Ray Bradbury speaking at the 1988 Santa Barbara Writers Conference
Ray Bradbury was a singular, irreplaceable figure in American letters, and the most wonderfully inspirational speaker our Santa Barbara Writers Conference ever had. Losing him is a great blow to every one of us who knew him and shared his love of the written word. For almost forty years, his voice opened the conference, his talk kick-started a week of passion and devotion to idea of being a writer. Indeed, my own father used to bring friends down from Northern California just to hear Ray speak about the reasons we write, and why nothing and nobody should ever dissuade us from putting words on a page. We will greatly miss that unbounded enthusiasm, that booming and irreverent voice, his terrific adoration of books and undying creativity, but we will never forget the road he directed us to follow. Safe travels, Ray!
– Monte Schulz
When I was young, long ago, I imagined myself a writer as an adult. My father, a struggling survivor of the Great Depression, saw things differently. He convinced me there was no future for women in the writing business and chose for my future profession the field of Radiology as a technician. Science was of no interest to me, but I respected my father and succumbed to his wishes when I was eighteen. In 1973, while attending Santa Barbara City College in the Radiological Technology Program, I had the great honor of attending a lecture by one of my favorite authors, Mr. Ray Bradbury. He rekindled my love of writing and I made it my goal to pursue my dream of writing while simultaneously fulfilling my father’s wishes. To you, Mr. Ray Bradbury, I am eternally grateful.
Ray Bradbury saved my life. I told him that once, at a book signing, and I think it embarrassed him. Probably because he could sense that I meant it. I had a difficult adolescence, you see. Enlisting the word “difficult,” here, to bear copious freight. Couple of anvils, three or four train wrecks, a collapsed bridge or five. Pot-pourri of twisted iron, chunked-up concrete, coated in nameless sludge, topped with a poison cherry. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” chorus the objecting relatives. “You’re exaggerating.” Whatever. Maybe I would have survived. There are plenty who didn’t. I can’t break it down into theories and proofs. I know that there were things the casualties didn’t have that I did. Large in that tally, they didn’t have Ray. It has made it difficult (laden, again) for me to express what I feel about him, his passing, the personal legacy he left me. Along with Asimov, Tolkein, Heinlein, Dick and a few others, Ray was among my second fathers. He sat at the head of their table. So, how did he do that? How did a man I never encountered in person until my mid-forties save the life of a bullied, badgered, isolated and confused teenage boy? He spoke to me. He spoke to me directly. I knew he was right on the other side of that page, not addressing an audience, but one person at a time. He was right there in the room with me, whenever I opened his books. He assured me that life was more than its banal constraints, its jealousies and prejudices, its practicalities and responsibilities and expediencies. He assured me that I was right, that life is not grey, and that in between the agreed upon and the understood and the taken for granted are realms of mystery and possibility beyond number. He gave me a cosmos of wonder and held it to my chest, where my heart could absorb it. He gave me a gift no one could take away. I wouldn’t let them. I hid it from them. “This you cannot have.” And they knew it, some of them. “You live in a fantasy world.” Well, better my fantasy than your reality, thank you very much. Better these skin illustrations, better these Martians, better these book people, better these rockets and stars and sparkling clouds, better these lightning bolts and high places, better this passion, better this love than your iron walls, and your bleak impossibilities, and your colorless pre-ordained futures, and your inhumane crush of numbers, and your conveyor-belt identities. Better. “You can do whatever you want,” Ray used to say. He said he never believed young people when he asked them what they wanted to do and they told him they didn’t know. He said they just didn’t believe in themselves. “Never let anyone take from you the things that you love,” he said. I loved him. I still do.
Ray Bradbury saved my life. I told him so once, at a book signing, and I think it embarrassed him. Probably because he could sense that I meant it. I had a difficult adolescence, you see. Couple of anvils, three or four train wrecks, a collapsed bridge or five. Pot-pourri of twisted iron, chunked-up concrete, coated in nameless sludge, topped with a poison cherry. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” chorus the objecting relatives. “You’re exaggerating.” Whatever. Maybe I would have survived. There are plenty who didn’t. I can’t break it down into theories and proofs. I know that there were things the casualties didn’t have that I did. Large in that tally, they didn’t have Ray. It has made it difficult for me to express what I feel about him, his passing, the personal legacy he left me. Along with Asimov, Tolkein, Heinlein, Dick and a few others, Ray was among my second fathers. He sat at the head of their table. So, how did he do that? How did a man I never encountered in person until my mid-forties save the life of the bullied, badgered, isolated and confused teenage boy I once was? He spoke to me. He spoke to me directly. I knew he was on the other side of that page, not addressing an audience but one person at a time. He was right there in the room with me, whenever I opened his books. He assured me that life was more than its banal constraints, its jealousies and prejudices, its practicalities and responsibilities and expediencies. He assured me that I was right, that life is not grey, and that in between the agreed upon and the understood and the taken for granted were realms of mystery and possibility beyond number. He gave me a cosmos of wonder and held it to my chest, where my heart could absorb it. He gave me a gift no one could take away. I wouldn’t let them. I hid it from them. “This you cannot have.” And they knew it, some of them. “You live in a fantasy world.” Well, better my fantasy than your reality, thank you very much. Better these skin illustrations, better these Martians, better these book people, better these rockets and stars and shimmering clouds, better these lightning bolts and high places, better this passion, better this love than your iron walls, and your bleak impossibilities, and your colorless pre-ordained futures, and your inhumane crush of numbers, and your adamantine certainties, and your conveyor-belt identities. Better. “You can do whatever you want,” Ray used to say. He said he never believed young people when he asked them what they wanted to do and they told him they didn’t know. He said they just didn’t believe in themselves. “Never let anyone take from you the things that you love,” Ray said. I loved him. I still do.
I am looking for help regarding the “Young Author Conference” which was held May 14, 1988. My daughter, Kellie Brett Bowen, at that time was 8 years old, wrote a book and it was published. At that time, she was attending Lucerne Valley Elementary School. However, the one copy we received has been lost and/or misplaced. How can I request a copy of this book? Would you PLEASE help me or guide me in the right direction? I would sincerely appreciate any help you would give me.