Sci-fi September: Science Fiction Influences (Part III)
The narrator of the book meets a tattooed man at travelling carnival. Each tattoo, when stared at, tells a different tale.
This was the first science fiction book that I remember reading on my own. It has been a long time since I have read it, so give me a moment to refresh my memory of the short stories.
[sounds of flipping pages]
Interesting. A few do ring a bell. One story, Kaleidoscope, ends with an astronaut burning up in Earth’s atmosphere after having to abandon the spaceship he was in. What’s more interesting is that in my short story collection, one of my stories ends in a much similar way, but when I wrote it, I wasn’t remembering Bradbury’s story.
Another familiar story was about living on Venus which he described as a damp rainforest where people lived in domed cities. The constant rain outside was so relentless that it could drive a person insane.
I think that unconsciously I wrote a collection of stories that mimicked one of my favorite books. In the following years I read more of Bradbury’s books, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked this Way Comes, and The Martian Chronicles to name the obvious.
“People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it.”
– Ray Bradbury (1982)
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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