Ray Bradbury gets a Special Citation Pulitzer

[Heradel]

Announced today at 3 pm EST, the following from the Pulitzer website (which puts everything in frames, and thus makes a direct link a little crippled)

SPECIAL AWARD   
A special citation to Ray Bradbury for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.
and
A posthumous special citation to composer John Coltrane for his masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.

[Simon Painter]

wonderfull!  I've always loved Ray Bradbury, he pretty much ranks as one of my all-time favorite fiction writers of all time.  Especially his stort stories.  Man, very few people in the world can even compare to Bradbury when it comes to short pieces.

Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK

[jahnke]

Every year about this time I dig out my dogeared copy of Dandelion Wine and open the windows and lie on the sofa long after midnight and read it. The weather is going from spring to summer here in Illinois and the smell of fresh cut grass and dew and the quiet sounds of the city sleeping just transports me back to my own childhood when I thought sneakers could be magic, and that ole Loveless was lurking in every dark alley. This book made me talk to my grandfather about his life and I learned that he once worked on the ships that moved coal though the great lakes, and later helped convert steam locomotives to diesel electric. And my grandmother told me that the house they lived in Sturgeon Bay was so cold that by the time she got dinner off the stove and onto the table in winter it near frozen. Also that the guy who invented a huge machine to get coal into the boats from the rail cars using the weight of the rail cars got a nickel a car.

I will miss Ray when he is gone, the two latest novels of his Death is a Lonely Business, and Let's All Kill Constance were fantastic. Makes me want to move back to So Cal. He is the master of short fiction. I don't think I have ever read anyone who does it better, his are so dense I can read them again and again and find something new in them. He bridged me into Science Fiction, I still enjoy short stories and subscribe to a number of pulp SF Magazines because I love the form (which attracted me to Escape Pod.) I am happy to hear each year Ray has not died and is still writing. It will be a sadder place for me when he does finally go. However, I still have Dandelion Wine and I will be found every summer in the family room long after midnight reading about the adventures of Doug and Tom Spaulding. I think if I ever were forced to become a book Dandelion Wine would be the one I would become.

[DKT]

I loved Death is a Lonely Business.  I need to read Let's All Kill Constance still.

Did you read "From the Dust Returned?"  It's a novel, kind of, that ties a lot of his horror short stories (including Homecoming) together.  Reading the introduction makes it seem like it's been something he'd spent his lifetime trying to work on.  And it really is a lot of fun. 

[jahnke]

I had not read "From the Dust Returned" I will put it on my list. A lot of his "novels" really were stitched together short stories. As I look at WEB 2.0 and how folks are stitching together companies the parallels lead me to think of his novels. The neat thing, for me, about the two Chumley and Ray stories ("Death is a Lonely Business" and "Let's all Kill Constance") was they stood on their own as novels much better. Although what I found amusing was that the events in both books foreshadowed stories we know the author Ray Bradbury will write at a later time. They were very self referential books showing a master at his craft.

Having said that I have always had a special place for the Elliot's, so I will get "From the Dust Returned" perhaps I will save it for crisp autumn evening in the back yard with the smells burning leaves and fire pits, a little apple cider will fit in nicely as well. Perhaps I will dig out even older copy of "The Halloween Tree" and give that a read as well. I just noticed this evening that Dandelion Wine has a sequel that just came out "Forever Summer." Looks like I will have something to do when I am done with Dandelion Wine this year. I wonder what emotions it will stir in 20 years?