An author who needs no introduction, Ray Bradbury’s work spans over six decades of the American experience. He has written for nearly every storytelling medium, finding equal success in each. An advocate of self-education, libraries, space exploration and the arts, Ray Bradbury is one of the definitive literary minds of the of the modern era.

CD: It’s a well-known fact that you did not attend college and feel you are a better writer for it; what do you feel are shortcomings of a university education?

RB: Unless you find a teacher who is your twin, don’t go to college. There’s always the danger of teachers trying to change your loves, your needs and your tastes-of trying to mold you into them. When I thought I wanted to go to college I asked myself why, and I realized-I wanted to meet girls. Don’t go to college for sex. You won’t learn anything. After I graduated high school I got a job on the street corner selling newspapers and made ten dollars a week. That was enough money for me to write everyday and go to the library every day. That was my education-the library. Thank god, I didn’t go to college. You can’t learn writing by talking about writing- you have to live writing. You should hang out and make friends with people like you-people who think like you. You have to write what you love, and do it every day until you get better and better. They can’t teach that in a classroom.

CD: When you were young there were very few writers working in the genre of fantastic fiction; what attracted you to this genre of storytelling?

RB: I read a lot of Jules Verne, a lot of HG Wells, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars stories. One of my biggest influences was the comic strips-when I was little we had Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon. They weren’t like the comic strips in the paper today-they had real imagination. When I read the first panel of Buck Rodgers it pulled me into the future-I started thinking about the future. I started collecting comic strips-I wanted to be part of that world-part of that environment.

CD: In numerous cases you’ve adapted your works to fit any combination of mass mediums. Is that flexibility an important part of communicating a good story?

RB: It’s not about flexibility-it about writing what you love. I love short stories so I write short stories-I love movies so I write movies. I’ve seen every movie ever made. When I was four years old my mother took me to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame and I fell in love with Lon Cheney. I wanted to grow and be a hunchback. When I was six I saw The Lost World and fell in love with dinosaurs and it changed my life forever. I wanted to write dinosaur stories, and that’s how I got hired to write the Moby Dick movie-because I wrote about dinosaurs. So you see, you select all these mediums-but it’s really about writing the stories you love to write.

CD: How close are we to seeing the events of Fahrenheit 451 coming to pass?

RB: One of the worst things we’re doing is education. We don’t begin teaching children to read and write early enough. Children are able to learn how to read and write when they’re three and four years old-schools don’t start teaching them soon enough. By the time they start teaching them-at five or six-it’s too late, the desire to learn is gone. I taught myself how to read and write when I was three. Teachers have become lazy and sloppy, and parents should want a better education for their children- they need to insist on it. Our government has all its priorities wrong. Politics focus on the wrong issues. Education should be the most important issue.

CD: Libraries have played an integral part in your life. Where is the libraries’ place in the digital age? Is there still value in the experience of visiting a library at a physical location?

RB: Forget the digital age-the digital age is garbage. Libraries are always going to exist. By God the smell when you open the door to the library…..it’s magical- it’s like opening Tutankhamen’s tomb. Forget machines-forget computers. There’s something magical about sitting in the middle of the library, reading, and feeling the vibrations of all the great authors of history impinging on you. No machine will ever be able to do that.

CD: Today many of the most popular forms of entertainment, be it on television or websites like You Tube, are videos of people performing mundane every day tasks or talking to the camera. Do you feel voyeuristic reality programming and its popularity is the harbinger of the death for our imaginations?

RB: There is no imagination in reality TV-it’s not looking ahead to the future. We need to stop creating entertainment where we don’t have to think. It’s stupid, it’s ugly, and it’s not improving our lives. Everyone who makes reality TV should be shot.

CD: Of all of your honors, awards and citations, which came as the biggest surprise?

RB: None of them surprised me-I expected it. When I was a child I told my father I was going to be “the greatest writer of all time”. Once you expect to be the greatest writer of all time nothing comes as a surprise to you.

CD: What are your hopes for mankind in the next hundred years?

RB: We’ll be in space. Putting the man on the moon was one of the greatest moments for our country and mankind. I was lucky enough to have been alive when man landed on the moon and I remember the excitement. We should never have lost interest in the space program-we should be on Mars by now. My Children and grandchildren are going to see us land on Mars-and I’m jealous. First we’re going to colonize Mars and then we’re going to move onto the rest of the universe and live there. It’s our destiny. I wish I was able to live forever and see it.

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