Ray Bradbury World's Greatest Science Fiction Author?

[Dave]

You are really discussing, "What is science fiction?" here. That is a question I've seen people try to answer time and time again, and still never adequately answered. I think we can agree that he is an excellent author. As a child I used to read young adult science fiction, but it was a teacher at school who got me to read Ray Bradbury and so to begin to read more widely within the genre. People who write blurbs on books don't necessarily know what they are talking about. Unless I'm mistaken, Ray Bradbury himself once told a reporter that he had only ever written one science fiction book. I have always assumed that the book he meant was Fahrenheit 451. It is still a great book but I've already spoken about it in other threads here.

 

[paranoid marvin]

To be honest I'm not sure why he would not class travel to Mars and meeting Martians as science fiction?

 

[Bick]

To be honest I'm not sure why he would not class travel to Mars and meeting Martians as science fiction?

Because its fantasy. The atmosphere is not breathable, and there are no martians.

 

[Bick]

For what its worth, I enjoy Bradbury, and agree he's a good author, especially of short stories. He's not the "best science fiction writer" for me though. He wrote a fair amount of future-based fantasy stories (Martian Chronicles), but also some memorable sci-fi (Sound of Thunder, The Veldt, etc). While these were very good, there have probably been better exponents of the form overall, I think.

Purely personal opinion, but I rate Ballard as a better short story writer (of speculative/fantasy fiction), and probably also Simak and Asimov.

 

[Lafayette]

I prefer to consider RB as a sci-fi rather than a fantasy writer. I guess his work falls more into the former as there is more science than there is magic or dragons etc (which I know is a generalisation). There is of course the Ray Bradbury Theatre for anyone interested in a tv show.

Yes the original tv version of Faranheit is the best (and ironically is more appropriate than the novel!). Another is The Martian Chronicles, which was a tv series which is more than a little bizarre (Mars has blue sky and clouds!). I agree that RB is more about the people than the science - but then again so are many sci-fi authors.

Yeah, but do the publishers claim that they are: "The World's Greatest Science Fiction Author"?

 

[Al Jackson]

I went to Westercon 18 in 1965 and Ray Bradbury read about the first 20 or so pages from his 178 page screenplay for MGM and Robert Mulligan and Alan J. Pakula Productions for The Martian Chronicles. It was a unified story , sounded good to me. The movie never got made. I guess that Bradbury script is around somewhere?

 

[hitmouse]

He is a pretty good writer. The Silver Locusts made a huge and lasting impression on me. Something Wicked is great horror. I really like some of his SS, though others are a bit sentimental for my taste.
However, trying to decide whether anyone is "the greatest" is rather meaningless in this context imho.