Poet of Mars

EDITORIAL Sheila Williams POET OF MARS I had to swim upstream to appreciate past June, New York Times’ critic the works of Ray Bradbury.The two peo- Michiko Kakutani said the author “saw ple who most shaped my earliest tastes the strange and miraculous everywhere, in science fiction were not fans of his and mastered the art of spinning them tales. My grandfather, a firefighter and into enduring yarns.” According to the avid reader, made no attempt to hide his Times obituary by Gerald Jonas, Brad- annoyance with an author who could bury found acceptance in magazines like imagine a world where firemen started Mademoiselle and The Saturday Evening fires and burned books. My father main- Post by eliminating SF jargon from his tained that Bradbury mostly wrote fan- prose. “He packaged his troubling specu- tasy and that genre didn’t interest him. lations about the future in an appealing My dad had introduced me to the hard- blend of cozy colloquialisms and poetic SF trinity of Asimov, Clarke, and Hein- metaphors.” Bradbury wasn’t the only SF lein. His passion for Edgar Rice Bur- author writing about ordinary life or us- roughs, who brought us princesses, ing metaphoric language. Contempora- warriors, and synthetic men of Mars, neous writers include Zenna Henderson, was limitless. My father liked some Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, and Bradbury. He’d read “A Sound of Thun- Kurt Vonnegut. Along with Vonnegut, der” to me and we’d spent a few hours though, he was one of the very, very few discussing the consequences of a time SF authors who appealed to a mass audi- traveler stepping on a butterfly, but he ence. Echoes of Bradbury’s themes and didn’t care for stories about ordinary life the attention he paid to the style and lan- or fiction that held a surreal edge. He guage of his writing can easily be found certainly had no patience for a book in the works of many modern SF, fantasy, about a suburban development on Mars. and mainstream authors. I never could convince my father that Bradbury said that he read poetry Burroughs’ swordsmen knocking around every day of his life. In 1971, Caltech held Barsoom were any less fantastic than a symposium in celebration of Mariner 9, Bradbury’s vision of the same planet. No which would become the first spacecraft one in my family expected me to mind- to orbit another planet the following day. lessly imitate their taste in literature, It’s well worth viewing an excerpt from a but my discovery of the joys of The Mart- NASA video of the event at www.youtube. ian Chronicles was one of my first steps com/watch?v=EBtZjbTDTDk&feature= toward independent thinking. I quickly youtu.be. Bradbury is clearly delighted to devoured The Illustrated Man and I Sing be included, but believes he is the “least the Body Electra on my own. When, at scientific of all the people up on the plat- sixteen, I lent my minister my favorite form.” Instead of talking about science, novel—The Listeners by James Gunn— he reads from his lovely poem, “If Only he returned the favor by handing me We Had Taller Been.” Bradbury felt the Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked poem encapsulated “why I love space This Way Comes. Some of Bradbury’s travel, why I write science fiction.” writing fell under science fiction, some of By the time I entered the field, he it was definitely fantasy, but the distinc- seemed to be concentrating more on poet- tion didn’t seem very important. What ry and playwriting than on fiction. Once, was important was that it exposed me to we asked permission to reprint a poem, a different way to tell a story, and a dif- but his representative told us the work ferent story to tell. would cost us a thousand dollars. Since Commenting on Bradbury’s death this that was a significant portion of the bud- Asimov’s get for an entire issue, we were unable to well-known in the Soviet Union. For in- pursue reprint rights any further. stance, Ray Bradbury and I are science Still, although Bradbury moved be- fiction writers whose books are enor- yond science fiction’s borders, his roots mously popular in the Soviet Union.” were in the genre. Bradbury had grown Perhaps Burroughs put us on the up on the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Moon, but Bradbury was no less influen- Wells. He believed that Edgar Rice Bur- tial. Just yesterday as I write this, on roughs was the “most influential writer what would have been his ninety-second in the history of the world.” In a conver- birthday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora- sation with Sam Weller, author of Listen tory announced that it was naming Cu- to the Echoes, The Ray Bradbury Inter- riosity’s Martian touchdown site Brad- views, he remarked, “Say to a girl or boy bury Landing. Michael Meyer, a NASA at age ten: Hey, life is fun! Grow tall! I’ve program scientist for Curiosity said, talked to more biochemists and more as- “This was not a difficult choice for the tronomers and technologists in various science team. Many of us and millions of fields, who, when they were ten years old, other readers were inspired in our lives fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream and decided to become something roman- of the possibility of life on Mars.” tic. Burroughs put us on the moon. All In addition to the chessmen and gods the technologists read Burroughs.” and all the job titles Burroughs proposed, A lot of people grew tall on the works of someday when we’ve settled Mars, we’ll Ray Bradbury. On May 31, 1990, Mikhail probably need surveyors and realtors Gorbachev held a luncheon at the Soviet and doctors and actuaries and teachers Embassy in Washington, DC, for various and engineers of Mars. We’ll need writers cultural luminaries that included Isaac and poets, too, but Bradbury was and will Asimov and Ray Bradbury. According to remain a very special poet of Mars. Isaac, they were invited because the president “wanted to meet with represen- tatives of American culture who were 5.

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