FROM THE ARCHIVES: What do you do when it’s late Sunday night and you still haven’t written anything new and interesting for Monday morning? You look back and see what you were writing 10 years ago … This was my post for Feb. 10, 2016.
I’ve written in the past about how I fell in love with Ray Bradbury’s prose from the first paragraph in the first story in the first book I ever read by my favorite author:
“There was this fence where we pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go …”
Ever since reading those words, I have picked up a Bradbury book whenever I forget who I am or where I came from but dream of who I might be and where I might go.
It’s been a while since I read beyond that magical opening paragraph and finished the rest of the story, a 1943 Bradbury short story called “R is for Rocket” that leads off a collection of 17 Bradbury stories named R is for Rocket.
Sunday morning, ready to remember who I am and where I came from and dreaming of who I might be and where I might go, I read the rest of the story again.
And what a story it is. Oh, well, it has its flaws: Like many early science fiction stories, it leans a little too much on talking about future technology (”It was hardly 7 a.m. and there was still a lot of fog roaming in off the Atlantic, and only now were the weather-control vibrators at each corner starting to hum and shoot out rays to get rid of the stuff; I heard them moaning soft and nice”).
But it’s also a sweet coming-of-age story about a boy of 15 who is invited to take a step into adulthood and fulfill his dreams of who he might be and where he might go.
Bradbury was a storyteller without peer, whether he was writing about rocketships or boyhood or dinosaurs or book burners or Martians or butterfly effects. “R is for Rocket” was, for me, the perfect introduction to all of it. He hooked my 12- or 13-year-old mind with the spaceships and brought me along as he celebrated being a kid and growing up and a terrific mom and the adventure of exploring the universe all in one 15-page story.
If you haven’t encountered Ray Bradbury’s work yet, “R is for Rocket” is a pretty good place to start. And if you’re an unabashed fan like me, it’s a great one to revisit.
“And, walking, I went beyond the fence.”
