Every time I see someone walking down the street listening to tunes with plugs in their ears, I think “seashells.” Ray Bradbury had the characters in his novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” become isolated from other people by always wearing earphones in their ears, and he called the phones “seashells.”

Bradbury also wrote in “Fahrenheit 451” of rooms with full wall TVs, and one could interact with the programs shown on the walls. We haven’t reached that stage yet, but with TVs reaching four feet wide, I don’t think we are far from rooms that envelop the spectator.

Ray Bradbury has been writing what is usually called science fiction or fantasy for over 60 years, and though his latest book, “Now and Forever,” is not one of his best, he is one of the best short story writers we have had since O. Henry. As for novels, at least two, the aforementioned “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Martian Chronicles,” are both prophetic and harrowing in their subtle ways.

“Fahrenheit 451” is the story of Montag, a fireman, who starts fires instead of putting them out. He burns books, as books are seditious and misleading in his society. People are to watch those wall screens and be distracted with their glib images. The story seems so obvious today, but we must remember he wrote “Fahrenheit 451” in 1953, just as TVs first started to become popular.

In a short story called “The Pedestrian” in the collection “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” Bradbury follows up on the idea that TV isolates people in a community. Leonard Mead takes evening walks, and he sees no one else on the street. They are all inside watching TV. Mead is stopped by a robot police car and is asked why he is walking. “To walk. To breathe the air.” After a moment the car tells Mead to get in and he is taken to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.

Don’t think that Bradbury is always a critic of society. He loved small-town USA. Several of his novels, “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and “Dandelion Wine,” for instance, are paeans to small-town life. His 2006 novel “Farewell Summer” is of the same ilk.

Sometimes Bradbury is maudlin and overly sentimental in these novels. Each sentence is treated as a paragraph, the words licked into shape in lapidary style, so that the idea is almost a bon mot.

In his short stories, however, Bradbury sneaks up on the reader with a twist at the end, O. Henry style. His collection, “The Illustrated Man,” is sinister in its frame. The pictures on a fully tattooed man come to life. In “The Veldt” the high-tech children’s playroom simulates the African plain. When the parents threaten to take the playroom away, they are locked inside it with the lions.

In another story, Bradbury imagines Jesus going from world to world bringing peace, and astronauts are always one world behind. If you could arrange a robot to take your place, would you do so That is the plot in “Marionettes, Inc.” What happens, though, if your wife did the same

For many years I used the collection “The Golden Apples of the Sun” in freshman English. I always imagined the sea monster in “The Fog Horn” coming to Cape Arago lighthouse because the fog horn’s mournful cry sounded like another beast. How lonely it is, to be the last of your kind.

In “The Murderer” a man takes revenge on all of the sound that surrounds him. He doesn’t want to listen to Muzak in elevators. He doesn’t want to hear conversations of people talking on phones. Computers drone on. Everyone, except him, has a wrist phone and is constantly in touch with others.

The man begins to destroy things — his phone, his wristwatch, the television, anything that could disrupt the peace he seeks. A psychiatrist finally allows him to go back to his padded cell, where there are no electronic devices. The man is blissfully happy, and the psychiatrist checks his phone for messages, puts seashells back in his ears, and types up his report on the computer.

Many of the stories written by Ray Bradbury have been made into movies, including “The Martial Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451.” Most notable, though, is that Bradbury was the screenwriter for John Huston’s film of “Moby Dick,” starring Gregory Peck as Ahab.

Bradbury revisits “Moby Dick” in his latest book in the novella, “Leviathan ’99.” It is 2099, and a comet glaring white is threatening the Earth. The spaceship, Cetus Seven, is sent to deal with it with a maniacal captain, subservient crew, a questioning first mate and the lone survivor, called Ishmael Hunnicut Jones.

Bradbury is having fun with ideas as he has for 87 years. The next time you see someone tuned out, say “seashells.” When censorship rears, think “Fahrenheit 451.” And be careful, because sometimes, “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”