Ray Bradbury

[Imaginary Interviewer] Another month and another new author for us. This January, we'll be reading 'The Illustrated Man' by Ray Bradbury. Have you read it before?

[Humble Writer, i.e. me] I haven't. I've read some other Bradbury but not this one.

II: What else have you read?

HW: His most famous novel is 'Fahrenheit 451' and I've read that several times. I don't think I've read any of this other works. He shows up multiple times on our list, though, so we'll cover a number of his works.

II: What else is on there? 

HW: Well, 'Fahrenheit 451' is there, #7 on the list. There is also 'The Martian Chronicles' and 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. I don't really know much about any of them.

II: Science Fiction or Fantasy writer?

HW: I don't know that he really bothered with that distinction. In what little I've read, he didn't concern himself with scientific fact but he also didn't include magical things. He seemed much more interested in setting up a specific setting or situation, so that he could tell a story about a specific problem. As a reader, I wouldn't spend too much time on questions of realism.

II: What do you mean?

HW: Well, if you concentrate on something like "that's not how conditions on Mars would be!" then you miss out on the point of the story. As a reader, we often have to meet the author midway and accept *something* for the story to work. That's true of Bradbury.

II: Was he well regarded?

HW: Enormously so. Possibly more so than the Big Three of science fiction, because he largely broke away to a larger audience. 'Fahrenheit 451' is universally thought of as one of the best works of American literature. 

II: Anything else we should know?

HW: I feel a little badly that I don't know much about him. If anyone else has something to share here, it would be most welcome!

Isaac Asmiov

 The book for December is Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot'. What should we know about Asimov?

He was born in 1920 in the Soviet Union. His family emigrated to the United States a few years later and ran a series of candy shops. He credits the newspapers and magazines that were sold there for his lifelong love of reading and learning. He started writing in 1939. Short stories at first, and later full length novels. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, publishing literally hundreds of books. 

Mostly science fiction?

He's most well known for his science fiction, but he wrote a ton of non-fiction books as well. I've got his guide to Shakespeare, and it is an incredible resource of the history of the plays, as well as the terms and situations that happen in the writing.

But, he's well known for the science fiction?

Extremely. Asimov is one of the Big Three of science fiction, the other two being Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein. The three of them dominated science fiction sales in the 40s and 50s. Asimov's two most famous series are the Robot stories and the Foundation Series (which we'll eventually get to.)

Are they good?

They're both very good. The Foundation Trilogy is ranked 8th on NPR's list. 'I, Robot' is ranked 16th. Each of them is a collection of short stories that Asimov wrote over a period of time. The Robot stories are shorter than the Foundation ones. Almost all of them are plotted as solving a mystery of some sort. I personally prefer the Foundation stories, but it's not a strong preference.

Is there anything we should know about 'I, Robot'?

This is where Asimov created his famous Three Rules of Robotics. These control how robots operate around humans and each other. The stories usually involve some difficulty in how the robots interpret these rules. It's fun for the reader to try and outguess the author. My record of doing so is very poor. Asimov is much, much smarter than I am.

What else should we know?

Asimov's novel, 'Caves of Steel' belong to his Robot stories. This is number 94 on the list, so we'll get to it eventually.