O.K., this video I’m linking to here, don’t open it when there are children around, or when you’re at work or anything. In fact, you probably shouldn’t open it at all unless you a) are a science fiction fan and b) have a seriously smutty sense of humor.
Ray Bradbury
Meanwhile, I will use this column for a few comments on Ray Bradbury, since the singer in the video seems to like him so much. When I was about 11, Bradbury (who is currently 91 and still alive) was one of my favorite writers, largely on the strength of a short story called “The Pedestrian” which was as much a commentary on modern American life as it was science fiction. The Illustrated Man is also pretty awesome, as is Fahrenheit 451, but then I read the Martian Chronicles. I just don’t see how that can be considered a sci-fi classic. It struck me as pretty much a total misreading of human nature.
It’s nowhere near as good as Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, or anything by Arthur C. Clarke, or even Robert Heinlein’s highly overrated Stranger in a Strange Land. They all wrote some good stories, which entertained me in my youth, but things have changed a lot since then.
Science fiction has divided into two types. There is Cyberpunk which, I am embarrassed to say but it’s true, is just way over my head. I’m glad that genre is out there, I’m glad that present day hard core sci-fi fans are smarter than me (or at least more knowledgeable) because that gives me some hope for the future in this grim, evil world. But I have never been able to get through a whole book by William Gibson.
Then there are those who write speculative fiction, and often set their stories in the future or on other planets, and usually include a bit of humor. It’s not as educational, as far as science goes, but it’s a lot more entertaining, and those are the favorites of my adult life. Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, people like that.
Vonnegut never liked being classified as a science fiction writer, but he was one.
My favorite science fiction writer of all time, though, was a guy called R.A. Lafferty. A lot of his short stories had a gang called the “Institute People” who were the greatest minds in the world but there were a couple of people excluded from this group by the “minimal decency rule,” which, like the 3 seashells in Stallone’s Demolition Man, was never explained.
But, whatever the minimal decency rule was, I think the young lady singing in this video may have violated it.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
wow, what you don’t know about bradbury, vonnegut, and science fiction in general, would just about fit into the grand canyon.
there’s few things more annoying in the internet age of everyone’s-a-pundit than someone posting a whole page on their blog on a subject which they clearly know nothing about.
Enlighten me, o brilliant one.
That’s a pretty funny video.