I loved Ray Bradbury when I was growing up. I went through a phase somewhere around age 10 or 11 where I read everything of his that I could lay my hands on. Several of his stories still stick with me. One in particular, I think it was in The Martian Chronicles, about an automated house that went through its daily checklist but the people who had lived there had been dead for ages. It was rather haunting.
It's been a while, Terry, but isn't 'Fahrenheit 451' about a world in which paper books went the way of the dodo bird (and became illegal), and the whole world plugged themselves into vid screens and ipod like players and rarily communicated face to face and person to person?
It's been forever since I read it, but what I recall is that books were banned (in a 'knowledge is power' kind of way). Any books that were found (and there was a group dedicated to ferreting them out), were consigned to a bonfire. The protagonist was a "fireman" whose job it was to destroy the books. Only he starts reading them instead (and thinking for himself).
Thanks to Meadowrose and Artemis for sharing memories about him. My already considerable opinion of him has increased to know that he was so humble and nice.
