S is for Space, B is for Bradbury, W is for Writing

Let’s wrap the Valentina thread I started on Thursday with this image taken from Guido Crepax’s Valentina e la Lanterna Magica (Valentina and the Magic Lantern) book.

The latter features erotic visionary tales with some sci-fi connections (please refer to that previous post and also see the last two images that accompany it to read more about Crepax's connections with sci-fi and fantasy) and quite a few illustrations with a cinematic flavour like this one.

While this illustration seems to be the perfect way to close the Crepax thread, I'm also going to use it to pay homage to American sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, who died this week at 91.

Born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury moved with his family to Los Angeles in the ‘30s. He started writing when he was very young, becoming a member of the LA Science Fiction Society. He turned into a full-time writer from 1943, contributing to many mid-‘40s crime and science-fiction pulps.

He also started selling short stories to popular magazines such as Mademoiselle, Maclean's, Seventeen, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Harper's (which makes you wonder why the pages of contemporary magazines are full of vapid adverts rather than featuring fantastically funny and whimsical stories by new and exciting writers…)

Bradbury published his collection The Martian Chronicles in 1950 and his famous dystopic book-burning tale Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 (turned into a film by François Truffaut in 1966).

Throughout his career, he also wrote children's books, plays, screenplays and poetry. Though his work wasn’t too successful after the ‘60s, he continued to be loved by his fans.

A furious writer, Bradbury left memorable quotes about the art of writing and dreaming. One of the best quotes (and my favourite one) states: "If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories – science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."

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