Ray Bradbury: Enemy of the State

Reason ^ | June 8, 2012 | Charles C. Johnson

[Colinsky]

I’m hard pressed to think of anyone from that 1930s-1940s generation who’s still alive and writing now.

Frederik Pohl is still alive and writing. He published "All the Lives He Led " last year when he was 91.

[a fool in paradise]

Bradbury also gave advice in the early 1990s at a lecture I attended. He said turn off the nightly news. There wasn’t much there anyway and the local news is largely car accidents, warehouse fires, sports drama, and weather.

Most people turn to it as a force of habit but they aren’t necessarily being informed as they are being misinformed and fed a steady diet of chaos. Witness the “rash” of stories of cannibalism these days whereas normally they wouldn’t be national news items.

[a fool in paradise]

Clarke seemed more cynical and perverted. From some of his writing he seemed to hold religion in contempt.

Asimov was also an atheist but he was more tolerant of those who’d pray for his health.

Bradbury spoke on faith at times.

[a fool in paradise]

Harlan Ellison is still kicking.

[Talisker]

Harlan Ellison is still kicking.

"Kicking" is what Harlan DOES.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Arthur C. Clarke died in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

Sorry.

Frederik Pohl and Jack Vance are about the only Golden Age writers left.

Still plenty ‘New Wave’ sci-fi authors from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, however, and in all fairness, many of them produced some very good stuff.

One writer said there were two flaws in the Golden Age. The first being that writers were paid for volume, not content, often from a nickel to a quarter a word, flat fee; and that content was often just “invent a gizmo and build a plot out of that”, with two dimensional characters.

The New Wave was so popular among writers because it was less about gizmos and more about sociology and cultural adaptation to futuristic change. This was because gizmos had become so common in the real world that they had lost much of their mystique, but in an odd way.

Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’ was a very accurate reflection of Clake’s third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”; except that “magic is magic”, it is all beyond reach, so there is no way to build it yourself in your garage. It is overwhelming to all but the expert.

So science fiction really had no choice but to move to cultural and sociological reaction to technology. However, this has its own failings, because sociology is a study, not a science, and the cultural breakthrough of one person is laughably juvenile to another. For example the downright silly plot-lines of some of the Star Trek TOS episodes.

Another problem is self indulgence. For example the later writings of some of the Golden Age writers during the New Wave period are just cringe worthy, such as Asimov’s ‘The Gods Themselves’, and Heinlein’s ‘The Number of the Beast’.

(To his credit, Asimov recovered and went back to writing sequels of his Golden Age masterpiece Foundation Series, before his untimely death.)

It is no surprise that the New Wave burned itself out quickly, but since then science fiction has lost its genre labeling, mostly because the publishers were all absorbed into the giant media oligopolies.

[a fool in paradise]

"Kicking" is what Harlan DOES.

Then it is appropriate that Kicks Books will be (re)-issuing two collections of early writings by Harlan Ellison.

http://kicksbooks.blogspot.com/

A second volume, with a matching cover, is to be released later this year.

[pabianice]

If not for greats like Bradbury and science fiction, this dyslexic — who was told he was “stupid” by his teachers — would never have learned to read.

[whd23]

To his credit, Asimov recovered and went back to writing sequels of his Golden Age masterpiece Foundation Series, before his untimely death.

It's amusing to read that sentence juxtaposed with your previous comment "[One flaw with the Golden Age was]... that writers were paid for volume, not content..."

Consider 'Golden Age' books from Asimov and Heinlein as compared to their later works. The earlier work was much more concise.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It was concise because that is why they survived. Most authors tried to crank out voluminous filler and the editors would slash and burn it, then pay them for what was left over.

This was one of the reasons suggested why L. Ron Hubbard got into the religion business, because he couldn’t cut both quality and volume in his writing. It was just too much work.

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. “ - Asimov

[Starstruck]

Martian Chronicles was my first SciFi book back in the fifties. I was hooked and mostly a SciFi reader for many years after that. I had not read any for the last 20 years until I recently picked up some John Scalzi.

[JCBreckenridge]

“The New Wave was so popular among writers because it was less about gizmos and more about sociology and cultural adaptation to futuristic change”

And that’s why it’s crap. Hard SF is far better.

[JCBreckenridge]

Ben Bova’s still around too.