| Author | Message | ||
     Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 193.113.57.161 |
Just heard the sad news. An icon is lost to us. The stories will endure forever. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.214.176 |
I just heard too, courtesy of Anne Billson's post on Facebook. Great shame, but he left a wonderful legacy. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
It had to happen in our lifetime. Sad, but unavoidable. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.171.20.248 |
Death is a Lonely Business.  | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.110.174.68 |
He was October. Live forever, Ray. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
A Master Craftsman for whose writing I have the utmost admiration. "Fahrenheit 451" has always been and always will be one of my top ten favorite novels, simply for its prophetic vision, and its beautiful, almost fragile prose. Regards Terry | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
That's the first time I've shed some tears when putting news of a death on the BFS site. What a writer, and what a legacy he's left us though. RIP Ray. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Normally when I read these I feel a brief shock and not much else. This time it felt like a real punch in the guts. I'm genuinely saddened to hear about this. His books have been the heart of my collection for nearly 30 years. His were the first grown up books I ever bought and I feel like I've grown up with him. RIP Ray. Your influence lives on. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Even though it had to come- the man had, by any definition, lived to a ripe old age, it still doesn't seem possible. Ray Bradbury's work has always been there; I grew up with his stories. He was one of the finest, most original and distinctive voices in fantastic fiction; if I ever write anything as lyrical, as thought-provoking, as inspiring and as unmistakably the work of only one author, I will be have achieved more than most writers ever can. RIP Ray. I'm a better writer and human being for your work; so are many others. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Saddened by the news today. It's like Bradbury's been around forever - he had a robust writing career back in the 1940's! You know what? He will be. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.21.6 |
When I was a mere spratling of a boy aged 14, I remember feeling nostalgic for 1920s america on the stength of Dandelion Wine. The only short stories which have ever made me cry are all from this great man's typewriter. I don't remember ever taking any non-family-member's death as much to heart as I have this one. I think the last disk of the TV theatre is going in the DVD player now. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.9.251.161 |
Here's to Ray forever. His body may have died but his soul is in his work. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.56.75 |
He died, but he lived before he died. Too few of us can really say that. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.11.134 |
It wasn't a shock really, but still an incredibly sad day. RIP Mr Bradbury. Your light will continue to shine for generations to come. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
It's a sad loss, though Bradbury had been very ill for years. It's a reflection of his talent that different people's favourite Bradbury titles stretch over at least five decades. I think he may be the last great Weird Tales contributor to leave us, though he's known more as the master architect of post-pulp era supernatural fiction. I remember reading The October Country in my early teens and feeling as though I'd swallowed a creature that wouldn't keep still. More than any other writer, Bradbury makes you reconsider what weird fiction is about, how it works, what it can do. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 81.158.152.219 |
"...as though I'd swallowed a creature that wouldn't keep still..." That's beautiful, Joel.  His stories evoke such powerful emotions it's easy to see them as living things. "The Fog Horn" is my absolute favourite. It's such a poignant portrait of loneliness and it's always guaranteed to make me cry. Likewise "Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas". I read it only once and couldn't bear to ever read it again. And "All Summer in a Day". We were shown the TV adaptation when I was the same age as the protagonist and I probably got teased for crying. But I had a kindred spirit in the writer. I felt like he truly understood me, like he was *with* me. His words always will be. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.5.43.148 |
I just returned from holiday to this sad news. Gutted. Totally gutted. I'd somehow managed to convince myself that Bradbury would live forever. | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.110.174.68 |
Me too, Zed. One would have thought that his being 91 would have made the news more...I don't know, palpable. But it hit me like a ton of bricks. For anyone interested, I've posted a personal Bradbury reminiscence on my website: http://www.richardgavin.net/2012/06/ray-bradbury-reminiscence.html | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
For me it was "Skeleton", "The Cistern", "The Next in Line", The Martian Chronicles (including the stray 'Martian' stories that appeared in later collections), "The Pedestrian", "the Emissary", "The Veldt", "Zero Hour", "Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!", Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, "A Story of Love", "Long After Midnight", "The Better Part of Wisdom", "Let's Play Poison", "Touched Withs Fire", "The Golden Apples of the Sun", "The Crowd", "The Shoreline at Sunset" . . . which doesn't mean I didn't like his other work. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That's a great tribute, Richard. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 94.197.127.181 |
The April Witch was my favourite of his short stories. Golden Apples of the Sun and R is for Rocket, my favourite of his collections. Goodbye, Mr B. And thank you for the tales. 'Looking back over a lifetime, you see love was the answer to everything.' Ray Bradbury | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I've been away all week and just heard about this today. What can you say really? Our last link with the absolute golden era of weird fiction has been broken. The man's legacy is likely to see him venerated as the 20th Century's greatest exponent of the weird tale. I grew up reading him in my teens and 20s and have still so much of his material to get through. Every cloud has a silver lining. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
And no time like the present to get started! As a wee tribute to Ray I'm just about to start 'Death Is A Lonely Business' (1985) for the first time. This thread and the mass of tributes elsewhere just about disprove that title but I think the man would have approved of the sentiment. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
A good book. I more or less lost sight of him after that. Tried The Toynbee Convector and Farewell Summer, but don't recall much of either. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Mmm... it would be unseemly here, on this thread, for me to voice my opinion of DIALB... Let it suffice, that I think the (vast) record shows Bradbury's greatest strength was in his shorter work. | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.158.83.240 |
Thanks, Craig. I appreciate it. Richard | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
A brief tribute of my own to the man: http://simon-bestwick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/ray-bradbury-1920-2012.html | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.48.103 |
Richard and Simon, I read and enjoyed both of your tributes. You conveyed a lot of what I feel for Bradbury and his writings. Good job. I used to take a 2-volume paperback set of a hundred of his best stories with me practically everywhere in my late teens and early twenties. There are still some novels that I've yet to read, but his short fiction made a huge impression on me (and still does). | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.158.83.240 |
Thanks, Huw. Simon - I enjoyed your tribute very much. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Huw and Richard- thanks to you both. Yours was a fine tribute as well, Richard. As you said, a huge part of our shared landscape has vanished. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Great long fairly-recent magazine interview here at The Paris Review, that Andrew Sullivan links to from his blog: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-brad bury So many good passages to select from it as a sample, it's impossible to choose. Here's a couple I liked: Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can’t get free of them and that’s what kids like in school. They read about rocket ships and encounters in space, tales of dinosaurs. All my life I’ve been running through the fields and picking up bright objects. I turn one over and say, Yeah, there’s a story. And that’s what kids like. Today, my stories are in a thousand anthologies. And I’m in good company. The other writers are quite often dead people who wrote in metaphors: Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne. All these people wrote for children. They may have pretended not to, but they did.... Oh, God. [following your instincts is] everything. I was offered the chance to write War and Peace for the screen a few decades ago. The American version with King Vidor directing. I turned it down. Everyone said, How could you do that? That’s ridiculous, it’s a great book! I said, Well, it isn’t for me. I can’t read it. I can’t get through it, I tried. That doesn’t mean the book’s bad. I just am not prepared for it. It portrays a very special culture. The names throw me. My wife loved it. She read it once every three years for twenty years. [!] They offered the usual amount for a screenplay like that, a hundred thousand dollars, but you cannot do things for money in this world. I don’t care how much they offer you, and I don’t care how poor you are. There’s only one excuse ever to take money under those circumstances: If someone in your family is horribly ill and the doctor bills are piled up so high that you’re all going to be destroyed. Then I’d say, Go on and take the job. Go do War and Peace and do a lousy job. And be sorry later. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I have to say enough at this one, because otherwise, I'd simply be reprinting the entire interview. But here's another great passage, Bradbury on writing.... Yes, the problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours. I try to encourage my student friends and my writer friends to write a short story in one day so it has a skin around it, its own intensity, its own life, its own reason for being. There’s a reason why the idea occurred to you at that hour anyway, so go with that and investigate it, get it down. Two or three thousand words in a few hours is not that hard. Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone. But a novel has all kinds of pitfalls because it takes longer and you are around people, and if you’re not careful you will talk about it. The novel is also hard to write in terms of keeping your love intense. It’s hard to stay erect for two hundred days. So, get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it. Let them be magnetized to it, drawn to it, and then cling to it. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.108.163 |
There's a documentary on Bradbury on BBC4 tonight for all the Brits around here | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.214.176 |
Ooh ta - I'll record that. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
Any chance to put it on YouTube? Or is the Beeb difficult about that sort of thing? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.214.176 |
They can be, Hubert. I could always stick it on a DVD for you if you wish - not particularly legal but not as bad as putting it on YouTube. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.136.40 |
Is BBC I Player available outside Britain? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.214.176 |
Not legally so far as I'm aware, but there are ways around that... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.155.144.90 |
Craig - some great stuff there about Bradbury, and advice I've been trying to stick to. Recently I was trying to finish some short stories for a possible anthology I was told I had a chance of having out (it's folded) and it was much easier to write something new than rewrite something old, or polish something old. Doing the latter was just awful, hard work. Going back to earlier pieces, well, you just see nothing in them of what you must once have saw. But stories from scratch, very short ones, seem to be easiest for me. Yes, i can have a finished short out a day - but let it go over to two or more and it just becomes dead meat. I seem unable to write novels. I've tried, but just can't - as Bradbury says - keep it up. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103 |
I've sent you an e-mail, Mick. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.61.184 |
Make way for a master. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/09/jeffrey-archer-writing-tips_n_1335112 .html | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.35.160 |
Actually most of the things he says make sense - except for point 4. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
And "Write what you know" - please. Stupid over-said false advice. Rather, "Write authentically." | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.43.241.164 |
We're only resistant to it because it's so familiar. I would also add write what you feel you know. I'm currently trying to write for an American anthology and it's very difficult writng in an American style. I thought it would be easy after all the movies. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.26 |
The second half of number 1 is tripe. I wrote my first good story in lunch hours in an office with phones ringing all around me, for instance. Or is he talking specifically about novels? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.26 |
I agree about 3, Craig - false advice, and your formulation is a lot more useful. I would add "Try writing what you think you can't." But otherwise most of the advice is sound enough. However, it proves that all those methods aren't guaranteed to produce good work. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Actually, it was point 3 I meant to criticise as well. If everyone wrote "what they know", only serial killers could write crime stories and there'd be no fantasy or horror genre. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.26 |
Just to return to point 1, I absolutely don't feel insulted if people who have to hold down a full-time job then attempt to write in their spare time, and I do wonder how many professional writers would agree with Mr Archer. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
I'm currently trying to write for an American anthology and it's very difficult writng in an American style. Why would you want to write in any other style than your own, Tony?! The very idea... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
As with every talent, there are three types of writer; those who were born to write, those who wanted to write and made it so by hard graft, and then there's the Jeffrey Archers of this world. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
There's a fourth type: the writer who doesn't. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I absolutely don't feel insulted if people who have to hold down a full-time job then attempt to write in their spare time Yes. Indeed. personally, I feel insulted that a talentless hack like Archer feels qualified to give anyone writing advice. Most writing advice is bollocks; it's simply a PR stunt by the author. In my experience, a writer simply finds their own way to write. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Keep your style and references firmly rooted in the UK, Tony. The Americans, perhaps suprisingly, seem to dig that. Though you might need to explain what the NHS was. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.26 |
Is it that you have an American viewpoint in your tale, Tony? Some Brits manage that very well - our own Pete Atkins for one - but I don't (though the prologue of The Nameless seemed not too bad). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.90.10 |
>>>9.Stay fit "If the body is a physical wreck – too much drinking, smoking, late nights – how can you expect the written word to be anything less than drunken, useless and tired?" Logic therefore dictates that Archer is a better writer than Poe. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Actually, the "write what you know" one does very neatly explain why he tends to write about thieves, liars and corrupt politicians... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.90.10 |
>>>Don’t think you can write a novel after you've done a hard day’s work, it’s insulting to those professional novelists who spend their time doing nothing else. What a fucking idiot. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.90.10 |
He's such a cunt he can't even write a single sentence without a lapse of style: "The plot will buzz around in your mind while you are walking, continually churning over, which it can’t be while you’re actually writing." -- His plots both buzz and churn, do they? They grind, too, you know. As well as stretching credulity and inducing irrepressible merriment. Very versatile, his plots. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.184.29 |
Joel, Ramsey, Stevie - I'm writing a story for an American antho inspired by and set in a specific place in America, an old mental hospital (I know, I know...). I'm trying to keep it transatlantic, nuetral-sounding. Everyone knows the more active you are the more fit and energetic you are. Sitting round all day makes me not want to write at all. But 'living' also helps with writing - meeting people, socialising. But in the end it's not what you do in your life, it's what you think, the old 'whole of the moon' thing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.90.10 |
I agree with Gary Mc: every writer's different. Tips are handy, but the only way to do it is to do it. You find your own rules. I'm reminded of Robin Skynner's comment about good mothers: they're the ones not consulting guidebooks. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.25.219 |
http://www.creativecreativity.com/2007/03/creative_advice.html | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.253.102 |
I read an Archer short story once. Only once. |