Ray Bradbury, SciFi Icon, has passed

I had the good fortune of meeting Ray Bradbury briefly at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years ago. He ventured out into the mass of convention goers in his wheelchair, saying hi to everyone. He seemed to enjoy the crowd. This was a crowd he influenced and inspired through many long years with books and ideas, short stories and articles. In this time of ‘new media’, the people at Comic-Con, with their reverence for pen-and-ink drawings and first issue collections, must have been pleasing for the author of Fahrenheit 451. No one at the show would consider book burning a good thing even though they have their television, movies, podcasts and twitter to distract them from reading books. In fact, from what I’ve seen, these modern day essentials draw people to read more, to uncover the story behind shows like The Game of Thrones, the Avengers, and John Carter, and the books in turn spawn new movies, twitter conversations and blog posts. Even though one of the icons of science fiction and fantasy has passed on, his influence on old and new media remains. I just hope we never have to see a future where we need to find out what temperature causes a Kindle to burn. Rest in Peace Ray Bradbury.