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Tarpinian: A Comic-Con Tribute to Ray Bradbury

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Rachel Bloom speaks at Comic-Con's Bradbury tribute. (Photos by John King Tarpinian.)

By John King Tarpinian: The Saturday evening tribute to Ray was very beautiful and moving.  The hall sat 4,000 people and followed a Gleek Fest.  I know of a few people who attended the Glee event in order to get a good seat for the tribute.

Even with having a line-up and an outline we had fifteen minutes to set-up and decide how to actually do the panel.   It was decided to take the tables off the stage and have a single podium so each speaker would be able to give their personal tribute to Ray.

Sam Weller was the organizer-host (The Bradbury Chronicles, Listen to the Echoes & Shadow Show).  He shared podium duties with Mark Evanier (Kirby: King of Comics).  Each tribute was separated by video clips of Ray over the decades.

First up was Rachel Bloom who had prepared a PG-13 version of her Hugo-nominated song.  When she came on stage she asked the assembled masses if they wanted to hear the CENSORED version or the real version.  Not one person in the hall opted for the CENSORED version and Rachel added some audience “call & response.” 

A number of the people who spoke have known Ray for half a century or more, William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson and Stan Freberg.  Both Bill and George let people know how Ray helped those two young writers.  If you youngins’ do not know the name Stan Freberg, just Google “Ray Bradbury Stan Freberg prunes” then sit back and prepare to laugh out loud.  Ray introduced Stan’s wife to him and was best man at their wedding.

Joe Hill gave a lovely tribute, of course.  He mentioned he had only met Ray the one time at the 2010 Comic-Con and that a man came over to him asking if he’d like to say hello to Ray.  I am proud to say that I was “that man.”  Joe also read a moving tribute from Frank Darabont.

Margaret Atwood had never met Ray and was supposed to visit him earlier this week but that was not to be.  She talked about how she read, as a young girl, Ray’s books as they first came out. That she used some of his themes in her books.  In The Handmaid’s Tale she used that women were not allowed to read because of Fahrenheit 451.

Marc Scott Zicree told how he first met Ray.   As a young man, Marc had done a “mixed tape” mashing up various audio renditions of Moby Dick.  Marc handed this out to a few friends.  A copy wound up with Ray.  Marc says he came home one day to find a message from Ray on his answering machine asking him to call.  Marc was afraid he was in trouble when in fact Ray loved the tape and they became fast friends.

On a final personal note, the only times I attended Comic-Con were with Ray.  Not a bad way to visit the zoo.  I did not speak but in talking to the guest speakers backstage I told how Ray’s hearing aids really did not work well with the den of noise in the hall but that hundreds of times an hour you could hear people shout out such phrases as, “OMG it’s Ray Bradbury.”  “I LOVE YOU RAY.”  “THANK YOU Ray.”  But the one that really got to me was when a young father and his son, who was riding on his shoulders said to the son, “There goes Ray Bradbury the greatest writer of all time.”  Once a man came up to Ray, got down on his knees bowed three times, got up and just walked away without saying a word.  There were lots of laughs, hugs and tears backstage and that will be how I will always remember Comic-Con.

Sam Weller

Margaret Atwood

Gary Gianni

George Clayton Johnson

Joe Hill

Marc Scott Zicree

Mark Evanier

William F. Nolan

Stan Freberg

More Bradbury Tributes

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Joe Hill meets Ray Bradbury for the first time at 2009 Comic-Con. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

Joe Hill
Wired
Sci-Fi Scribes on Ray Bradbury: ‘Storyteller, Showman and Alchemist’

I met him in San Diego a few years ago. He was being pushed along in a wheelchair, surrounded by people who were in glory to see him, and hear his voice. We were at Comic-Con, marooned among booths selling ray guns and comic books and maps of Martian worlds. Every third person who walked by wore a cape.

“All this,” I said, pointing around us, “is your fault.” I had to shout to be heard. His hearing wasn’t good.

He laughed — it was one hell of a laugh — and nodded and said, “You know, some of it probably is.”

(At the same link are quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin, Daniel Wilson, Jonathan Maberry, Mort Castle, Gordon Van Gelder, Robin Hobb, Elizabeth Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Morrell, Greg Bear, R. A. Salvatore, Lev Grossman.)

Michael Dirda
Washington Post
Ray Bradbury dies: Appreciation for an author who will ‘live forever’

But he always remained, in the hearts of many, America’s greatest science fiction writer, eventually being honored by a special Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime achievement. In truth, though, Bradbury’s fantasy, horror and science fiction did more than merely entertain. In all his work, he explored loneliness and the troubled human heart and our deep-seated fear of otherness. In that regard, he became what he always wanted to be — a great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic. Live forever, Mr. Bradbury.

Orson Scott Card
National Review
Thoughts on Ray Bradbury

Five years later, a young woman who lived across the street had to wear eyepatches for several days, making her effectively blind. I went over to her house to help her pass the time. I brought that hardcover of I Sing the Body Electric. I read to her.

That was when I realized that Bradbury’s stories were not meant to be read silently. Your lips have to move, your voice has to produce those words, the cadences of his language have to rise out of your own throat.

What counted in the Whitman quote Bradbury used for his title was not the word “electric.” Not even “body.” It was “sing.”

The girl I was reading to married me. Talk about a book changing your life! (She assures me that it was me, not Bradbury, she fell in love with.)

Keith Wagstaff
Time Magazine / Techland
Ray Bradbury Didn’t Love All Tech, but He Loved What Mattered Most

In the 1940s, when a young Ray Bradbury began a series of stories that would eventually become The Martian Chronicles, man had yet to even send a satellite into space. Since then, six U.S.-launched landers have touched down on Mars, with a seventh, Curiosity, due to land in 60 days.

The first images sent back by Viking 1 in 1976 confirmed what scientists already knew — nothing like the advanced Martian societies of Bradbury’s imagination existed on the planet. Still, scientists are hopeful that we’ll find signs of past life; more importantly, many of them were inspired to explore Mars in the first place thanks to works like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

One of those people was Ashley Stroupe. She first read his work as a 10-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Today she holds a job with the charmingly prosaic title of “Mars Rover Driver.”

Andrew Porter

Interesting that the various media websites that include photos show him after he became famous, such as at the White House or at mainstream author events. But of course there are no photos of him at the many SF conventions that he attended, because back then he was just some dumb sci-fi geek/nerd.

Note: I published Bradbury’s 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention Guest of Honor speech, in the December 1986 issue of my Science Fiction Chronicle; I taped his speech and had it transcribed. AFAIK, this was the only place it appeared in print.

Jeff Stahler
Editorial cartoonist
Bradbury Transits Mars – click on link, and if necessary, search June 7, 2012.

Martian Chronicles from Subterranean Press

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Martian Chronicles cover

Martian Chronicles cover

Review by John King Tarpinian: What can one say about Ray Bradbury’s Martian canon that is not known? In this volume there are more than 50 stories, essays, introductions and two full-length screenplays by Bradbury, just fewer than 800 pages. Over the past five decades and in different editions of Martian Chronicles stories have migrated in and out of the book that was currently in print. What Subterranean Press and PS Publishing have done is bring EVERY known Martian story of Ray’s together in one volume,  The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition. This includes ones that have never been in any book with the title Martian Chronicles and a few that have never been in print before, forty-nine stories in all. To add to the pleasure of this volume are two screen plays written by Bradbury. His introduction to the 40th anniversary edition is included. Lastly, in his own words, “How I Wrote This Book.”

The seven previously unpublished Martian stories are: The Disease, Dead of Summer, The Martian Ghosts, Jemima True, They All Had Grandfathers, The Wheel and The Marriage.

There are a few other contributors, writing introductions (really more like essays) to the different parts of the book. Reading a few of their words made my eyes mist up. They are Meeting the Wizard introduction by John Scalzi, Undiscovered Mars, Unseen Bradbury by Joe Hill, Lost Mars, the Unpublished Martian Stories of Ray Bradbury by Marc Scott Zicree and For Ray Bradbury by Richard Matheson.

The book is truly a work of art with Bradbury’s words being the canvas. This is the first and probably the last chance one will ever have to own ALL Martian stories in one volume. All of which came to life from the mind of a then little boy who read Edgar Rice Burroughs and since he could not afford to buy another John Carter novel went about writing his own Mars.

[The Table of Contents follows the jump.]

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