Writer Ray Bradbury has died, aged 91. Shown above we have an hour-long lecture you can view by this grandmaster of fantasy fiction. About Bradbury: Bio | More clips: Browse
Video summary (via YouTube): Writer Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in "Telling the Truth," the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Lecture footage provided by University of California Television. Also mentioned in this clip: Dancer Gene Kelly, special effects creator Ray Harryhausen, and artist Joe Mugnaini.
Shown above: Icarus, illustration by Joe Mugnaini, materials and date not specified, but likely to be 1962. More info
Shown above: Gene Kelly appears with fellow dancer Cyd Charisse, in Singin' in the Rain (1952).
Shown above: Interview with special effects creator Ray Harryhausen. Video interview uploaded in 2011, provided by the Tate.
Shown above: Additional video clip featuring brief interview with Ray Bradbury. Uploaded 2007, source not specified. Sound for clip is a little loud, compared the others above; you might have to turn volume down somewhat.
Transcript (excerpt): Bradbury discusses the origin of one of his short stories.:
All of my stories that are worth anything are based on some sort of personal metaphor. And when I was eight years old, a little girl went into Lake Michigan, [a girl] that I was playing with, and she never came out.
What a mystery it was, to hear about this thing called drowning, and death. And she stayed with me, for 12, 13, 14 years, the memory of her disappearing into the lake.
And when I was 22, I sat at the typewriter one day and remembered the lake, and wrote the story of this girl, and building a sand castle with her, and very late in time, coming back, and there's the sand castle, waiting on the shore. She's been there. And left the metaphor of her death for me.
And when I finished the short story, I burst into tears. I realized that, after 10 years of writing, I'd written something beautiful. I'd turned a corner, into my interior self. I wasn't writing exterior stuff, I wasn't writing for the right, or the left, or the in-between; I was writing for me. And I discovered that that's the way to go.
