JAMES DAY: Ray Bradbury's
publishers refer to him
simply as the world's
greatest living science
fiction writer. Some might
take exception to the
description, but only to
argue that what he writes
is not science fiction but
fantasy. Stories that tell
us little about science
but a great deal about the
netherworld of imagination
buried deep in all of us.
In addition to more than a
1,000 short stories,
several novels and a hand
full of plays. Ray
Bradbury has written
poetry and scenarios, he
adapted the novel Moby
Dick for the movies, and
has seen some of his own
stories made into motion
pictures, among them
Fahrenheit 451. His
writing has appeared in
virtually every American
magazine publishing
quality fiction. And in
over a 100 anthologies of
short stories.  
[Theme Music]
JAMES DAY: Ray I'd like to put
myself first on the side
of those who regard your
writing as fantasy rather
than science fiction and
ask you a question about
fantasy. I suppose that
like myself you grew up
believing that to
fantasize was the same as
to day dream, to be idle,
to be a kind of a
ne'er--do--well, and yet I
know you don't look upon
fantasizing as something
that's evil.    
RAY BRADBURY: No and it's a
shame that this concept
ever got going with any
people at all because I've
always claimed that the
ability to fantasize is
the ability to survive.
The ability to fantasize
is the ability to grow.
Boys and girls at the age
of 10, 11, 12, 13 right on
up through, the most
important time of their
day or especially at
night before going to
sleep is dreaming
themselves into becoming
something and to being
something. So when you're
a child you begin to dream
yourself into a shape. And
then you run into the
future and try to become
that shape. When I was 10,
11, 12 I began to dream of
becoming a writer and the rest
of my life has been the real
task of shaping myself to that
boyhood thing. So fantasizing
has been very creative for me.
  JAMES DAY: I thought
that you dreamt of becoming a
magician when you were a child.
RAY BRADBURY: I was a magician
but I was everything, I
was into so many things.
I was into architecture, I
fell in love with World's
Fair's when I was 12, the
Chicago World's Fair
opened that year and my
aunt was working in the
streets of Paris there
designing costumes so I
went down to the fair from
my home in Waukegan
Illinois quite often. And,
but I'd begun to fall in
love with architecture
when I was 8 by looking at
the old science fiction
magazines. The great thing
about growing up in
science fiction is that
you have an interest in
everything. And so
architecture was one of
them, being a boy magician
was another, becoming an
actor.  
JAMES DAY: Did you meet
Blackstone?  
RAY BRADBURY: Yes I met
Blackstone when I was 10 years
old. And I ran up on the stage
and helped him with several of
his illusions, which made them
work even better of
course. And I had a
wonderful experience with
Blackstone 7 or 8 years
ago, I've raised all four
of my daughter each
evening on a time we
called Blackstone time.
Starting when they are 2
or 3 year old I'd tell
them my adventures with
Blackstone as a child, all
over the world and Egypt,
ancient Egypt going back
in time and what have you.
So the name Blackstone's
part of their life. And
about 7 or 8 years ago I
was walking down Hollywood
Boulevard with 3 of my
daughters and I stopped in
front of his magic store
and looked in and said oh
my gosh wait a minute do
you know who's in there
and they said who, and I
said its Blackstone and
they said oh wow. So I
said wait out here I'm
going to go in and I'll
introduce you, so I ran in
the store ran up to
Blackstone, I said Mr.
Blackstone you haven't
seen me in 35 years, but
I've got my daughters out
here and they know your
name and all about you and
they think I know you
better than I really do,
can I bring them in? He
said what's your first
name, I said Ray, he said
okay bring them in. So I
ran back out and got the
daughters brought them in,
Blackstone did tricks for
them and signed  books and
said Ray it's great to see
you after all these years and
all our adventures, you know.
And we were all floating for a
week after that. So
this is the kind of life I lead
with myself and with my kids.
JAMES DAY: Somewhere in reading
about you Ray I come across a
story about a Mr. Electrico.
  RAY BRADBURY:
Yes he was a real man too,
when I was 11 or 12 a
carnival used to come
through our town every
Labor Day weekend for 3 or
4 days. And there was a
man called Mr. Electrico
who told me he was a
defunct Presbyterian
minister and, or so he
said. And for some reason,
maybe because I was rabid
magician, or just a boy
with open eyes, charming
on some level of another.
He sort of took me under
his wing and we'd walk
along the shore of Lake
Michigan and talk, he would
talk his little philosophies and
I'd talk my large ones.
  JAMES DAY: Why were
yours large and his little?
RAY BRADBURY: Well a
boy always imagine
that what
they have to say is more
important than anything
said by an older person,
you discover later it's
the reverse. But, as a
result he used to sit in
an electric chair in the
carnival every night and
they'd throw on a 100
million volts of
electricity and his hair
would stand up in a
marvelous shock over his
head, he'd look very much
like Ernest Thesiger the
English actor who played
Dr. Pretorius in the
"Bride of Frankenstein",
that wonderful kind of
face with a terrific nose.
And as a result of his
impact on my life, with
his magic show I have put
him in one of my books,
under that name, under his
real name, Mr. Electrico
in "Something Wicked this
Way Comes" a novel of mine
I published 8 or 9 years.
So he's one of the few
rare real people in my books.
  JAMES DAY: As I recall he told
you that you had met before.
  RAY BRADBURY: Yes.  
JAMES DAY: In another life.
  RAY BRADBURY:
That's true he told me
that we had met
on the battlefield of the
Argonne Forest in France
toward the end of the or
in the middle of World War One,
that I had died in his arms.
Now here I was reincarnated
under the name Ray Bradbury.
  JAMES DAY: You were
born after World War One too?
  RAY BRADBURY:
Yes, I was born two years after.
And so I
was impressed with that.
Anyone tells me that I'm
the reincarnation of
someone, I was very
impressed when I was 12.  
JAMES DAY: You said that
you had this fantasy of
wanting to be a writer and
that you became a writer.
Why so early did you think
you wanted to become a
writer? Was this again
your interest in science
fiction at a very early
age?  
RAY BRADBURY: Science fiction
and fantasy, I began, my aunt
and my mother read to me
when I was 3 from all the
old Grimm fairy tales,
Anderson fairy tales, and
then all the Oz books as I
was growing up, and then
Edgar Allen Poe when I was
8. So by the time I was 10
or 11 I was just full to
the brim with these, and
with the Greek myths and
the Roman myths. And then
of course I went to Sunday
school and you take in the
Christian myths, which are
all fascinating in their
own way. And I guess I've
always tended to be a
visual person, and myths
are very visual, and I
began to draw and then I
felt the urge to carry on
these myths. And if I'm
anything at all I'm not
really a science fiction
writer I'm a writer of
fairy tales and modern
myths about technology.
And my stories are easy to
remember because I was
influenced at an early age
by the real tellers of
tales, of all history. And
when you start out 2,000
years ago and come up
through time and learn all
the myths then you become
a good storyteller. It's
in your blood then by the
time you start to write.
I'm glad for that
background.
JAMES DAY: You moved, the family
moved from Illinois I gather to
Los Angeles because you did
attend high school
here in Los Angeles.
RAY BRADBURY: Correct.
JAMES DAY: But I've also seen
a reference to your
reading comics on a radio
station in Tuscan,
so you must have come by way of
Tuscan.
RAY BRADBURY: We lived in Tuscan
for a year when I was 6 and for
a year when I was 12. To
show you what kind of a
brassy little boy I was,
always knowing what he
wanted to do. I fell in
love with radio of course
along the way too, I've
had so many loves in all
the arts, thank god,
including movies. But when I
arrived in Tuscan, I was
doing a lot of little
theater work in the 7th
grade, and got the lead in
a play. And then based on
that I said to my friends,
oh heck I'm going to go
into radio, I love radio
and I'm going to get me a
job there. And three weeks
from tonight you're going
to hear me on the radio.
Well I didn't know anyone
at the local radio
station, but I went down
and hung around the
station, emptied the ash
trays and ran out for
cigarettes and bought the
magazines for people when
they ordered me to do so
and I got under foot. And
after a while I was not
only underfoot but I wound
up reading the comics to
the kiddies every Saturday
night on that station 3
weeks later. So I
discovered early on if you
want anything you went for
it and you got it. And
most people don't ever go
anywhere or want anything,
so they never get anything.
JAMES DAY: You come
from a family
of rather modest circumstances.
RAY BRADBURY: Very yes.
JAMES DAY: I saw a reference
of your folks being on relief
when you lived here in Los
Angeles, living in a tenament.
RAY BRADBURY: I
lived in a tenant later.
We were on relief though
the year I graduated from
L.A. High School, getting
food from the government,
my dad was out of work for
the better part of a year
or so. And so I graduated
from L.A. High School
wearing the suit of a
uncle who had been
murdered in the suit, and
there was bullet hole
through the front and out
the back of it. He'd been
shot in a hold up. And we
hadn't enough money to buy
a graduation suit for me.
So I put on my uncles suit
that he'd been killed in
and wore it to graduation.
We didn't even have enough
money to repair the bullet
hole, so we were in deep
from a very modest
background at that time of
our lives. And then later
things improved for us.
JAMES DAY: You didn't go
to college.
RAY BRADBURY: Never went to
college. Don't believe in
college for writers. Think it's
very dangerous, I think
too many professors are
too opinionated and too
snobbish, and too
intellectual and the
intellect is a great
danger to creativity.
JAMES DAY: The intellect
is a danger.
RAY BRADBURY: Terrible danger
because you begin to
rationalize and make up reasons
for things, instead of staying
with your own basic truth.
Who you are, what you are,
what you want to be. And
I've had a sign over my
typewriter for 25 years
now which reads don't
think, you must never
think at the type writer
you must feel and then
your intellect is always
buried in that feeling
anyway. You collect up a
lot of things there, you
do a lot of thinking away
from your typewriter. But
at the typewriter you
should be living. It
should be a living
experience, just as when
I'm here with you,
speaking to you, your
popping all sorts of
questions at me, I don't
have time to think about
them, I can react to them.
I try to say things that
are meaningful in a
reaction to them, if I
stopped and thought too
long both of us would fall
asleep. And that can
happen at the typewriter
too. The worst thing you
do when you think is lie.
You can make up reasons
that are not true for the
things that you did and
what your trying to do as
a creative person is
surprise yourself, find
out who you really are and
try not to lie, try to
tell the truth, all the
time. And the only way to
do this is by being very
active, and very
emotional, and get it out
of yourself, making lists
of things that you hate
and things that you love,
you write about these
then, intensely. And when
its over, then you can
think about it, then you
can look at whether it
works or doesn't work or
something's missing here,
and then if something's
missing you go back and
re-emotionalize that so
its all of a piece. But
thinking is to be a
corrective in our life,
its not supposed to be the
center of our lives.
Living is supposed to be
the center of our lives.
Being is supposed to be
the center, with
correctives around which
hold us, like the skin
holds our blood and our
flesh in. But our skin is
not aware of life 
living is the blood
pumping through our veins.
The ability to sense and
to feel and to know, and
the intellect doesn't
really help your brain
much there, you should get
on with the business of living.
JAMES DAY: You
rely heavily upon intuitions?
RAY BRADBURY:
Oh completely, everything
of mine is intuitive, all
the poetry I've written. I
couldn't possibly tell you
how I did it, I don't know
anything about the rhythms
or the schemes or the
inner rhymes or any of
this sort of thing.
It comes from 40 years of
reading poetry and having
heroes that I loved,
feeling again. I love
Shakespeare, I don't
intellectualize upon him.
I love Gerard Manley
Hopkins, I don't
intellectualize upon him.
I love Dylan Thomas,
I don't know what in the
hell he's writing about
half the time, but he
sounds good, he rings
well. Let me give you an
example of this sort of
thing, I walked into my
living room, oh 20 years
ago when one of my
daughters was about 4 year
olds and a Dylan Thomas
record was on the set,
and I thought that my
daughter, that my wife had
put the record on, come to
find out my 4 year old had
put on his record and I
came into the room,
she pointed to the record and
said he knows what he's doing.
JAMES DAY: Really?
RAY BRADBURY: Now that's great,
see that's not
intellectualizing, it's an
emotional reaction, so if there
is no feeling there can not be
great art. If the feeling is
missing, just forget it, you'll
never make it as an artist.
JAMES DAY: Ray
you've said that the
greatest teacher, in the
greatest school you've
ever had was Charles
Laughton, who taught you,
who helped you rediscover
Shakespeare and Shaw.
RAY BRADBURY: He certainly was
one of my, he was the best
male teacher I had. My
best female teacher was a
wonderful lady in L. A.
High School, Jeannette
Johnson, who is still
alive and around 83 years
old living out in
Fairmont, and Charlie
Laughton on the other
hand, again emotionally.
Taught me by simply
standing on his own two
feet, on his hearth, in
his home, and giving me
the opening scenes of
Richard the Third, and
Hamlet, and Othello and
reminding me again of what
language can do in the
theater. Again, feeling.
JAMES DAY: The feeling of
the language?
RAY BRADBURY: The love of
this, which rolled out of
the man, his passions for
Shakespeare, not
intellectualizing him. So
he taught me to go back to
my own place and dare to
feel and dare to speak in
tongues, and use the
language again and hope
that people will stay with
you, and not worry about
the plot, because you
don't go to Hamlet to find
out who in hell murdered
Hamlets father, that's not
what its about, what its
about is listening to the
asides. Everything in art
is an aside, all the great
novels, the reason you go
to read them is not the
plot, its for the
philosophical asides,
to find out who Ernest
Hemingway is or who
Steinbeck is, or who
Faulkner is, or you name
your own novelist or poet.
But its always an aside
having nothing to do with
the main drama.
JAMES DAY: When you say who they
are, elsewhere you've written
that the character of the
story is a kind of medium
in a séance with the
author and that other
self. Inside the author, the
process of writing is a process
as you said earlier of self
discovery. The hidden parts.
RAY BRADBURY: Yeah, the
typewriter should be an Ouija
board, and your hands move on
it and reveal things about
yourself that you don't
know. For instance in my
novel "Fahrenheit 451", my
character Montag is myself
discovering me. Really
there are those sides of
our character, which are
destructive. And you bring
them out in the open and
then you find ways of
becoming creative, so the
character of Montag is a
totalitarian who discovers
he's burning, and not just
books but ideas, and then
he sets out in search of
rediscovering himself and
discovering how to read,
and how to be alive
through reading and then
he gives up his profession
and becomes a destroyer of the
destroyers. And comes out on the
right side of the situation.
JAMES DAY:You've referred
yourself
as a child of the libraries.
RAY BRADBURY: Yes indeed, I use
the library, the same way I've
been describing the
creative process to you,
as a writer, I don't go in
with lists of things to
read, I go in blindly and
reach up on shelves and
take down books and open
them, and fall in love
immediately. And if I
don't fall in love that
quickly, shut the book,
back on the shelf, find
another book and fall in
love with it. You can only
go with loves in this
life.
JAMES DAY: What about
reading lists?
RAY BRADBURY: They can't help
you most of the time, you
got to prod around
everywhere, and people
don't have any fun because
they don't ever go in the
children's section, but
I go over in the children's
section all the time.
I try to keep up on what's
being done in every field,
and most children's books
are ten times more
enjoyable then the average
American novel right now.
So I looked on the shelves
on the children's library
years ago, and I said I
want to cheek by jowl,
shoulder to shoulder
with my real hero's; Mark
Twain, Charles Dickens,
Robert Lou Stevenson,
Edgar Allen Poe, and as a
result of this kind of
emotional thing and
rejecting all the modern
American novelists, most
of them in the last 20
years, I have become a
father to a lot of
children, and these books
are indeed leaning against
the shoulders of good old
Charlie Dickens and Mark Twain.
JAMES DAY: You
haven't mentioned Edgar
Rice Burroughs and you refer to
him as one of your fathers.
RAY BRADBURY: Yes indeed he was.
When I was 10 fell completely
under the spell of Tarzan and
John Carter Warlord of
Mars. These are not on any
reading lists anywhere in
the world. They are
reviled and detested by
all of the teachers, and
all the librarians, and
most of the library's
don't even carry his books
and yet with Tarzan and
with out Mr. Burroughs
writing about John Carter
Warlord of Mars, I would
never have grown to be 12
feet tall and taken off
from Mars myself. This is
the emotional thing you
see. You must galvanize
people so they want to be
completely alive and live
forever, or the next thing
to it and out of that
comes art and survival
through emotion, no matter
what happens, even though
the world can try to crush
you and put you down with
facts. You break up
through the concrete, say
damn it all I'm a blade of
grass and I will survive.
But you survive with people
like Mr. Burroughs first of all.
JAMES DAY: You began writing
about space travel,
before there was space travel,
now there is.
RAY BRADBURY:
Right.
JAMES DAY: What is space travel
going to do for man?
RAY BRADBURY: Space travel is
going to enable us to live
forever, that's its most
important function.
JAMES DAY: Live forever?
RAY BRADBURY: Yes, we
wish to guard the
gift of life, Nikos
Kazantzakis puts it very
well in his most
remarkable book, which no
one has read, very few
people have read it. "The
Saviors of God", and in
the book, god cries out to
be saved. We go to save
him, that's what space
travels all about. In this
part of the universe, god
has wakened on this planet
and shaped himself the way
we are shaped, we are the
flesh of the universe
which wishes to know
itself. That's great.
That's responsible, that
beautiful. It's a very
nice concept of religion,
one I'm very comfortable
with. I like to think of
myself as part of the
universe waking up. And
looking around saying hey
this is remarkable, look
at this, I have all these
senses I'd like to keep
this gift going.
JAMES DAY: You find
no conflict between
religion and science then?
RAY BRADBURY: Absolutely not,
the processes that are
going through are almost
too halves of a coin,
because everything ends in
mystery. I mean the
scientists have theories,
and the theologians have
myths, and they're both
the same thing. Because we
end up in ignorance. We
don't know what gravity
is, we have theories about
light, but they're only
theories which are being
revised. Even Mr. Einstein
is coming under scrutiny
again in the last few
years with some of his
theories, these will be
revised and changed in the
next hundred years. And
again a hundred thousand
years from now. The
important thing is we
should gather as much data
as we can, as many facts
as we need and on these
based on our theories,
which help us to survive
and where the mystery
begins, theology takes
over. This is two halves
of the same coin. We have
to think about the
unthinkable, which is what
religion does, and science
does too at times. Trying
to figure out what in the
heck is going on, how did
we get here, where did we
come from, where are we
going. We don't have the
answers and we never will
have them. So we make do
with theory and with
theology. And with the two
of them as tools, one to
work with the basic facts,
one to take up where the
mystery begins, we'll make
do and go on into the
future and live for three
billion years in space,
not just here, but out on
the stars. That's what
space travels all about.
JAMES DAY: Would you like
to see life extended
forever? Your own life for
example?
RAY BRADBURY: If I could stay in
good health, and if I would not
become senile, and if I
could revivify myself as
I've done a poem my new
book of poetry, which
cries out to the universe,
and says give me a shape,
knock the soot off my
chimney, cause living, we
accumulate so much
knowledge within
ourselves, we take
ourselves inside with
improper knowledge at
times. And what we want to
do at times is just bang
our head.
JAMES DAY: We know so
much is not true.
RAY BRADBURY: Yeah, that's
right. And just the accumulation
of what we would call sin or
knowledge of sin or all
these. And if you could
give that a knock, every
40 years and dislodge the
soot on your soul, cleanse
yourself completely so
that you wouldn't be
burdened with knowledge,
you'd keep all the
knowledge you need and go
on for another 100 years
or 200 years. That kind of
life I'd want. But I
wouldn't want to have such
knowledge as would make me
paranoid or drive me crazy
at a later age. And that's
one of the problems of old
age. Is that you have
senile paranoia and
similar things. Which we
don't want to have visited
upon us. So I would take
the gift of age if you
would give me health, and
a truly clean mind with
it.
JAMES DAY: Ray you don't
drive an automobile.
RAY BRADBURY: Not yet.
JAMES DAY: And you don't fly.
RAY BRADBURY: Not yet.
JAMES DAY: Why?
RAY BRADBURY: I'm a born coward
and also I know I would be
a murderer behind the wheel of a
car, which is more than most
people seem to know. We men are
especially horrible at
this, the average male is
the most dangerous drivers
on our roads, and kills
most of the people in our
society every year. He's
generally aged 21 as you
can gauge by the insurance
rates, and I think I would
be a dangerous murdering
fiend on the road and at
least I have enough sense
to know this and stay away
from the devices, I think
I'd kill someone the second day
out. Run over them and then back
up and run over them again.
JAMES DAY: What about flying?
RAY BRADBURY: Flying is a
matter of height. Took me
3 days to get to the top
of the Eiffel tower with
my kids, few years ago.
They had to bully me into
going up to the third level. I
just don't much like heights.
JAMES DAY: And neither of these
seem to interfere with your
work.
RAY BRADBURY: Not at all.
JAMES DAY: And you've
given us a very strong
impression you love your
work.
RAY BRADBURY: Intensely. I
wouldn't be in it, if I ever
stopped loving it I'll shift it
and go over and do
something else. And I have
so many loves though.
JAMES DAY: You think this
is important for all of us
to work in something that
gives us this kind of deep
satisfaction? That you
describe as love?
RAY BRADBURY: Yeah I don't
think life is worth
living, unless your doing
something you love
completely. So that you
get out of bed in the
morning and want to rush
to do it. If you're doing
something mediocre, if
you're doing something to
fill in time, life really
isn't working living and I
recommend suicide. I cant
understand people not
living at the top of their
emotions, constantly
living with their
enthusiasm, living with
some sense of joy, some
sense of creativity, I
don't care on how small a
level it is. If you're a
mathematician and love
figures, great. I don't
understand that, I've
never been any good at
figures, but if you love
it, and you tell me you
love it. Boy are you
lucky. I don't care what
field it is though. And
there's got to be a field
for everyone, doesn't
there? Even raising
children, which is not
supposed to be in these days,
but why can't one love that.
Huh, why can't one love that?
JAMES DAY:
Do you, are you fearful
about being put out of
work in writing about
fantasies of space as
reality over takes fantasy?
RAY BRADBURY: No
it's going to take about 3
billion or 4 billion years
for them to catch up.
Cause we've only been on
the moon for a few hours
out of the last 5 billion
years, so they haven't
caught up at all. And the
basic problems of science
fiction have always been
philosophical ones. Plato
wrote the first science
fiction works, among the
first anyway with The
Republic, The Republic is
an examination of a
possible future democracy
and the problems of
humanity and how do you
put together society
that works. Anytime you
postulate a theory of that
sort, your writing science
fiction. So all the
philosophy falls in to our
domain when we're thinking
about human kind and how
to better ourselves, how
to survive, what to do
with our machines, how to
build our cities and we're
just beginning to
understand human
character. So as to
construct better cities
and better places for
ourselves to raise our children.
JAMES DAY: Some
of your stories seem almost
to be a protest against
the overwhelming
mediocrity of life. And
yet I've seen you defend
mediocrity, defend the
junk of life as part of its joy.
RAY BRADBURY: Yes
I think we have to have
every kind of knowledge
there is. In order to
become excellent you first
have to be mediocre, which
only means medium anyway,
a lot of people use it
very pejoratively thinking
that it means poor,
it doesn't mean poor at all.
It just means medium.
And, but I believe in raising
children with all these
fabulous junks because I
was raised on them,
I found they were good food
and they helped me to
grow. Its liking blood
manure on roses, you have
to have a little of
everything. You can't
appreciate Shakespeare
until you've read Edgar
Rice Burroughs, first of
all. And you need both of
them in your life. You
know I spend my evenings
wildly changing styles
from reading Shakespeare
at the start of the
evening and reading James
Bond at the end of it.
There's room in your head
for al this, its not going
to contaminate you, it's
not going to corrupt you.
And it gives you then such
a complete education, that
you're subconscious, you
don't have to stop and
think and prevent your
subconscious from moving
when you're writing. Cause
you have all these styles
within you.
JAMES DAY: Thank you very much
Ray.
RAY BRADBURY: Thank you.
[Theme Music]
