Ray Bradbury wrote modern myths, not science fiction – Telegraph Blogs

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Guy Stagg


Ray Bradbury wrote modern myths, not science fiction

Ray Bradbury's 'Farenheit 451' turned a burning book into a dystopian vision


Ray Bradbury, author of Farenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, has died aged 91. Bradbury was one of the only science fiction writers who appealed to people who never read science fiction. Most of us avoid books about space and aliens, assuming that because Star Trek was dull, the whole genre is a dud. Bradbury managed to transcend this, because he wasn’t writing fairy tales for astrophysicists, but myths for modern society.

Interestingly, Bradbury was not that popular among science fiction fans. He was not geeky enough. Bradbury's books lack the scientific rigour of writers such as Arthur C Clarke or Larry Niven. Instead he wrote short stories about incompletely imagined worlds, with impressionistic sketches of life on Mars, or fractured warnings about advanced technology. Bradbury argued that he actually wrote fantasy: "Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen".

His books were not trying to predict the future. Instead they are timeless. In this way he is closest to Isaac Asimoc. Asimov's Foundation series was a "future history", describing the decline and fall of a space empire like an intergalactic Edward Gibbon. Asimov does not seem that interested in what we will be wearing a few millenia from now. Instead he explores how societies fall apart, and how learning can be lost.

Historical fiction is exciting because of the similarities, not the differences. If you were only interested in the eating habits of Roman senators, or the rituals of Medieval monks, then you could read a history book. What is compelling is characters from the past thinking and feeling like we do today.

The same is true of science fiction. Farenheit 451, Bradbury's most famous book, is not about the future, but about his contemporary society living in fear of the Cold War. The future it imagines is not fantastical, buit unerringly familliar. Like the all the great dystopias, Brasbury does not create a nightmare vision of a distant tomorrow, but the kind of world we glimpse in the shadows of everyday life.

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