“‘One thing,’ he said later, ‘it’s quick in space. Death. It’s over like that. You don’t linger. Most of the time you don’t even know it. You’re dead and that’s it.’”
— “The Rocket Man” by Ray Bradbury
THE LAST THING I ever thought I’d do was write about Ray Bradbury again. After all, I met the man just twice: once in the early 1990s, and the last time in 2000. But “Uncle Ray” has a way of becoming the ghost of Hamlet’s father, skulking about after dark, rattling his literary chains on the parapet of consciousness, and urging me toward a writing future I wasn’t ever sure I wanted in the first place.
In other words, I think I gotta heed the spirit and just go with this.
Bradbury wrote about humans torching books, the distant planets of our solar system, dandelion wine in summer and machines that created joy and misery, ghosts and ventriloquists, carnival barkers who sold lightning, and children who dreamed of the stars.
All miracles, really.
As a writer, Bradbury inspired me in his gentle, remote-uncle way, steering me toward places I never imagined. I might have wished my own father was more…
