eading this, you should not have to be told who Ray Bradbury is—many of you, that is. New readers, denied backlists by the blacklists of monied publishing, need to be told anew, wherever possible.
Ray Bradbury began publishing in 1941 and is still going strong. He is the recipient of honors and awards too numerous to mention, including the O. Henry Prize and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Ray Bradbury is a hard man to catch up with, although I have been reading him all my life. In my first few tries at this interview, we had to postpone, because he was unexpectedly on his way somewhere. I caught up with Ray in what now seems a timeless telephonic moment one spring evening at the turn of the century ...
Let's start with an uneasy question. Ray, what were your feelings when you started writing? What did you hope for?
Bradbury: Hah! I just wanted to be a good writer, that's all. I was 12 years old.
That early?
Bradbury: Sure.
You had what seems to have been a long apprenticeship—from the late 1930s to the early '50s. Why do you think it took a long while, as it does for so many writers? Did it seem long to you?
Bradbury: No. Every day was wonderful. You just do it because you love it. I wrote a lot of good short stories all through the '40s. I began to be a good writer when I was 22—that's in 1942—so it didn't take as long as it looks. Took about 10 years.
Now when you, arrived, so to speak, with The Martian Chronicles (Doubleday, 1950), you did so not only in the world of science fiction and fantasy, but in the world of American letters. Did this surprise you?
Bradbury: It didn't happen just then—I didn't arrive anywhere. The book didn't sell worth a damn. It didn't get any reviews. One review by Christopher Isherwood. It sold 5,000 copies. So I didn't exactly arrive.
Well, by the time I got to it in the late '50s, it certainly seemed that way to me.
Bradbury: Well, you were a member of a minority—a few thousand people.
Now whose idea was it to make a book of the Martian stories? Was it your own?
Bradbury: No, it was Walter Bradbury, the editor of Doubleday. I had dinner with him when I went there in 1949. My wife was pregnant, we had no money. I went to New York to meet the editors, and they all said, don't you have a novel? I said no, I have short stories. At dinner one night with Walter Bradbury, no relation to me, he said, what about all those Martian stories? If you tied them together in a tapestry, wouldn't they make a book called The Martian Chronicles? I said, oh my God! So he said, write me an outline, and give it to me tomorrow at the editorial offices, and if I like it I'll give you $750. So I stayed up all night and wrote an outline, and he gave me an advance the next day.
And how did you feel?
Bradbury: I felt fine. I was rich, suddenly.
Yes, well, it was much more money back then. Would you tell me something about your association with John Huston and the scripting of Moby Dick? It always seemed to me that you were the perfect choice to write the script. When I saw your name on the screen, I said, "Of course!"
Bradbury: It was very difficult. He was a strange man. He could be wonderful, he could be a monster. He didn't know anything about Moby Dick, so he couldn't really help me. The main thing was he egged me on, and so I finally got the script finished. But it was a strange relationship, and I'm very grateful for it, of course, because it was my first screenplay.
You've often talked about preventing futures rather than predicting or advocating them. Do you see good science fiction as a kind of cultural vaccine against evil futures?
Bradbury: Oh, it can be. I mean, Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of wrong things I wrote about that have come to pass, and we're living through them right now. Trying to make do with lousy TV. Dreadful TV news. The news on every station in America today, local TV news, is an abomination. You mustn't look at it, you mustn't listen to it. It's all lies. It's all building up things that shouldn't be built up. There's no real news. It's all 15-second sound bites. It's all violence, it's all murder, it's all rape. There is no news.
It's all to sell products. Now, do you think, however, that science fiction should strive to depict desirable futures, or is that impossible or undesirable?
Bradbury: No, you shouldn't strive to do anything. Just do your work, and if it's positive, fine, and if it's negative, fine. Whoever you are, whatever you need to write—do your work, and then if it influences people, swell, but you can't set out to do that.
Then you've never tried to imagine a desirable future?
Bradbury: No.
Could you describe one? Would that be possible?
Bradbury: No, I don't think so. If it happens in a story, swell. There are good and bad things in the culture, constantly. The automobile is a wonderful device and a horrible device. It can transport us, it can change civilizations, and it has killed 2 million people so far.
But there are innovations that could be desirable?
Bradbury: Well, the rocket ship is one. Space travel is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to mankind.
Tell me, what writers do you most admire?
Bradbury: Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, early John Steinbeck, the short stories of Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Katherine Ann Porter, Jessamyn West ...
What do you most admire about Hemingway?
Bradbury: Let's talk about a real writer—John Collier. One of the most important writers of the 20th century, yet most people don't know his name.
Sadly, that's so.
Bradbury: He had a true imagination, he had a gift of metaphor, and he was a great influence on me.
Aside from writers, what people have you admired during your long career?
Bradbury: Well, people like Federico Fellini, the film director. Loren Eiseley, who headed the department of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His essays on anthropology were a great influence on me all through my late 20s and 30s. I wrote him a fan letter and encouraged him to write a book back around 1948. He responded and said, by God, I think that's a good idea. He set out and wrote 30 books, so I'm glad to say I was an influence on his life.
Yes, and I've often linked him with your work in my mind.
Bradbury: Wonderful, wonderful man.
When last we talked, you mentioned the help you received from Robert Heinlein, from Leigh Brackett and from Henry Kuttner. What was your experience with these notable writers?
Bradbury: Well, especially with Leigh Brackett. I met her at the beach every Sunday afternoon from the time I was 21 to the time I was 25, and we'd sit on the beach and I'd read her wonderful short stories and she'd read my terrible ones. And I hadn't learned to write yet, and she put up with this garbage that I was writing. I wrote imitations of her stories, and finally I broke free and began to write stuff from my own psyche, and by the time I was 25 I was beginning to write some good stuff; but it was meeting with her every Sunday, watching her play volleyball and reading her short stories that helped me. Later in this period she married Edmond Hamilton, and the couple were influences on me. I was best man at their wedding. Edmond was a beautifully educated man, and he introduced me to some of the greatest writers in the world. So I was lucky to have them as friends. Henry Kuttner was a constant critic. I can't say we were close friends, but we were close critical friends. He read my short stories and kicked me around the block when I needed it. I have dozens of letters from him, from my early 20s. He tried to sell my short stories for me. He contacted John W. Campbell, but he didn't get anywhere selling me to Campbell. He in turn sold Campbell a lot of wonderful fiction. I was privileged to know Kuttner as a casual friend.
And Robert Heinlein?
Bradbury: No, I didn't really know Heinlein that well. I met him when I was 19, and he was 31. He had just sold his first short stories. He joined the Science Fiction League in L.A., and I would see him on occasion. He sold my first short story for me. He sent it to Rob Wagner's Script. It was my first appearance in print. I was 21 old, and I was very much beholden to Heinlein for that act of kindness.
Was it Kuttner who sent you his manuscripts after he was finished with them?
Bradbury: He gave me a lot of his typescripts, yes.
In advising young writers, you suggest that they not read their contemporaries, but stick with Shakespeare, Pope, Pepys ...
Bradbury: That's for later. You gotta read your contemporaries when you're 19 years old to know what's going on. But as you get older you should break free—don't go on reading in science fiction and fantasy, because you're going to imitate, repeat the cliches. The trouble with science fiction today is that you see all these repetitions of titles and themes that are repeats of other themes—galactic empires, dungeons and dragons. That's terrible. You have to break free from that.
Who are the greatest writers that you like to read?
Bradbury: F. Scott Fitzgerald. I go to Paris every July, and I take a copy of Tender Is the Night, and I sit in outdoor restaurants and drink coffee and have a beer, and I read the novel.
What are you working on now, Ray?
Bradbury: Three novels, two books of short stories, a book of poetry and two books of essays. Outside of that, nothing.
Are the essays previously published?
Bradbury: Some are, from various magazines. I have an article coming in National Geographic.
And you have a story reprinted in Skylife, edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski.
Bradbury: That's right!
We're very glad to have you in the collection. What are you reading now?
Bradbury: I'm rereading George Bernard Shaw, and Shakespeare, and Alexander Pope. There are not many living writers worth bothering with. I go back and reread Steinbeck and Hemingway, and books of essays by Aldous Huxley. I'm so busy writing, though, that I don't have much time to read.
I know the problem. What changes do you see in the publishing industry since you started?
Bradbury: Well, it's easier to become a science-fiction writer. There are hundreds of books a year published in science fiction and fantasy. When I was growing up and trying to become a writer, there were seven or eight books a year. So there are more opportunities open to the young writer.
And what changes for better or worse do you see in the science fiction and fantasy fields?
Bradbury: I can only guess, since I don't read in the field. I can't judge.
Let me ask you, is there a question that you would have liked me to ask, and if so, what is it?
Bradbury: Well, you might have asked me if I will ever write an opera, and the answer is yes. I've written several musicals, I've written a dramatic semi-opera for Fahrenheit 451, which was performed in Chicago and in New York, and will have performances all around the world in the next year. I'm working on a grand opera called Leviathan 99, which is based on a play of mine about Moby Dick in outer space—the Great White Comet. I've taken the metaphors and transferred them from sailing ships to rocket ships, from the open seas of the world to the open seas of stars and space, and Ahab is the space captain whose eyes have been put out by a comet when he was a young astronaut, and he goes out into the universe seeking this great white comet, which he seeks to destroy. This is the subject matter of my opera, which I hope will be written with Jerry Goldsmith, the composer.
The film composer.
Bradbury: He's one of the best.
Films have been made of your work. Generally, how have you found them?
Bradbury: Well, I love Something Wicked This Way Comes. It's not perfect, but it's damn good. Fahrenheit 451 is quite good, except they left out a lot of things. I'm hoping that if it's filmed by Mel Gibson that he'll put a lot of things back. But I'm not very optimistic, because years have gone by and he never calls. So I don't know what's gonna happen next.
Well, it seems that you're as busy as ever.
Bradbury: I'll be 80 in August.
Only eighty. Well, you and Charles L. Harness and Jack Williamson. Well, Jack Williamson makes you all look young.
Bradbury: Jack is a wonderful man, a terrific man. He was very kind to me when I was 19 years old. He read my stuff long before Leigh Brackett did, and it was really bad in those days.
It's hard for me to think that Frederik Pohl read Jack Williamson when Fred was 11.
Bradbury: Jack started publishing in magazines when I was about 7 or 8 years old.
Incredible.
Bradbury: I couldn't afford to buy the magazines, but I borrowed copies from friends on occasion, and I read Jack Williamson first.
Well, I thank you for your snappy answers to my questions.
Bradbury: Well, I'm wide awake, I had my nap!
This interview will appear in SYNERGY SF/New Science Fiction (Five Star), edited by George
Zebrowski, as "Interview with Ray Bradbury" by George Zebrowski. Copyright ©
2004
George Zebrowski.
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The cast and crew of Around the World in 80 Days
