Ray Bradbury’s Home Demolished

The house where author Ray Bradbury lived for over 50 years went on sale last year. You can get a good look at it in the real estate listing photos. Renowned architect Thom Mayne and his wife purchased the house for $1.67 million. And Friday they had it torn down.

The discussion under all these stories, and the post at Metafilter, divides fans into two camps: those who don't want to see history being demolished, and those who say this is no big deal. Both have valid points.

Those who regret seeing the house torn down are sad that it wasn’t preserved for its historical value. It could have been made into a museum. It was a perfectly habitable house, built in 1937, with some interesting architectural details.

Others say the house was outdated and not particularly significant in its architecture. Bradbury’s legacy lives on in his writings. And no one wants to live in a house with only three bedrooms. If fans wanted to preserve it, they should have bought it. One commenter pointed out that if every home in Los Angeles where a celebrity once lived were preserved, there could be no new homes built.

(Image source: Redfin)

What do you think?




Comments (11)

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

It's a California thing... There is no history in the area. There are no historical artifacts to dig-up... no point in buying a metal detector. No great battles were fought in the area. With select few exception, nobody occupied any of it until a few hundred years ago, and the vast majority far, FAR more recently. History is just not a "thing" in California for those reasons and more, it's something that exists elsewhere...

And now with the entire population migrating further south-west every year, it's gone beyond "full" and property that your parents could have purchased for a few month's wages is now worth tens of millions. Ranch houses are replaced with McMansions, apartments & condos are built everywhere they can be, commercial buildings being replaced with high-rises, and there's no sign of the trend reversing.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I worked at a radio station in the basement of an old Carnegie Library. We had wires running everywhere because we couldn't get permission to embed them in the walls. They eventually built a new building out on the outskirts of town so I could no longer walk to work.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I used to know a guy who worked in a "historic" building - it looked nice on the outside, but it was crumbling on the inside. They couldn't get anything fixed either, because any changes to the building requires approval from a historical society committee who moved slower than molasses.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
"Aliens are always smarter than us."

Aside from the fact that shows such as Star Trek are filled with stupid or technologically inferior alien cultures, the implication that this trope should be stopped is kind of silly. Any alien species we are capable of making contact with in the foreseeable future would have to be far more intelligent than us in some way or another - that's not a trope, it's a fact of life which makes the story more relate-able.

Similar issues with things like evil aliens and explaining time travel - there are many, many counter examples and they are plausible or worth exploring, so it seems kind of silly to say they should be stopped altogether. That part of the joy of sci-fi.

I definitely agree that the brain power one needs to die though. It's too completely and obviously false to keep playing with. :)
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
4) Humans are the good guys, aliens are the bad.
Also deserving of a mention in the counter-example list is Small Soldiers. The "goodies" turn out to be very nasty humans indeed. Well, humanish.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
dev - there are a few notable counter-examples. In Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken", humans didn't learn the simple technique that enables interstellar travel until aliens with matchlock weapons invade, and lose miserably. In Niven's Known Space series, the Thrintun are of low intelligence but use mental powers to enslave the aliens who visit, and from there take over the galaxy. In Arthur C. Clarke's "Rescue Party", most species in the galaxy take millions of years to progress from sapience to radio, while humans manage it in under 400,000 years. (There are other Golden Age stories with a similar theme; we're more intelligent, but late to the scene.)
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Commenting is closed.

We hope you like this article!
Please help us grow by sharing:

Get Updates In Your Inbox

Free weekly emails, plus get access
to subscriber-only prizes.

We won't share your email. You can cancel at any time.
Email This Post to a Friend
"Ray Bradbury’s Home Demolished"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
neat stories? Like us on Facebook!
Close: I already like you guys!