Ray Bradbury

In my high school years, I discovered the ABCs of science fictiion; Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. I read as many of their works as I could find. Years later when my quirk of scoring high on IQ and aptitude tests got me into Mensa, I was pleased to find that Asimov and Clarke were also members. I'm quite sure Bradbury could have been too, if he thought it mattered. After one too many dues increases I dropped out of Mensa. The cost/benefit ratio to have an ego-stroking card in my wallet wasn't worth it, and I never went to any of the meetings with the arrogant self-important pricks and snobs. That's probably why Bradbury never joined.

The following story sounds like he is aging into the very model of an old curmudgeon. I hope to emulate his fine example.

Famed US author Ray Bradbury on Monday told the Los Angeles Times that this country needs a "revolution" and that he gets burned up by the idea of his works going digital.

Bradbury, author of "The Martian Chronicles" in which colonists from a devastated Earth encounter natives on Mars, lashed out at President Barack Obama for not backing development a moon base to be used to "fire off a rocket to Mars".

"Then when we do that, we will live forever," he told The Times, before going on to complain about the growth of government in the United States.

"I think our government needs a revolution. There is too much government today," he said.

Bradbury also bridled at the spread of modern technology, saying: "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now."

The author of "Fahrenheit 451", which depicted a US future in which critical thought was banned and books burned, told the Times he had rebuffed proposals to convert his written works into digital formats to be read on devices like Amazon.com's Kindle or the Apple iPad.

"I was approached three times during the last year by Internet companies wanting to put my books" on an electronic reading device, he said.

"I said to Yahoo, 'Prick up your ears and go to hell.' "

Bradbury is being celebrated in Los Angeles with a week dedicated to him to mark his 90th birthday on August 22.

His other works include "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "Dandelion Wine" and "The Illustrated Man."

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His website

His Wikipedia entry

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -Ray Bradbury (1920 - )