Ray Bradbury (1920)

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, near Lake Michigan. In his childhood he was fond of reading. The books by Jules Verne and Edgar Poe were to his special liking. His fate was determined at 17, when he became a member of the local science fiction club. This club issued its own magazine “Imagination”. Bradbury’s first short-story was published in that very magazine in 1938 (“Hollerbochen’s Dilemma”). All basic themes of his future works appeared in this story, they were: the power of human reason, the victory over time, the problem of death, and the necessity of moral choice.

The success found the writer in 1943-1944. The American readers liked his stories, where the main hero was a child with his childish attitude towards the world. But Ray Bradbury became really famous only after the publication of his science fiction books “The Martian Chronicles” (1950), “The Illustrated Man” (1951) and “Fahrenheit 451°” (1953).

Ray Bradbury is often related to writers of science fiction. He is unquestionably the one, but also a subtle artist and social philosopher. The prediction of further achievements in science is not his field. Bradbury is mainly concerned with the changes occurring in man’s spiritual life under the influence of science and engineering. His manner of narration is deliberate; realistic and fantastic elements are intermingled to such a degree that they become inseparable.

Bradbury is both an optimist and a pessimist. He is alarmed by mechanization, being able to see its unfortunate consequences and at the same time he has belief in man’s ability to make a reasonable use of machines. What he appreciates about people most of all is truthfulness, kindness, moral purity and sincerity.

Bradbury is not only a kind-hearted story-teller. He is very critical about the contemporary American society and comes to the most merciless conclusions. His novels “Dandelion Wine” (1957), “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (1962), and the collections of short-stories “The October Country” (1955) and “A Medicine for Melancholy” (1959), are widely known.

His education stopped at the school level. Books became his “universities”. He himself used to say that Jules Verne was his father, Mary Shelley was his mother, Herbert Wells was his wise uncle and Edgar Poe was his cousin.

“Fahrenheit 451°” (1953) is a fantasy narration about a dreadful future awaiting the civilization. The book is built on a paradox: it is generally accepted that a fireman’s duty is to prevent fires; here it goes the other way round – firemen stoke the fires up and keep them going. They burn books as in the future society described in the novel neither literature nor art is of any value. The cult of personal enrichment dominates it.

(451° – the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns).

LECTURE XVI

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana in a family of a prosperous architect. The Vonneguts, a family of German descent, held beliefs of pacifism and atheism – beliefs that figure prominently in Vonnegut’s works.

Educated in Indianapolis, his journalistic endeavors began as a reporter for his high-school newspaper and continued after he entered Cornell University in 1940 as chemistry major, writing for the student newspaper.

The bombing of Perl Harbor in the December of 1941 changed Vonnegut’s life. Despite his feelings for pacifism, he volunteered for military service. He was trained to operate a 240-millimeter howitzer, but because he had some university academic credit, and because he had been in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, the army sent him back to college at Carnegie Tech as part of the Army Specialized Training Program.

During the World War II he was a prisoner in Germany and was present at bombing of Dresden, an experience which he recounted in his novel “Slaughterhouse Five” (1965) which was made into a film.

Unlike many writers, Vonnegut received technical education. Rather than studying literature, he studied biochemistry and then anthropology. He studied at the universities of Chicago and Tennessee, and later began to write short-stories for magazines.

His other books include “Player Piano” (1960), “The Sirens of Titan” (1961), “Cat’s Cradle” (1963), “God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater” (1965), “Welcome to the Monkey House” (1968) and “Breakfast of Champions” (1973) and “Deadeye Dick” (1982).

He used to live in the USA, at Cape Code, in an old-fashioned mansion together with his wife and six children. He devoted all his time to writing.

Kurt Vonnegut is often related to the literary trend of “black humorists”, but sometimes he is defined as a science fiction writer. While Vonnegut was once identified as a science-fiction writer, he is recognized chiefly for his social satire. His work often combines technology and ideas of the future with an understanding of human nature and experience. He is idol of not only teenagers, but of grown-ups as well. His style is light, but his humour is deceptive.

Vonnegut does not think that life is absurd in its essence; he thinks that the way of life of our modern society is absurd. His works are ciphered.

Vonnegut calls upon the readers to pay attention to the vices of our society. But his satire causes hope, not despair in us. The writer proves that we are able to change the world for the better.

Kurt Vonnegut is often called a cosmic jester.

Some of Kurt Vonnegut’s critics have called him a skeptic, a pessimist, a fatalist, a malcontent – everything from a cynic to a worrywart – for his seemingly depressive view of civilization. Others have more accurately described him as a cultural scientist, a prophetic environmentalist offering humankind a glimmer of hope. Throughout much of Vonnegut’s writing, one theme resounds again and again: Like the toll of a funeral bell, he warns civilization that time on Earth is running out. In a number of his lectures and autobiographical works, he counsels that one day soon, we will all go “belly-up like guppies in a neglected fishbowl”. Suggesting an epitaph for our planet, he offers, “We could have saved it, but we were too darn cheap and lazy”.

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