This final note, a remembrance of Ray Bradbury who died today at 91. You can’t really just call him a science fiction writer. More social commentator, really, on our collective anxiety about what new technology might do. He’s still best known for “Fahrenheit 451,” about book burning in a distant America. He talked to Queena Kim, our tech reporter, a couple of years ago about how that book came to be.
Ray Bradbury: I was wandering around UCLA, I heard typing in the basement of the library and there were 12 students typing for 10 cents a half-hour. So I got a bag of diamonds…
Queena Kim: Did you say you brought in a bag of diamonds?
Bradbury: Dimes! I moved into the typing room and I wrote “Fahrenheit 451” in nine days.
“Fahrenheit 451,” “The Illustrated Man,” “The Martian Chronicles,” and a whole lot more.
Bradbury: I’m not a short story writer, I’m a magician. I can make you believe anything that I tell you. I know how to live forever, so help me god.
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