RIP Ray Bradbury

[tubemonkey]

The half-hour sci-fi radio show from the 1950's - X Minus One (1955~58/ 126 episodes) featured 8 stories (in 7 episodes) by Ray:

• And The Moon Be Still As Bright -- ep 1
• Mars is Heaven -- ep 4
• The Veldt -- ep 13
• Dwellers in Silence -- ep 25
• There Will Come Soft Rains / Zero Hour -- ep 27
• To the Future -- ep 30
• Marionettes, Inc -- ep 31

You can listen to all 126 episodes of the series at Internet Archive or iTunes. A complete episode guide is located here - X Minus One.

[oddly bodkins]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

The half-hour sci-fi radio show from the 1950's - X Minus One (1955~58/ 126 episodes) featured 8 stories (in 7 episodes) by Ray:

• And The Moon Be Still As Bright -- ep 1
• Mars is Heaven -- ep 4
• The Veldt -- ep 13
• Dwellers in Silence -- ep 25
• There Will Come Soft Rains / Zero Hour -- ep 27
• To the Future -- ep 30
• Marionettes, Inc -- ep 31

You can listen to all 126 episodes of the series at Internet Archive or iTunes. A complete episode guide is located here - X Minus One.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by teh603

Dunno. I've read a good chunk of 451 and an entire graphic novel rendition. Can't say I like it. Too much fuel for the toxi-capitalist "government is evil" movement. Course the other one about the schoolteacher getting replaced- which was run in Boys Life back in the early Clinton era- wasn't any better.

I kinda wish I could've asked him why he and Orwell and Rand were so strongly anti-government. I'd like to do something entirely different to Rand.

Actually he was one of the few people who actually stood up to McCarthy and his unamerican committee I believe. I don't know about Orwell and Rand though.
The real lesson of Fahrenheit 451
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/ray...ahrenheit-451/

[crich70]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

The half-hour sci-fi radio show from the 1950's - X Minus One (1955~58/ 126 episodes) featured 8 stories (in 7 episodes) by Ray:

• And The Moon Be Still As Bright -- ep 1
• Mars is Heaven -- ep 4
• The Veldt -- ep 13
• Dwellers in Silence -- ep 25
• There Will Come Soft Rains / Zero Hour -- ep 27
• To the Future -- ep 30
• Marionettes, Inc -- ep 31

You can listen to all 126 episodes of the series at Internet Archive or iTunes. A complete episode guide is located here - X Minus One.

You can also find them along with many others at
http://www.mysteryshows.com/ "X minus One" is in the club section. They do ask for a small one time donation for access to the club area (to help defray costs of keeping things running) but it's well worth it. There are some 48,290 Old Time Radio episodes there to choose from.

Originally Posted by crich70

Actually he was one of the few people who actually stood up to McCarthy and his unamerican committee I believe. I don't know about Orwell and Rand though.
The real lesson of Fahrenheit 451
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/ray...ahrenheit-451/

Orwell was British, and anyway died in January 1950. Ayn Rand was a virulent anti-communist and was a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. This is before the McCarthy hearings, and she never appeared there.

[BenG]

Software developer and Ray Bradbury fan Tim Bray has proposed a new HTTP status code inspired by Fahrenheit 451 that would reflect Internet censorship.

Bray’s recommendation is that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons, the user is given the status code 451.

http://thedailywh.at/2012/06/24/ray-...+Daily+What%29

[kennyc]

Interesting!

[WatchAdam]

Bradbury's writing is some of the most imaginative and yet topical that I've ever read. He was a master at writing "sci-fi" that actually made a statement about current issues. And what a work ethic! Definitely an inspiration for my own writing.

[QuantumIguana]

This position of his that 451 was not about censorship of books, but about TV seems to have come out long after the book was written. I can only go with what I get out of the book, not what someone else tells me that I'm supposed to get out of the book, even if that person is the author. It's just hard to justify the position that it's not really about government censorship when the main theme is about the government burning books, and the title of the book is a reference to burning books. If people had simply become uninterested in books, there would be no need to burn books. You only need to suppress what people want to have access to. Sure, TV was shown as being mind-numbing in the book, but that appeared to be background, if anything more a symptom than a cause.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

This position of his that 451 was not about censorship of books, but about TV seems to have come out long after the book was written. I can only go with what I get out of the book, not what someone else tells me that I'm supposed to get out of the book, even if that person is the author. It's just hard to justify the position that it's not really about government censorship when the main theme is about the government burning books, and the title of the book is a reference to burning books. If people had simply become uninterested in books, there would be no need to burn books. You only need to suppress what people want to have access to. Sure, TV was shown as being mind-numbing in the book, but that appeared to be background, if anything more a symptom than a cause.

Definitely agree with your assessment.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Definitely agree with your assessment.

Musta been the banana bonus. but yes I agree, not sure why anyone would associate it with TV?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Musta been the banana bonus. but yes I agree, not sure why anyone would associate it with TV?

Same here. That reminded me of a Star Trek episode when someone asked to watch TV and Riker had no idea what it was. Data then explained that it died out in 2040. Really! Video is going to die out? I don't think so.

[QuantumIguana]

It's possible that cable TV may be dead by 2040, replaced by internet TV. There already are TV shows that are made for the internet, and they are pretty good. I watched "Lilyhammer", which was made for Netflix. But watching video on a screen, that probably isn't going to go away. The holodeck, or even the smaller holosuites can't be used by everyone, they are bulky and there isn't enough to go around. Plus, from what we've seen, the holodeck is more addictive and mind-rotting than TV.

I disagree that TV can't tell you about Napoleon, which was one of his examples. A good documentary can be quite informative, although a book can give you much more detail. I dropped cable a couple years ago, there just wasn't anything worth watching. Video isn't mind-rotting, it is the choice of content.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Musta been the banana bonus. but yes I agree, not sure why anyone would associate it with TV?

Well, in the movie, it is pretty clear that television was having a large negative influence on the general population, who wanted to veg out in front of the set for hours on end and were genuinely creeped out by anyone wanting to read a book. They were on board with book destruction.

I think there are Bradbury interviews where he said the book was about society rather than government.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Well, in the movie, it is pretty clear that television was having a large negative influence on the general population, who wanted to veg out in front of the set for hours on end and were genuinely creeped out by anyone wanting to read a book. They were on board with book destruction.

I think there are Bradbury interviews where he said the book was about society rather than government.

Well, it does say on wikipedia:

Themes

The novel is frequently interpreted as being critical of state-sponsored censorship, but Bradbury has disputed this interpretation. He said in a 2007 interview that the book explored the effects of television and mass media on the reading of literature.[7] Bradbury went even further to elaborate his meaning, saying specifically that the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state—it is the people.[7] Yet in the paperback edition released in 1979, Bradbury wrote a new coda for the book containing multiple comments on censorship and its relation to the novel. The coda is also present in the 1987 mass market paperback, which is still in print.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

But remember this IS the internet!