100 things - Science fiction

[herumtreiber]

I love space. Seems like I always have, ever since I read my first science-fiction story, or watched that first TV show in a misty, half-forgotten time. To gaze up at the sky and wonder what's out there…

… to float in mid-air, borne by the tiny currents aboard a spaceship as I look down at the blue limb of the Earth, shrouded in clouds and curving in the infinite horizon below me. To reach my hand, seemingly able to grasp all that ever was.

I won't do that, but I've imagined it, borne by the tales of sci-fi authors. They've taken me to other galaxies; to the dawn and sunset of the Solar System, the Universe even.

I love hard science-fiction. It's not only due to the shiny spaceships, rather to the way the authors adhere to the rules, even if they pull the hyperspace card.

And yet, I also love the literature of ideas that takes place in the here and now. What will happen if censorship runs amok? Will there come a time when people will be prohibited from having any books? If they caught them, will they combust at the temperature paper burns, 451 degrees Fahrenheit? Ray Bradbury wrote about it.

If a time-traveler goes on safari to the age of the dinosaurs, what will happen if he steps on an insect? What repercussions will it have? Ray Bradbury wrote a marvelous short story about it.

Alas, today another Grand Master of Science Fiction has left us.

Ray Douglas Bradbury

August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012

Comments

[herumtreiber.livejournal.com]

I remember when we talked about the insect that was squashed and how it changed the future. I know you loved his writing, and I sympathize with the feeling of loss.

Like you, I enjoy those genres, but there's something about the amazing vistas that sci-fi offers that is unequaled elsewhere. And Ray Bradbury was a master at delivering those feelings of wonder.

He will be sorely missed.

*abrazos*