Ray Bradbury In Memoriam

The news is breaking that Ray Bradbury passed away this morning. It is poignant that Bradbury had a short article published in The New Yorker just days before his death today, June 6th, 2012, at the age of 91, which bore the title “Take Me Home.” The article is about the inspiration for one of my favorite Bradbury stories, “The Fire Balloons,” which appeared in some editions of The Illustrated Man and of The Martian Chronicles. It explores the intersection of religion and science fiction, as a priest from Earth seeks to evangelize alien entities on Mars, only to discover that he has things to learn from them.