While the people of the 50’s stayed bottled up in their homes worrying about the threat of nuclear war and censorship, he gave a reason to forget it all. He told us to leave it all behind and take a journey with him into the sky.
First we were introduced to men who colonized Mars in his novel, The Martian Chronicles. He shielded us from reality and gave us a home on the red planet right beside the other characters.
Next, he started a revolution against censorship with Fahrenheit 451, in which he told us the temperature at which books begin to burn, but warned us to be wiser than to test it. He warned that if we truly wanted to destroy civilization, the first step is to put an end to reading.” You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them,” he said.
Next he saved us from our complicated selves by releasing us into simpler times, where boys lived their summer days with gusto in Dandelion Wine. He snuck us away from responsibility and deadlines to watch innocent boys running through ravines and buying new tennis shoes that would make them “jump…over trees and rivers and houses.” He took us by the collar and showed us Greentown, Illinois, where life was something beautiful.
As if he hadn’t saved us enough, he swooped down for us again with a tale of friends who risk their lives to save another on Halloween with The Halloween Tree. He gave us the friendships we longed for, and made us feel the way we felt on Halloween nights so many years ago, when our feet clamored on sidewalks and wind howled through the trees.
Time and time again he came for us, took us away in rocket ships and time machines so we could have a chance to get away from our day to day troubles and relax in the dusty cities on Mars and eat cool ice-cream from across the ravine in Greentown. He created heroes out of dust when America needed them the most.
He showed us a glimpse of the future, reminded us of the past, and explained to us what science fiction truly was. “Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is science fiction,” he reminded us.
While others called him crazy, while libraries refused to carry his books, he waited patiently, in the basement of the library at the University of California, Los Angeles, hastily slamming dimes into the pay typewriter and furiously writing what would become our dreams, our memories, and our future.
He was a boy. Born in Waukegan, Illinois he grew up reading Roy Rodgers comic books and dreaming of adventures. He and his family later moved between Tucson and Waukegan. He started his writing career by writing on butcher paper, dreaming up stories of distant worlds that would one day inspire his Martian Chronicles. Acting became a hobby of his, but two of his teachers noticed his writing capabilities and pushed him in that direction, a step he never regretted. After graduating from Los Angeles High School he began selling newspapers during the day and writing during the night. His passion bubbled and grew inside him. “All that stuff that’s collected in my head…comes out in my stories…like a pomegranate, you just burst. And the ideas come spilling out,” he explained. And it was by this life of wonderment and desire that fueled a small town Waukegan boy to become the father of science fiction.
Now we ask ourselves, “Why?” Why does writing about spaceships and sea monsters affect American culture? The answer is simple. Ray Bradbury gave us our freedom, he showed us a reason to live when the world was full of chaos. If Earth was not enough reason to live, he gave us Mars. If Mars wasn’t sufficient, he gave us Halloween every night of the year. He rattled our bones with feeling and stirred our souls with excitement for life. To him, his job was very simple. “My job is to help you fall in love,” he said. That is exactly what he did.
Suddenly we were not quite as afraid of the nuclear threat. Instantly foreign problems seemed farther away than Mars. He took our greatest fears and replaced them with joy and wonder. He allowed us to open our eyes to see our world as if we were viewing it for the very first time. “Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he said. “Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made up or paid for in factories.” But while he gave us glimpses of distant worlds, he never let us forget that the real beauty, the true beauty, hung right outside our windowpanes in the forms of raindrops, fireflies, and dandelions.
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