Ray Bradbury Died

One of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, died last night. While he lived a good and long life of 91 years, I still feel sad that he is no longer in this world. It was The Martian Chronicles that introduced me to his wonderful writing style that evoked moments of time so familiar to me even as a child. But my favorite work of his would have to be Dandelion Wine, which is about a momentous summer for a young boy in a small town in the nineteen twenties. Thanks to my sister, Ann, I have this in a leather bound edition from Easton Press.

While he wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a warning against television wiping out literacy, he was prolific in that industry. The Ray Bradbury Theater series is available on DVD and I recommend that highly, as it was the author’s chance to adapt his own stories after being disappointed with Hollywood’s attempts.

I will end with the opening from Dandelion Wine, for it is one of my favorite openings to any book:

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

Hopefully, Bradbury is enjoying his first morning of true summer.