Ray Bradbury died yesterday in Los Angeles at age 91. And I think that means the checkered flag has at last been swung for the end of my childhood.

I grew up reading Bradbury’s novels and short stories. Because of an indulgent mother, I owned more books than almost all my friends, except perhaps Bob Gibson who had a big literate family and Steve Buyske who was sort of Draco Malfoy and Ron & Hermione to me through High School. All my chums, though, had sets of the thin Bradbury paperbacks from Bantam (the red rooster!).

I don’t remember our talking about these stories and collections that often — The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 — but DC/Marvel comic books and Ray Bradbury were imaginative fiction to us, the only fiction as often as not (except for Steve, an early Tolkien admirer of no little seriousness).

Below the jump, some online tributes to the master and two personal stories to illustrate what Bradbury has meant to me —

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Am I excited about Ascendio 2012? Yes, I am.

First, there’s the group of friends I’ve made that have presented at five or more HPEF conferences in locales as different as Orlando, Salem, Dallas, Las Vegas, Toronto, and San Francisco: Diana Paterson from Calgary, logospilgrim, Cathy Leogrande, Melissa Aaron, David Gras, HPEF’s Heidi Tandy and Gwendolyn Grace (Lee Hillman), and Valerie Frankel. I don’t know if Philip Nel and Karin Westman from KSU, Steve Vander Ark or the podCasting regulars Melissa Anelli and Andrew Sims will make it, all regulars in past years, but I do expect to see and catch up with HPA’s Andrew Slack. Ascendio 2012 will be a blast if only as a reunion of the decade’s Potter Punditry.

But it’s a lot more than a reunion. These folks are coming again because of the wow talks that are scheduled beyond the Quill Track we’ve discussed briefly here. Outside of St. Andrews, no one reaches the Programming bar that HPEF sets: the variety, depth, and reach of the discussions here is simply the best. Surfing through the incredible list of talks in their formal programming, for example,  I found this mind-blower —

The Unpublished JKR – Behind the Scenes of Lev Grossman’s 2005 Interview

In July of 2005, shortly before the publication of Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling agreed to a two-hour conversation with a callow, inexperienced and thoroughly starstruck journalist named Lev Grossman. The interview turned into a TIME magazine profile (the infamous badness of which the journalist deeply regrets). But that profile only made use of a few scattered quotes from the conversation, and the full transcript of the interview, which runs to 12,000 words, has never been published anywhere, and probably never will be. In this talk — the contents of which must never be repeated anywhere, on pain of agonizing death — Grossman will share the highlights, and a few of the lowlights, with you.

And this —

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Have you registered for the Harry Potter conference of the season?Tonight’s the Night!

Ascendio 2012 is running a special today, 5 June, where you can save $20 off registration or off the cost of Night of a Thousand Wizards 2, the Ascendio 2012 night inside ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.’ I will be at Night of a Thousand Wizards that Thursday night and hope to be talking with friends in a Hogsmeade tavern about, well, anything you want to talk about. Who knows? Maybe Veronica Roth or Lev Grossman or Starkids will join us for a Butterbeer!

Here is the HPEF announcement (sorry I’m so late in picking up and sharing this tweet!):

We just sent our 2000th Tweet! We were limited to 140 characters (including the URL) so we’ve expanded it a bit here:

For the next 2000 minutes (in other words, until 11:59 PM on June 5) you can take 2000 pennies (that’s $20) off a Night of a Thousand Wizards 2 ticket for you or a friend! Just use the code N1K2K when you register for Ascendio or modify your registrationto add a NoaTW2 ticket.

The $20 discount code can be applied to tickets for registrants (otherwise priced at $140) or to the NoaTW2+ ticket for nonregistrants (otherwise priced at $155). The NoaTW2+ ticket includes access to the Common Room, Vendor Room and Art Gallery on Friday, July 13, too!

See you in Orlando!