Tag: Ray Bradbury

FAHRENHEIT 451

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FAHRENHEIT 451
Ray Bradbury
SF
2 stars
190 pages

In the nebulous dystopian future the masses are entertained with mindless drivel and books are banned, hunted and burned when found. One man discovers how empty everything is and goes on the run from the authorities and finds others like himself. Ends with the US being nuked and the premise that these “book rememberers” will help rebuild civilization.

I can’t say I really enjoyed this book. The writing style was annoying, too dramatic, over the top, when describing the internal struggle felt by the protagonist. And a culture that allows the youth to grow up to be cattle, it couldn’t survive very long. The kind of people needed to make a culture survive that was described couldn’t grow up in the culture described. It doesn’t fit.

The Illustrated Man

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The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
sf
1 star
253 pages

many of these stories[and several in the Martian Chronicles] were in The Stories of Ray Bradbury. His old familiar themes of hate, despair, revenge and weirdness. I only read this because I’d gotten it out at the same time as Something Wicked… and it seemed a waste to have taken it out and not read it. But no more.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury
fantasy
3 stars
290 pages

A Dark Carnival comes to town, promising to give people what they want, but turning their own dark desires against them and making them slaves of the Carnival. One middle aged man and two teens fight and win, with laughter. I don’t like Bradbury’s writings. I shall not be reading anymore. His style annoys me. Patricia McKillip writes of shadows and so does Bradbury; however, McKillip’s shadows come from the Light, Bradbury’s shadows come from the Dark. I don’t want to fill myself with shadows from the Dark.

The Martian Chronicles

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The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
SF
3 stars
182 pages

a series of of short stories chronicling humanities contact with Mars, the decline of Martian civilization, Humanities self-destruction on Earth and ends with a few families becoming the “new Martians”. Bradbury has a very unique writing style. Sentences, while whole and complete, are put together in such a way as to suggest fragmentation. His style increases the dark view of humanity that Bradbury seems to hold.