LOS ANGELES – Don’t call Ray Bradbury a science fiction writer.
He writes "speculative fiction," he says.
"I don’t write science fiction," he said. ‘I write about what’s possible. The only science fiction I’ve written is ‘Fahrenheit 451.’"
In addition to that piece of informtion, the 79-year-old Bradbury, who spoke at the Space Frontier Foundation conference Thursday, regaled the audience with tales of learning the writing trade from Robert Heinlein, being assigned a book report by director John Huston and a youth spent reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
Quoting from Burroughs' books, Bradbury related that when he was 12, he said, "Mars take me home. I did that one night and never came back."
The author of the "Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked this Way Comes" said he felt at home with the crowd of space enthusiasts and entrepreneurs.
He told the crowd, "You’re the insurers of our future. Take our dreams and try to put them together."
To make a point, Bradbury wryly explained why he believes in Genesis from the Bible and Darwin’s theory of evolution.
"Nothing is proven. It’s all theory," he said. "You can’t prove the past, but you can prove the future."
He described seeing a launch of one of the Apollo missions as making him reborn as a "space Christian."
On the eve of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, Bradbury was in London to appear on the David Frost show, he said.
He said he walked out before he was to appear because musical performers upstaged his effort to spread the message of space travel.
"That was the most joyful night for humanity and the world," he said. "I walked off and got in a cab and went across town to appear with Walter Cronkite."
Bradbury said humans have a duty to venture into and colonize space.
"We've got to pass on to other generations and improve it," he said. "We can find immortality in space. We go back to the Moon and stay and then to the planets and in another 500 years to Alpha Centauri."
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