The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Ray Bradbury on Libraries, Space Exploration, and the Secret of Life: The Lost Comic-Con Interview

Of the many things that made Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920–June 5, 2012) one of the greatest creative spirits of our time, his remarkable passion for life stood out not only as an inspiring echelon but also as a necessary antidote to our all-too-prevalent cultural trope of the tortured genius, the mythology that in order to be creative and successful, we must on some level be miserable. Reader Juan Kafka points me to a fantastic lesser-known interview with Bradbury, one of his last, conducted by Bradbury’s official biographer, Sam Weller — who collected many of his conversations with Bradbury in Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews (public library) — at Comic-Con 2010. It was recorded by Jeff Goldsmith, maker of the free storytelling app Backstory. At 90, Bradbury is as full of zest as ever, brimming with a love of life as he discusses space exploration, libraries, technology, and the importance of doing what you love. The full Q&A runs over an hour, but I’ve excerpted and transcribed the most salient parts below — enjoy.

On prediction, purpose, and making things happen — a complement to Bradbury’s prior passionate case for doing what you love:

SW: How did you predict all of this stuff, Ray, how did you predict all of these technologies?

RB: The secret of life is being in love, and by being in love, you predict yourself. Whatever you want is whatever you get. You don’t predict things, you make them. You gotta be a Zen Buddhist, like me: Don’t think about things, just do them; don’t predict them, just make them.

On public libraries:

SW: Of course, you have been, really, the patron saint of the American public library system … You love public libraries — tell us the story of your love affair with libraries.

RB: When I left high school, I had all my plans to go to college, but I had no money. And I decided then, the best thing for me to do is not worry about getting money to go to college — I will educate myself. I walked down the street, I walked into a library, I would go to the library three days a week for ten years and I would educate myself. It’s all FREE, that’s the great thing about libraries! Most of you can afford to go to college, but if you wanna educate yourself completely, go to the library and educate yourself. When I was 28 years old, I graduated from Library.

On space exploration, for which Bradbury has ardently advocated before:

SW: One of the technologies you have been in favor of is space exploration. Why is space exploration so important to you?

RB: Because we are gonna live forever, if we go out in space, if we go back to the moon — we should’ve never left the moon — we should go back and build a base, we should go back and build a base on the moon and go on to Mars and we should put a civilization on Mars and then, 500 years from now, move out into the universe, and when we do that, we have a chance of living forever. That’s why I believe in space exploration.

Further in the interview, he revisits the subject with equal parts endearing fantasy-world outlandishness and very real policy concerns:

SW: What should we be investing in for the future, to assure our future? What should we focus on for tomorrow?

RB: We’ve gotta reinvest in space travel. We should’ve never left the moon. We’ve gotta get back to the moon and build a firm base there, so that sometime in the next 40 years we can take off and go to the planet Mars. We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian — I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now, into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever. So our future is investing, right now, in space travel, and money should be given to NASA sometime next year to build the rockets to go back to the moon.

He later brings this same blend of fantasy and civic engagement to gridlock and the monorail dream:

We’ve gotta build monorails all over LA and California … The freeways don’t work, but monorails would do the job for us. Get rid of the goddamn freeways and build the monorails.

On loving life and living with joy:

SW: If you could time-travel to a moment in your life, what moment would you go back to?

RB: Every. Single. Moment. Every single moment of my life has been incredible, I’ve loved it, I’ve savored it, it’s been beautiful — because I’ve remained a boy. The man you see here tonight is not a man, he’s a 12-year-old boy, and this boy is still having fun. And I remain a boy forever.

He then takes the question of growing up head-on:

SW: We hear this term, ‘grow up.’ Do you feel like you’ve ‘grown up’? How have you been able to stay connected with your inner child over the years, because a lot of people lose touch with that?

RB: You remain invested in your inner child by exploding every day. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t worry about the past — you just explode. So, if you are dynamic, you don’t have to worry about what age you are. So I’ve remained a boy, because boys run everywhere — they never stop running, they never look back, they never look back, they just keep running, running, and running. That’s me — the running boy.

Weller’s biography of Bradbury is a must-read, to be complemented with his recently released Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

Complement with Sartre on why “being-in-the-world-ness” is the key to the imagination and De Beauvoir on ambiguity, vitality, and freedom.


Published September 4, 2012

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/09/04/ray-bradbury-comic-con-interview/

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