Ray Bradbury, Speculative Fiction Writer Extraordinaire By Rolf Auer; June 16, 2012 Ray Bradburythe extremely prolific,

gifted speculative fiction short story writerpassed away recently. Throughout his life, he wrote hundreds of poignant stories, often surprising for their astonishingly high content of pathos. The focus of this short article, which unfortunately cannot do him justice in properly appraising his work, will be only on three stories of his: A Sound Of Thunder, The Long Rain, and All Summer In A Day. A Sound of Thunder was published in 1952 as part of the collection The Golden Apples Of The Sun. Its synopsis is that humans develop time travel, and use this as a business enterprise to take big game hunters into the distant past to kill dinosaurs (ones chosen to be killed minutes before they would have died anyway), particularly one of the fiercest, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. On this, the last such trip supposedly ever taken, a rank amateur hunter travels into the far past, and fails to hit his target. Terrified by the gigantic beast with six-inch long teeth charging him at 60 mph, he stumbles off a special pathway constructed by the time travel company intended to prevent humans from interfering with the past, and steps on a butterfly. The cumulative ripple effects of the missing butterfly 60 million years ago result in a different future back when the trip first started. Instead of as in the previous present, when a progressive leader was elected to govern the country, the new present has a de facto dictator elected in his place. The overarching themes of humans disrespect for nature and the environmentand the consequences thereofare inescapable (much like a human trying to outrun a T-Rex). Implied is that the butterfly, a quintessence of natures beauty, perhaps symbolizes something like the arts and/or culture. Therefore, the outcome of the butterflys death in the past underscores that the arts and/or culture have the positive effect of emphasizing humanity when present, as opposed having a negative effect when missing, which Bradbury highlighted by writing the thus altered future as a resultant less compassionate society. Artists have a special role in social movementsthey lend passion, poetry, humour to the principles any movement espouses. They enhance the power of a social movement, which needs every additional strength it can muster to challenge the power of authorities. (italics added) Howard Zinn (American historian, author, social justice activist), interview, Z Magazine, February 2007 It is not difficult to imagine that if artists, poets, etc. are missing essential sources of inspiration such as natural beauty, they would, to say the least, find it more difficult to create, and thus be

less able to lend strength to social movements. The implication is that the 60-million-year cumulative effect of the missing butterfly results in severely diminished mass artistic imagination, and therefore also in diminished social justice activities by artists. Hence the electionby a humanitarian blanked populationof a dictator, because they are sorely lacking the efficacies of the humanities: ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts such as music and theatre. The humanities that are also regarded as social sciences include history, anthropology, demographics studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics. Upon realizing that by disobeying the company rules, therefore the hapless hunter has transformed the future into a soulless, technocratic nightmare, the time travelling company head shoots him deadthe predictable action one might expect from an inhabitant of a society where sentimental emotions such as love, compassion, empathy, sympathy, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, and so on have been diminished or completely eliminated due to a heartfelt lack of the arts and/or culture. In my opinion, the parallels between this story and Canada at present with the Conservatives increasing emphasis on technology, sciences, and business management while more and more shortchanging the humanities in postsecondary institutions are inescapable. The second story is titled The Long Rain and is from the collection called The Illustrated Man, and was published in 1950. Rain, rain, and more rain. Thats what happens throughout nearly all the story. A small group of military men trudge endlessly through thick, verdant jungle for an interminable amount of time while torrential downpours deluge them nonstop. There are no refuges to take cover in, save for the illusory sun dome, which, if found, promises dry shelter and a miniature sun at its centre, giving heat and warmth. Undoubtedly, there are numerous ways to interpret the meaning of the unending rain: the word itself may hold a clue: rain, reign. To me, the obvious choice for the reign of what? is war. The way one of the men dies is practically a metaphor for shell shockit is in all but name the 1,000 yard stare. (I wont describe what happened: that would be a spoiler; however, you will recognize the incident when you read about it.) The reaction of the lone survivor upon finding a sun dome, and their inability to cope with the reality of it reminds me of Stockholm syndrome; that is, having undergone the traumatic experience of the rain (war), the survivor now can only think in terms of this and cannot comprehend the purpose of a sun dome (peace). In Gestalt perception, the vases/figures image can simultaneously be seen in two different ways. A theme of environmentalism is at least in the storys Gestalt background. It could even be

providing antagonist conflict. The war-torn world we live in might be the storys Gestalt foreground. As in Gestalt perception, these might be interchangeable. The third and last story being considered in this article is titled All Summer In A Day. It was published in 1954, and can be found in the collection, The Stories of Ray Bradbury. This is a highly charged, emotional story. It is a story about discrimination. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes when I read it. I have rarely read a story so expertly crafted as this, meant to deliberately tug hard on ones heartstrings, intending to strongly impart a lesson. The lesson about the hurt one suffers when one experiences discrimination is so powerful, its as if one actually experiences it; this is good, because it is in ways such as this, that we vividly learn why we should avoid pitfalls such as discrimination at all costs. Ray Bradbury was so obviously a brilliant writer that mere words alone cannot express sufficient accolades as compensation for the enormous number of positive influences he exerted on many young impressionable imaginations. Perhaps summarizing his writing talents would go something like this: As light always follows darkness, Ray Bradbury was able to turn frowns into smiles, sadness into joy, melancholy into laughter. Had he lived long enough, he finally would have been able to beat all of the swords into ploughshares!