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YMMV / Ray Bradbury

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  • Death of the Author: Everyone knows how Fahrenheit 451 is about the dangers of government censorship... except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of Anti-Intellectualism.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The notion of unmanned helicopter drones collecting people off the streets in "The Pedestrians" seems less far-fetched after the COVID-19 outbreaks had police using drones to call out unmasked pedestrians in various cities.
  • Heartwarming Moments: In 'Homecoming', Timothy is mocked by his family for being the only human, and in attempt to greet the relatives, he is conned into doing a trick that his sister Cecy actually did to greet the family for the reunion, thus having everyone laugh at him and leaving him humiliated all the more, but the story fortunately does not end on dark terms. It is assured to him despite this, his family still utmost loves him. His relatives do applaud him when he wins the coffin game (much like musical chairs), his sister does make up for it (as she helps him greet his relatives farewell), and they do greet him goodbye when they leave, his uncle reassures him to treasure his mortality, and his mother says it the best at the end, "She came to touch her hand on his face. "Son," she said, "We love you. Remember that. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day." She kissed his cheek. "And if and when you die, your bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that. You'll lie at ease forever, and I'll come visit every Allhallows Eve and tuck you in the more secure."
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Bradbury depicted Venus as being more or less like Earth except the climate consisted entirely of endless precipitation, with stories like "The Long Rain" in which a group of astronauts stranded on are picked off one by one while going insane and longing for the warmth of one of many "Sun-Domes". We now know that Venus is... well... quite the opposite. Now we know that Venus has a thick (insanely toxic) atmosphere that has such a greenhouse effect as to make it the hottest planet in the solar system - and any astronaut trying to land on its surface would be incinerated pretty quickly, had they not been crushed to a pulp by Venus' atmospheric pressure which is almost 100x greater than that of Earth.
  • Shocking Moments: Witness a master of the trope. Bradbury can effortlessly pull the rug out from under a reader with a single Wham Line. A nostalgic story about childhood will suddenly veer into Cosmic Horror, a high fantasy story ends in a Science Fiction reveal, a Day in the Life story suddenly becomes a Murderer P.O.V. story.
  • Tear Jerker: Few writers can make your heart utterly wrench like Ray Bradbury.
    • The Lake...a little boy remembers his lost playmate Tally, who drowned in Michigan Lake, her body never recovered. In her memory, he makes a sandcastle, like they used to do together, leaving it unfinished. He grows up, marries a nice girl named Margaret and returns to the lake for their honeymoon...only to see footsteps leading from the lake and back into it. To the unfinished sandcastle now completed, and Tally's body has been recovered. As he proclaims his undying, eternal love for the girl he lost long ago, the story ends with him walking back up the beach "where a strange woman named Margaret was now waiting for me."
    • The Rocket Man: An astronaut caught between home and space seeks to finally end his profession after his realization of the damage it's done to his family. His wife, to cope with the pain of having him away so much, thinks of him as 'dead.' Knowing of the pain, he says he tried "so damn hard" to stay each time he's returned, but failed to resist the call of space. On his last mission, of course, he dies by crashing into the sun. Remembering him each time the sun is out, the wife and son cope by sleeping during the day and only going out at night or when it's raining. Even worse, when the news of the father's death comes, the mother's response? "Don't tell me anything I don't already know."
    • Homecoming will tug at the heart of anyone who's ever felt out of place in their family, featuring a boy named Timothy who's the sole human in a family of monsters desperately trying to fit in. His sister Cecy uses her magic to make him act like he does...only to reveal she was the one behind it, humiliating Timmy all the more, though she does make up for it and he comes to forgive her. Timmy's uncle Einar instructs him to treasure his mortality as "life is best to those who live the least of it. It's worth more per ounce." As he comes to grips with the notion of his own mortality, his mother cautions that no matter what, she will always, always, always love him. And even if he dies, she will "come visit you every Allhallows Eve and tuck you in." Sad and sweet at the same time.
    • The Fog Horn will have you feeling sorry for an ancient sea beast. Two men are working at a lighthouse who's foghorn attracts a sea monster, as the foghorn sounds just like the monster and makes it think it's found another of it's kind. The men shut off the foghorn and the monster angrily destroys the lighthouse and leaves. The lighthouse is rebuilt and years later, one of the men asks the other is the monster ever came back. He says it didn't and that the monster has gone back to waiting.
    • There Will Come Soft Rains blends this with Nightmare Fuel in its description of a "smart house" diligently but ineffectively carrying on After the End. The reveal is subtle, only showing the house to be empty at first but eventually we discover that all the humans in the house were incinerated in a recent nuclear attack: their silhouettes are preserved on the blackened outer wall of the house, where they were outside playing or doing chores when the bomb dropped. The only shown survivor of the war is a stray dog ravaged by radiation sickness and starvation, who desperately tries to find a caring human in the house but ultimately gives up and dies in the parlor after the house starts making food which it refuses to provide to the dog. Eventually an electric fire breaks out due to a falling tree branch spilling cleaning solvent on the stove, and most of the house burns down, with just enough mainframe left to attempt to continue to maintain the single remaining wall of the house just as before.

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