August 22 is Ray Bradbury’s Birthday

He would have been 92.

The Writer’s Almanac quotes Bradbury — arguably the greatest short story writer of the 20th Century  — saying at age 80:

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12.”

Use this link to read Bradbury’s wonderously evocative 1951 short story, “The Fog Horn” from his collection, The Golden Apples of the Sun.

An excerpt:

“We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I’ll make one. I’ll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door and like the trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and to all who hear it in the distant towns. I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.

“The Fog Horn blew.”

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