View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of San Diego University of San Diego Digital USD News Releases USD News 1976-02-17 Ray Bradbury to Speak at USD February 26 Office of Publicnfor I mation Follow this and additional works at: http://digital.sandiego.edu/newsreleases Digital USD Citation Office of Public Information, "Ray Bradbury to Speak at USD February 26" (1976). News Releases. 1415. http://digital.sandiego.edu/newsreleases/1415 This Press Release is brought to you for free and open access by the USD News at Digital USD. It has been accepted for inclusion in News Releases by an authorized administrator of Digital USD. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NEWS RELEASE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION jj CONTACT: SARAS. FINN TELEPHONE : 714-291 -6480 / EXT. 354 SD ADDRESS: RM. 266 DE SALES HALL, ALCALA PARK, SAN DIEGO, CA 92110 RAY BRADBURY TO S~EAK AT USO FEBR UARY 26 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Ray Bradbury, noted science fiction and fantasy author, will spea k at the University of San Diego Thursd ay, February 26. His talk is set at 8 p.m. in Camino Theatre. Genera l admission is $2. 00; students $1.00, with tickets avail able at the door only. Bradbury has published over 500 articl es, stories , poems, plays, screenplays and novels. His sto ri es have appeare d in s cience fiction and fanta sy magazines, as well as su ch peri odicals as t he Saturday Eve ning Po st and t he New Yorker. Some of Bradbury's most popular books include Dande li on Wine, Fahrenh eit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicl es , and I Sing the Body Electric. Br adbury's talk is sponsored by the USO Assoc iated Students sr eukers Bure au . # # # 2/ 17/76 ( NEWS RELEASE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION jj CONTACT: SARAS. FINN TELEPHONE : 714-291 -6480 / EXT. 354 SD ADDRESS: RM. 266 DE SALES HALL, ALCALA PARK, SAN DIEGO, CA 92110 NEWS CONFERENCE FOR: RAY BRADBURY, science fict i on author DATE: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26 TI ME: 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. PLACE: ROOM 218 DE SALES HALL, UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO 2/18/76 Biograph~ News• September/October 1q7; BRADBURY tennis shorts. shoes and jacket (which on themselves. The new liberalism has he y,ears throughout the day "because to be radical conservatism, which it's most comfortable and easiest to means grabbing back power from a work in" ), Bradbury tries to grasp the 1984-type government. which our bu­ significance of his new acclaim. reaucracies have become.·· Bradbury contends that the only Plato's Science fiction &ospel he tries to spread is the gospel "One line well-written, well­ of individualism. " Everywhere I go I spoken. is worth 1,000 pictures," he tell students: ' Don' t complain that comments. "A new idea comes into your society is not handing you some­ the world, and the science fiction thing. Build something yourself,· " he writer looks at it, and tries to guess notes. "It drives me wild that people what to do with it, and how it will af­ want to be told what to do, or they fect mankind as a people or man as a want to be hired, or given money to do single individual. And that's where it. the fun comes in. Plato was writing " You are your own self-starter. science fiction in 'The Republic' when You make your own foundation . I'll he asks questions like: What is a man? never forget when radio was very big What is a woman? What is a slave? around 1950, at a party in New York What is wealth? City I met a producer who came up to ' 'Shakespeare invented Freud. He me and said: ' Ray, I love you -ha te wrote about visitations from ghosts you.' To which I offered my cong111tu­ inside the head, end then Freud bor­ lations, but asked: ' What's your proh rowed the metaphor and began his lcm?' And he said, 'Well. you 're doing investigations of the subconscious all the things I want to do.· I replied mind. The greatest works of Verne incredulously. ' What's your income and Melville grew out of their fear and every year?' He said, ' Eighty thou­ fascination with the scientific princi­ sand dollars.' I said 'Right now my in­ ple- one side being paranoid and de­ comt is $ I 00 a week .' It probably was structive, the other being positive and less-about $80. plugging into the energy. Years ago 'You Have free Wllr they envisioned the moral choices we "I said, · Don· t muck me up with face today es a nation and a planet." this talk . You've got more money Turning to his own works, Brad­ than I can even imagine having . bury comments, "My stories are in­ You' ve got freer choices. Quit your tended as much to instruct how to pre­ job. Take that $80,000 and go to vent dooms, as to predict them. The Florida. Lie on the beach and write· Brodoury \ ., ,, Moqgi e was on Engli sh last 10 years have been great because your novel. Don't tell me you love me­ instruc tor. 1 he y n, Iin o bookstor,,.e'---­ we have gotten more accustomed to hate me, and I 'm doing all the things Blorr•ph:,, democracy and its powers. Do you you want to do. I 'm doing them be­ N•w• realize that in the last 20 years we BRADBURY. Ray cause I want to do them. You do them have forced three presidents out of of­ because you want to do them . No fice. Don't forget that Truman had one's making you do anything in this PITTSBURGH a chance to run for president end world. You have free will .' " PRESS couldn't take it, because his policies According to Bradbury, being able (Pittsburgh, Penn .) Oct. 5, 1975 were unpopular. to do your own thing successfully re­ Nixon Hod Chane• quires a lot of courage and a certain "Then Johnson came along, and I amount of intelligence. " When I was RAY founded a group to oppose him run­ 12." he recalls, " I could see that I was ning for office six or seven years ago. an orange monkey. and everyone else All of my liberal friends said: · It's no was a brown monkey, and if I wasn' t BRADBURY use. he's in there. He's a megalomaniac. careful I 'd be destroyed . And that He'll never step down.' But l insisted. kind of instructive paranoia can be In Orb it With Ray Bradbury "He stepped down and then Nixon very helpful to a child. Take protec­ had a chance to really make it, but tive coloration. Pretend that you 're By Sandra Shevey didn't believe in himself, which is a dumb, and then let other people dis­ O R approximately two d~ades, great shame. Because his foreign poli­ cover that you arc bright. Remember, Ray Bradbury has been a cy was much more liberal than John­ people don't like bright people. Boys F household name to science fic­ son's or Kennedy's strangely enough. in school who speak up and get good tion readers. Lately, the 55-year-old We've been talking tor years, but we grades arc beat up after school. author (whose 24 novels include know now it's time to act to change "It's been my contention for y ears ''Illustrated Man," " Fahrenheit 451," the policies. and we're doing it. A lot that each of us makes his or her own "Martian Chronicles" and Dandelion of money is flowing back to the states, foundation . I've always been a t Man") has been surprised to find him­ back into the cities (or rapid transit. school although I never had much self beatified by large numbers of Nader's group has come along, and formal education. The library has youths as guru of a new creed. John Gardner's group, and there have been my foundation . My career has The m a in ideas which the younger been a lot or citizens' suits against provided me with a foundation-the generation has latched onto center on major corporations. experimentation possible within the Bradbury's oft-written warnings "We've grabbed back a lot of loosely knit, quasi-cultish community against becoming overly dependent on power, and we're grabbing back more of California-based writers. science and technology at the expense with a policy of radical conservatism, "For the past 27 years I've been of moral and aesthetic values. which is really what the mood of the part of a group who mttt on and off In the living room of his 10-room time is. The new liberals ,are out or every two weeks--such craftspersons house in Cheviot Hills, Calif., clad in step. They have to put another label as Charles Beaumont (since deceas- • 947 l' I BRADBURY Biograph~ News• September/October 1.q7; (Continued from preceding page) them didn't work. and I complained to his honor by a bookseller who worked ed) , Richard Matheson. George Clay­ Mr. Electrico. He gave me another, at Pickwick. There were around 20 ton Johnson, Sidney Stebe), Henry and asked me to walk. along the shore people there, and we were all waiting. Kuttner, Leigh Brackett and Richard with him. He began to tell me about When Heard came in the door, he Bach, who enjoyed such phenomenal himself: that he was a devout Pres­ looked around and said, "Where's success with 'Jonathan Livingston byterian minister, who was traveling Ray Bradbury?' It was so beautiful.