Ray Bradbury has died. As sad as I was when Maurice Sendak died, Ray Bradbury's death is somehow much more distressing. Perhaps because Bradbury connects me to my parents' adolescence and to my discovery of science fiction and the journey to find my own storytelling style. His work has a timelessness in my memory that almost made me think he, too, would be immortal. But Sev has lent me one of his enormous, black silk handkerchiefs, and we are carrying on with today's quizzes. Which will, of course, be in honor of the much-missed Ray Bradbury.



Which Wine Are You?
Dandelion Wine wasn't my first experience with Ray Bradbury, but it is perhaps my favorite. I read it in the frigid depths of a Chicago winter, and the story and the prose were so absorbing---so vivid---that I looked up from the pages one Saturday afternoon, saw sunlight and blue sky through the window, and for a moment thought I should throw on some shorts and go out to enjoy the summer warmth. What a magical book....

As for being Sherry, I think that's a good fit. In fact, Sev and I are enjoying some port---in lieu of Sherry---and offering the venerable Mr. Bradbury a toast.

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You Are a Red Pumpkin You are beautiful, interesting, and bold. You may not stand out immediately, but you're the type of person who gets a lot of double takes. You believe life's too short to do anything you hate. There's so many things to love in the world, and you try to fill your life full of them. You have a heart for adventure and a passion for travel. Even if you can't visit some place new for a while, you still remain curious about the world. You find it easy to be excited and optimistic about new things. You are fearless and believe that everything will work out in the end.

What Color Pumpkin Are You?

I really wanted to find a quiz to reflect The Martian Chronicles, the first Ray Bradbury book I ever read, but while I could find tree- and planet- and disaster-related quizzes, none of them really struck me as remarkable. And much though I wanted to take a quiz on folk heroes/tall tales---in honor of my favorite story in the book, "The Green Morning"---not one was to be found. So instead, a pumpkin quiz for Something Wicked This Way Comes.

As for the result: I'm not fearless, but I am curious and optimistic, and I certainly don't seem to stand out immediately. Also, red pumpkins are awesome....

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Michael Moorcock (b. 1939) 21 High-Brow, 9 Violent, -3 Experimental and 3 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Violent, Traditional, and Cynical! Michael Moorcock is one of the most influential fantasy writers of all time, his impact rivaling that of Tolkien. Perhaps China Miéville described it best when he said: "I think we are all post-Moorcock." Apart from being the editor of New Worlds twice in the '60s and '70s, thereby being instrumental in bringing on the so-called "new wave" of science fiction which changed all fantastic literature forever, Moorcock's own work has been an inspiration to more recent writers. He is also known for not hiding or blunting his views on fiction which he regards as inferior, a trait which has led him to apply harsh criticism to authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and H.P. Lovecraft. His most popular works are the Elric books. Elric was originally conceived as a sort of critical comment to or even parody of R.E. Howard's Conan, but the character and his world soon grew to form a tragic and somewhat fatalistic drama. Elric's world is, in turn, only a small part of the huge Multiverse, a set of stories from all sorts of worlds (including our own), which is forever locked in a struggle between the two powers of Law and Chaos. Whenever one of these powers is threatening to become too powerful, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, a group of warriors possessing the same spirit, is forced to fight to maintain the delicate balance between the two. Moorcock has worked several of his heroes into this cycle of books, including Hawkmoon, Corum, and of course Elric. Moorcock's stories are often stories about warriors, however reluctant they may be, and are usually explicitly violent, even if the purpose of all the hacking and slashing is to free humans and other beings from oppression and, ultimately, fear. There is little happiness, though, for those who are forced to do the fighting and all they can hope for is a short time of respite, sometimes in the town of Tanelorn, the only place in the Multiverse that the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos can't reach. It should also be mentioned that, even though Moorcock has done quite some experimenting in his days, it can't be ignored that a major part of his books are traditional adventure stories that become more than that by their inclusion into a grand vision. A little ironically, perhaps, for an author who has criticized the "world-building school" of fantasy, Moorcock achieves much of his popularity through building, if not a world, a world vision. You are also a lot like China Miéville If you want something more gentle, try Ursula K. Le Guin If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, Katharine Kerr

Which Fantasy Writer Are You?

Also ironically, I have never read Moorcock. :) I'm not entirely convinced this author matches my style, but the description of High Brow, Violent, and Traditional is a good fit---especially as defined in the more complete description of my result. And while I technically ranked as Cynical, I'm actually less cynical than the average taker of this quiz. So maybe I'm somewhere in between Moorcock and China Miéville? I think of myself as someone who writes high/quest fantasy (traditional) with some adventure (violence) and romance (hmmm....) and as much lyrical language and sense of the beautiful (high brow?) as I can elegantly include. Perhaps I should simply write a book and let others decide?