On this day in 1920, Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois. Mr. Bradybury would grow up to be a famous American author and screenwriter.
One of his science fiction works,The Martian Chronicles stories, tells the story of mankind’s colonization of Mars and the ultimate effect on the colonizers.
He wrote numerous other famous books and short story collections, including Fahrenheit 541, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, and Dandelion Wine.
Speaking on science fiction, Mr. Bradbury once stated:
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
Asked in a 2004 interview what he thought about the US space program, he stated:
It’s too late, isn’t it? We’ve let 30 years go by. It’s stupid. It’s stupid. We should have stayed on the moon. We should have made moon the base, instead of building space stations, which are fragile and which fly apart. The moon is a good, solid base to build a space travel organization in the community. Then we take off from the moon and we go to Mars. But it’s terribly late. We’ve let too much time go by. We’ve been busy with war instead of being busy with peace. And that’s what space travel is all about. It’s all about peace and exploration and wonder and beauty.
Fortunately, it is not too late to visit the Moon or Mars, as demonstrated by NASA’s Artemis program. It’s the art (and science) of the possible.
Our Awesome Universe 