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When life is over, it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the
screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an
instant on space, and before you could cry out, "There was a happy day, there a
bad one, there an evil face, there a good one," the film burned to a cinder, the
screen went dark.
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Ray Bradbury was a boy during the Great Depression, and he was a boy when Walt Disney's first animated shorts and features came to life. The world really took off technologically speaking when he was young, and it ignited his imagination in ways it cannot ignite mine. Sure, I've lived through some amazing developments in digital and musical technology, but not like films in color for the first time, or the emergence of talkies, or the boom of automobiles, or either World War, or the beginning of animation in Hollywood. Not only did he see Walt Disney in his prime, Ray Bradbury worked for him in developing Tomorrowland. How many sci-fi writers can say that? He wrote a John Huston film based on a massive work of classic literature. He inspired comic creator Charles Addams's wacky macabre family. He wrote about dinosaurs long before Michael Crichton did. Everything that inspired me as a kid was first inspired by Ray Bradbury.
So how can I compete? Simple answer: I can't. I just have to work on improving my craft to the best of my ability (and maybe beyond my best) so that I can try to stand alone as he does. It won't be easy. I've definitely got my work cut out for me...