by David Kubicek
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”–Ray Bradbury
Forgive me for the tardiness of this tribute to visionary writer Ray Bradbury. I had intended to post it on the 99th anniversary of his birth (Thursday, August 22), but my internet chose that day to have a spaz attack.
The Great Experiences
Ray Bradbury said there are three great experiences; the first is birth, the second is life, and the third is death. After a career spanning more than 70 years, he embarked on the third of those adventures on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. For a while, on the 99th anniversary of his birth, Ray Bradbury was the top trending topic on Twitter, which means that lots and lots of people where tweeting about him–a rare thing for even a living writer.
Although Bradbury is most famous for his science fiction and fantasy, he also wrote horror, mystery/crime and mainstream stories, not to mention poetry, stage plays, teleplays and screenplays.
My Writing Mentor
Bradbury was my first writing mentor. I was an amateur astronomer during my high school years and devoured every book on astronomy at the local library. One day my mother gave me a paperback book she’d picked up in the 25-cent bin at the Salvation Army store. Since it involved space, she thought I might be interested, but she warned me that it was fiction.
That book was The Martian Chronicles, and I could not put it down. By the time I had finished reading it, I was determined to be a writer and write cool stories like Bradbury. My first step was to haunt the bookstores, the libraries and the paperback racks in drugstores until I had found and read every Bradbury book in print.
My Study of Ray Bradbury
A few years later, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), I wanted to write a thesis about the influences of Bradbury’s early life on his writing. When searching for an advisor, I discovered something that amazed me–not everyone was a Bradbury fan, and the first few professors I approached turned me down.
The professor who finally agreed to supervise my work, Robert Bergstrom, had never read Bradbury before he agreed to take on the project, and our association continued long after the thesis was finished. Bob was a Beta Reader of my own fiction–including my novel In Human Form–for many years after I graduated.
The thesis took longer to write than I’d planned (about two years), and it was twice as long as it needed to be–I was required to write 40 pages but ended up with 80 because I had so much to say. In fact, years later, the editor of CliffsNotes mistook it for a Master’s thesis, so my credit on the CliffsNotes I wrote for Willa Cather’s My Antonia reads: David Kubicek, M.A., University of Nebraska.
Contacting My Mentor
I never met Bradbury, but in the few letters we exchanged, I found that he lived up to his reputation as a generous champion of budding writers . I was relieved–it can be a serious downer if one learns that one’s hero is a d*ck. We first made contact when I sent him a copy of my thesis. In the accompanying letter, I mentioned the dearth of information about him when I was doing my research.
Within a week I got a package from Bradbury. I was a little suspicious at first. I listened to it to see if it was ticking (I had said one or two things in my critique of his work that a writer might not be overjoyed to hear, but in my defense, I had tried to be objective). But it wasn’t a bomb–it was a copy of galleys for a book about Bradbury’s work that was scheduled for publication.
Curiously, my thesis–Ray Bradbury: Space Age Visionary–is listed on Amazon as “out of print–limited availability,” although it was, technically, never in print to begin with since only six photocopies had been distributed. My guess is that Amazon’s spider, while scrambling over the web, crawled up on the Special Collections cyber-pile at UNL’s Love Library, which had one of the six copies in circulation.
Bradbury’s Advice for Living
When I was researching my thesis, I came across this Bradbury quote in Writer’s Digest:
“I absolutely demand of you and everyone I know that they be widely read in every damn field there is; in every religion and every art form and don’t tell me you haven’t got time…! Stuff yourself with serious subjects, with comic strips and motion pictures and radio and music; with symphonies, with rock, with everything!”
Years later I realized that I had unconsciously followed his advice. I developed a great curiosity about many subjects, did lots of reading, listened to lots of different types of music, watched lots of movies, had lots of life experiences, etc. Every writer needs curiosity to properly explore the things he or she writes about, and I highly recommend that everyone–especially aspiring writers–follow Bradbury’s advice.
For more about this amazing man, read The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury’s authorized biographer. I wish this book had been available when I was writing my thesis. Weller’s book is a great read and provides a wealth of information about a writer who has touched our imaginations and our culture. Every Bradbury fan should have this book in his or her collection. NOTE: The hardcover edition was published several years before Bradbury’s death, but Weller has added a final chapter to the Kindle edition covering the author’s last years.
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