Tag Archives: Ray Bradbury

by

An Overlooked Christmas Gem: “The Gift”, by Ray Bradbury

r-is-for-rocket-by-ray-bradburyThis Christmas Eve, treat yourself to this short story by Ray Bradbury, “The Gift”  It’s from his superlative collection, R is for Rocket.

“The Gift” is such a short story that this review, or, more accurately, this glowing recommendation, will be short too.  “The Gift”  tells of a man and a woman who are taking their first space flight with their little boy on Christmas Eve.  He had hoped for a tree and presents, and his parents got him a tiny tree – but the gift exceeds the family’s weight allowance and the tree is not approved, so they have to leave tree and gift behind.

The rest of the story is the father’s solution to how he can give his son a Christmas Tree in space.  I dare say no more.  If you don’t get choked up at least a little then your soul is dead.  Not that I’m judging you.

“The Gift” is a beautiful example of how a writer can accomplish a great deal in just a few words.  Every word counts – so we care about the family, we have some idea of what their world is like, and the story has visual and emotional impact.

As a tree-hugging atheist, I find the solstice holidays to be meaningful because I’m drawn to the reoccurring themes of renewal of light, celebration of nature, and giving to others that appear across so many cultures.  I can’t think of a much more pagan way to celebrate solstice than to bring a tree inside and decorate it, hang lights all over the house, and celebrate re-birth.  And I have to confess that I’m pretty into that gift thing, too.

“The Gift” gives the reader a deep sense of veneration and wonder without being specifically religious (other than references to the holiday as “Christmas”).  And it gives a deep sense of generosity and kindness, in showing how the other passengers participate in trying to create a special experience for the child.  It’s a beautiful story and an exquisite example of writing craft.  And it’s so short you can read it in less than five minutes – handy for when the holidays are not so much a time of wonder and veneration but a time of busy, busy madness.  It’s a little hit of serenity and joy.

by

Gateway Drugs: The Science Fiction Edition

door opening onto poppiesIt’s time for Gateway Drugs – and this month we’re looking at science fiction.  The joy of science fiction is that it encompasses so many styles of writing.  In popular imagination, science fiction means Star Wars and Star Trek – stories with lasers, spaceships, and aliens, and a lot of action.  God knows, I cherish those things.  But there are all kinds of writing within the science fiction genres – mystery, romance, comedy, tragedy.  There’s space opera and there’s small-scale, character-driven, philosophical stories.  you name it, science fiction has it.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

Let’s start with an anthology that has a little bit of everything.

The Latest Edition of The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Latest Edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

Here’s what the author Connie Willis has to say about The Year’s Best:

My second big influence was The Year’s Best SF&F.  This was the 1950’s, when Judith Merrill, and Robert P. Mills, and Anthony Boucher were editors of this collection, which came out every year.  I’d read a Philip K. Dick story, and then a Theodore Sturgeon story, and then a Frederick Brown story, and then a Shirley Jackson story.  It was an amazing experience, not just because the stories were amazing, but because I saw this vast variety of things you could do.  You could have a highly experimental story, and then a rip-roaring adventure, and then a horror story, and then you’d have a sweet little romance – all in one book.  Had I just read novels, I don’t think I would have stuck with it.

One of the first stories I ever sold was a romantic comedy.  It was called “Capra Corn” – a terrible title.  I knew that within science fiction, I would write anything I wanted to.  I thought, I can write a sad story and then a really fun story, and nobody said a word.  I thought, I can do anything I want!  That’s why I had so much fun, and why I’ve stuck with the genre all this time.

R Is For Rocket, Ray Bradbury

r-is-for-rocket

I discovered science fiction when I asked my dad for something to read.  He showed me his collection of Ray Bradbury and Issac Asimov short stories.  Not only did those books get me to read science fiction, but according to a lot of rooms full of current sci-fi authors, those two guys got ALL of us to read science fiction, long before we knew what science fiction was.  In R is for Rocket,  you can read about spaceflight, and sea monsters, and time travel.  You can read about the emotional problems that come with leaving everything you know on Earth behind to colonize Mars.  You can read “The Sound of Summer Running”, which is about a boy who wants new tennis shoes, and isn’t science fiction at all.  I also recommend Bradbury’s S is for Space.

I, Robot, by Issac Asimov

I, Robot

This collection of stories includes a mystery, and a psychological mind game, and a cave-in on another planet.  So again – if you like action, it’s here, but the core of the stories is about how people work, and how robots might work someday, and how robots and people would interact.  The stories are funny, and touching, and scary, and sad, and heart-warming.  I don’t care how much you say you don’t like science fiction – if you don’t find at least some of these stories to be a least a little bit interesting, your soul is dead.  I’m not judging you – simply stating a fact.

But let’s say you want to read a novel.  OK, here’s a list:

If you enjoy love stories, try these:

A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

Rivited, by Meljean Brook

The Best of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord

If you like spaceships and lasers, and politics on far-flung planets, try:

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

Dune, by Frank Herbert

If you like to laugh:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

If you like to think deep thoughts and be intellectually and emotionally challenged, try these:

The Sparrow, by Maria Doria Russell

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

OK, that should keep us all busy until next month!  What are your favorite science fiction books?

by

Library Quotes from Science Fiction and Fantasy

It’s library week here at Geek Girl In Love, and here’s ten quotes about libraries in science fiction and fantasy.  I meant to make this a list of quotes by fictional characters, but the authors had such great things to say in their own voices that I let them have a say, too.

1. “She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”

– Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

2. “I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a

Ray Bradbury and cat

Ray Bradbury

six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.”

– Ray Bradbury

3. “Rule number one: Don’t fuck with librarians.”

–Neil Gaiman

4. “Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.”

book cover

Among Others

–Jo Walton, Among Others

5. “I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.”

–Patrick Ness

6. “…bookstores, libraries… they’re the closest thing I have to a church.”

–Jim C. Hines, Libriomancer

7. “We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library”

–Carl Sagan

8. “Once again I’m banished to the demon section of the card catalog.”

Willow and giles

“If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um… smelly.”

– Willow, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

9. “The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned by no later than the date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”

– Terry Pratchett, Guards, Guards

10.  And the most Badassas of them all:

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,

Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.

Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted.

Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy,

Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution.

Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not.

When at last he goeth to his final punishment,

Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

― Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

Soooo…okay then.  I guess I better go turn in that overdue book that I just found under the couch.  Thanks to Good Reads for the quotes!