Cats good. Internets NOT.
Oh, Ray Bradbury. You have not mellowed with age. He had these choice remarks at a recent event marking his 90th birthday:
Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama, but it's not about the economy, the war or the plan to a construct a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.
“He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week's worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events. “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."
The man who wrote "Fahrenheit 451," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Martian Chronicles," "Dandelion Wine"and "The Illustrated Man" has been called one of America's great dreamers, but his imagination takes him to some dark places when it comes to contemporary politics. “I think our country is in need of a revolution."
“There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people and for the people.”
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“We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”
Bradbury wrote darkly about bookburning in "Fahrenheit 451," but he sounds ready to use a Kindle for kindling. “I was approached three times during the last year by Internet companies wanting to put my books" on an electronic reading device, he said. "I said to Yahoo, 'Prick up your ears and go to hell.' "
Yeah. Mr. Bradbury manages the amazing feat of encouraging political revolution because of a lack of a grand technological project which will make us immortal space gods, then tuns around and gives full throttle to the Luddite demons that have possessed him since way back when.
Is this hilarious? Yes. I can't help but being a little sad as well. Once upon a time, Bradbury was the ferociously cynical (yet humanistic) voice of a better sci-fi. He played a major role in igniting the medium's Deviant Age (also its Golden one, for my money) and his stories remain justly famed.
He's always been prickly, to put it kindly, but part of me always hoped that at some point he'd get past his prejudices and find some shred of the voice he once possessed in such abundance. We could certainly use it.
Nah. Chuck the machines, chuck the internet(s). The only majesty's in rocket ships. And we need to shoot the too-much-government motherfuckers who aren't getting us to Mars. STAT. Really, Mr. Bradbury?
On the other hand, perhaps he saw this:
Yes, take a moment. Then watch that again. Comedian Rachel Bloom hits one out of the park. "Fuck me, Ray Bradbury" is deliciously filthy and perfectly timed (see how she intones "you're a prolific author, Ray Bradbury"). It's unrepentant fun and, in its own strange way, a tribute to the wonder that the best of his works possessed while managing a catchy tribute to the kink side of geekdom.
Meet the future, Ray. It loves you anyway.
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