Twenty-four years ago, I met up with Ray at Disneyland in California, interviewed him (not for the first or last time) and made a radio programme for 'Meridian', the arts show on the BBC World Service of which I was a regular presenter.
Here, as a tribute to my old friend, is an opportunity to spend half-hour in the company of one of the most imaginative storytellers of our – or any – age...
The reader is Blain Fairman and the programme, first broadcast in 1989, was produced by Miriam Newman
4 comments:
Thanks Mr S. This is a perfect medicine for melancholy. (Where I have heard that phrase before?)
Thank you for posting this, Brian. "Follow the love."
Fab Mr B ! It's hard to think of this being the first 22nd Aug for 92 years without him but I guess he begins his quest for immortality at this point.Wherever his books are read or we listen to his words, that quest becomes a little nearer reality.
It's sort of right that he steps out as we get our first decent pictures of Mars - his enthusiasm helped get us there
Perhaps he'll suddenly appear in one of the camera lenses of the rocket.Stranger things have happened.... in his stories anyway.
Happy Birthday Ray !
Brian, you're not the only one to pay tribute: NASA have just announced that the Curiosity rover landing site on Mars is now named BRADBURY LANDING, in honour of Ray. They finished their press conference with a two-minute clip of Ray's last visit to JPL in 2009, where he was allowed to "drive" a Mars rover. They emphasised Ray's significance to the space programme,not just through his fiction but through his lifelong advocacy.
This absolutely echoes something Ray said in your interview with him: "To heck with technicalities. I can't build a rocketship. They can. But I can sell it, you see! I'm a great salesman."
(Which reminds me, did you ever see his prunes commercial with Stan Freberg...?)
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