Ray Bradbury Listens to Mr. Electrico and Decides to Live Forever.

Is this is a harsh title to write once a man has died? I don’t think so. 

Apparently, Bradbury, who passed away today, June 6, 2012, at 91 years of age, liked to tell a story, one that inspired him.

In 1932, a young Mr. Bradbury was at a carnival show when the magician, Mr. Electrico, ended the show by reaching out and touching a boy with a sword and admonished him to “live forever.”

According to Mr. Bradbury, this was the greatest idea he had ever heard and from then on he wrote every day Now, after a writing career that has spanned over 70 years, he has put his pen down.

I don’t think I have many funny witticisms about Bradbury, any anecdotes that I can tell to lighten the mood, really. I think, at least in my mind, that I never really imagined a world without Bradbury.

I have trouble considering a universe where I don’t envision him at some table musing about or typing up a universe elsewhere, a timeline we don’t know, or maybe we could have been. I think I gave him an immortality in my head, arrogantly assuming he would always be there.

But, he will always be there.

His thoughts, his answers, are all here. They’re in his books, they’re in his interviews,in films,  in libraries, bookstores, on the Internet and even on banned book lists.

Mr. Bradbury, at the behest of a two-bit carnival man, has found a way to live forever.

My hat is off to you.