Ray Bradbury was a master story-teller with a boundless, magical imagination. I especially love his poetic style of description. One of my favorite quotes that struck me by its simple and lovely imagery is from a favorite book, The Halloween Tree, "Suddenly the day is gone, and night came out from under each tree and spread." I loved that line the first moment I read it.
Long before tattos were commonplace and still gawk-worthy, there was the trippy movie, "The Illustrated Man" based on a collection of Ray Bradbury stories. When I saw this movie as a kid, I was totally creeped out by the naked guy covered in tattos.
" . . . for he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulders, back, sides, and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter." - excerpt from The Illustrated Man.
"I want to be buried on Mars. I don't want to be the first live person to arrive there. It'll be too late. But I want to be the first dead person that gets there. I want to arrive in a Campbell's soup can. Bury me on Mars in [the] thing called the Bradbury Abyss. They gotta name a place on Mars for me, and I will welcome that." ~ Ray Bradbury
I hope he gets his wish.
