bjbj"9"9 JUDY WOODRUFF: Next, remembering
one of the most celebrated authors of science
fiction.
Jeffrey Brown has our look.
JEFFREY BROWN: Ray Bradbury was a modern master
who helped bring the genre of science fiction
writing into the cultural mainstream.
And it began as a young boy, with fairy tales.
RAY BRADBURY, author: And I got a book of
fairy tales when I was 5 years old.
And I fell in love with reading all those
wonderful stories like "Beauty and the Beast"
and "Jack and the Beanstalk."
So I began with fantasy.
JEFFREY BROWN: Beginning in the early '50s,
Bradbury's books would sell more than eight
million copies.
They include the short story collections "The
Martian Chronicles" and "The Illustrated Man"
and his novels, "Fahrenheit 451" and "Something
Wicked This Way Comes."
He also wrote poetry, plays.
. . MAN: He rises!
JEFFREY BROWN: . . . the screenplay for the
1956 movie "Moby Dick."
RAY BRADBURY: I'm Ray Bradbury.
JEFFREY BROWN: And hosted "The Ray Bradbury
Theater" on television.
Bradbury referred to himself as an idea writer,
but one with a close eye on changes and the
culture around him, this from a 1970s interview.
RAY BRADBURY: 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.
JEFFREY BROWN: Bradbury won numerous literary
awards and the National Medal of Arts in 2004.
He died yesterday in Los Angeles at age 91.
And we explore the life and legacy of Ray
Bradbury with Lev Grossman, book critic for
Time magazine and himself a bestselling writer.
His novels include "The Magicians" and "The
Magician King."
Lev, perhaps first for those who haven't read
Ray Bradbury, or not in a long time, what
do you think made him such an important writer
in American literary life?
LEV GROSSMAN, author: Well, you know, you
come to him as a science fiction writer, but
as soon as you start reading him, you start
to realize that he's doing things that you
didn't realize that science fiction could
do.
I mean, after -- I came to him after writers
like Heinlein, who are thrilling and exciting.
But, with Bradbury, you started weeping.
You were terrified.
You were happy.
You were laughing.
He took you places psychologically that science
fiction writers didn't usually go or didn't
go before then.
He was exploring outer space, but in essence
he was really exploring inner space.
He was sort of taking you on a journey, the
inner space in your unconscious.
JEFFREY BROWN: There's a wonderful interview
in print he did with The Paris Review that
I was reading today.
And he said: "When I was a young writer if
you went to a party and told somebody you
were a science fiction writer, you would be
insulted.
They would call you Flash Gordon all evening
or Buck Rogers."
So, he really had to sort of fight his way
in, past the sort of sense of the genre as
a lesser type of writing.
LEV GROSSMAN: Well, it's funny.
He did.
And he did it because he was as smart as the
guys who were writing literary fiction, and
he wrote better than they did.
He was interested in words and language in
a way that very few science fiction writers
or even any writers are.
He was so good that they had to acknowledge
him.
They had to acknowledge that science fiction
was a kind -- was just another kind of literature,
as good as any other.
And the funny thing is, he didn't really seem
to care that much.
He thought of himself as a writer.
He loved what he did, and people could like
it or not.
It was all the same to him.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, how did he see his writing
and science fiction?
Also, in that interview, he referred to science
fiction as the fiction of ideas.
And I said in our intro he referred to himself
as an idea writer.
So what do we know about how he saw himself
as doing?
LEV GROSSMAN: Well, he was certainly one of
the early cautionary voices about technology,
about where it was taking us, about how technology
was changing us.
Even as it was developing, the tools we were
using affect who we are and how we live and
what our culture is.
He was one of the first people to kind of
pay attention to that feedback loop and think
about where it was taking us.
And that was -- you know, that was a revelation.
And many writers do it now, but he was among
the first and best.
JEFFREY BROWN: And that -- we should set the
context there.
That starts in the 1950s, right, postwar,
Cold War, worry -- well, the beginnings of
going to space and the fears of nuclear war.
LEV GROSSMAN: Yes.
Well, he sort of -- he presided over this
period in the 20th century that saw so much
incredible change, the rise of digital computers,
space travel, nuclear war.
And he was one of these wise skeptical voices
who kind of kept us centered and on track
and gave us a sense of perspective that, you
know, these things were amazing, but they
were also terrifying and they could take us
to dark places that maybe we didn't realize.
JEFFREY BROWN: And I saw a list today.
People are putting out lists of things from
his writing that eventually came true that
seemed crazy at the time, but they did come
true.
LEV GROSSMAN: He said often, I'm not writing
to describe the future or predict it.
I'm writing to prevent it.
And I think what he meant by that was, he
wrote cautionary tales that allowed us to
kind of head things off at the pass before
they happened.
JEFFREY BROWN: Where do you see his legacy
today, what writers, what kind of writing?
LEV GROSSMAN: Well, he was, you know, one
of the early writers who really transcended
any sort of sense of boundary between science
fiction and literature.
And there have been so many writers who do
that since then, Kurt Vonnegut, an obvious
example, Philip K. Dick, but also later writers
like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Kazuo
Ishiguro, Neil Gaiman, writers who write in
a way that defines themselves both as literary
writers and as genre writers, and shows that
there isn't really any great difference between
the two.
JEFFREY BROWN: Do you have a favorite one,
before we go?
Do you have a favorite book or story that
you want to recommend to people?
LEV GROSSMAN: Well, "Martian Chronicles" for
me is always the masterpiece, this idea that
we could go to Earth -- to another place,
to another planet, and go there, only to sort
of re-encounter these sort of dark spirits
from our own unconsciousness.
It was such a beautiful and powerful idea.
That's the one that stays with me.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, the life, work and
legacy of Ray Bradbury.
Lev Grossman, thanks so much.
LEV GROSSMAN: Thank you.
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