Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chroniclesand Fahrenheit 451, died Tuesday. He was 91. Bradbury was known for his futuristic tales — but he never used a computer, or even drove a car.
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn’t imagine the future, and his active imagination made him stand out. He once told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.
“As soon as I looked up, there it was, and it was horrible,” Bradbury remembers. “And I would scream and fall back down the stairs, and my mother and father would get up and sigh and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, here we go again.’ “
Bradbury dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells captivated Bradbury — and made him dream of becoming a great author. So he started writing, churning out a short story every week during his teens. After his family moved to Southern California, he would escape to the basement of the UCLA library. There, he’d focus on his craft.
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Bill talks with and invites readings by renowned poet, novelist, and editor Philip Appleman, whose creativity spans a long life filled with verse, fiction, philosophy, and religion. The author of nine books of poetry, three novels, and six volumes of non-fiction, Appleman’s most acclaimed work includes explorations of the life and theories of Charles Darwin. A scholar of Darwin, Appleman edited the critical anthology Darwin, and wrote the poetry books Darwin’s Ark and Darwin’s Bestiary, earning him praise for illuminating the “overwhelming sanity” of Darwin’s thought with clarity and wit. Appleman’s latest poetry collection is Perfidious Proverbs.
Always Question Authority 