“Make Haste to Live”

Abstract

Bradbury’s 1999 induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame opens chapter 36. That year he also received the George Pal Memorial Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, followed in 2000 by a National Book Foundation Medal. His November 1999 stroke and subsequent loss of sight in his left eye did not prevent him from attending this ceremony, or from finally gathering his half-century-old stories of the supernatural Elliot family into a novelized story collection, From the Dust Returned. The chapter closes with Bradbury’s cautions against the loss of freedom of the imagination; these thoughts had resurfaced in his new book’s inter-chapter bridges and in his letter to Leon Uris reflecting on the mid-century climate of fear.