It’s one of my most popular [books]; it’s in almost every school in America. And we’d already done “Fahrenheit 451.” At the Goddard Space Dinner in Washington, D.C., [recently], there were 4,000 aerospace people. The general in charge of the Pentagon says to me, “I read you in high school.” He looked out at the audience and said, “I wonder how many people tonight read you in high school.” I said, “Let’s find out.” So I stood up and said, “How many of you read me in high school?” Two thousand hands went up. That’s why we do this.
You use these things; they don’t use you. If you allow them to use you, you’re sunk. A library is no better than the person who walks into it. A CD-ROM is no better than the people who use it. A computer’s the same way.
It’s all been done backwards. The shuttle should have been done 30 years ago. It’s mail-carrying. They’re making topographical photographs of the planet, making atmosphere studies. It doesn’t lift the heart the way landing on the moon did. We should have done the shuttle first and then taken off for the moon and stayed there. Then we should go to Mars.
You have to do one to do the other, otherwise you can’t go. I was in Houston 28 years ago with all the astronauts. There were 60 of them. Life magazine sent me to interview these people. I was sitting in the back of the room and the Life editor said from the front of the room, “We have with us today, in the back of the room, Ray Bradbury.” Eighty percent of the astronauts leapt to their feet. If you know how to read, you become an astronaut. If not me, then H. G. Wells or Jules Verne.
I’m tired of seeing creatures from other worlds with the brains on the outside of the skull. There’s too much imitation going on by people who think they’re writers but aren’t. Don’t put me in outer space with another galactic war. I can’t stand galactic wars. I didn’t like them when I was 12 . . . I [read] all the great poets. Emily Dickinson, Yeats, Frost. I go back to Shaw most often. He’s a superb, gigantic pomegranate that explodes all over the place; I love him so much I put him into a science-fiction story called “GBS Mark V.” I learn from all of these people and bring it over into science fiction.
It’s a great place to grow up as a creator because there’s no intellectual hierarchy. I remember going to a party in New York about 35 years ago. They all called me Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. I said, “You, ma’am, your name and phone number? And you, sir, your phone number? And you, sir?” And they said, “Why are you taking our phone numbers?” I said, “Because the night we land on the moon, you’re going to get called.” I was in London when we did. I called three of them, and when they answered I said, “Stupid son of a bitch,” and hung up.
