The True Story of Ray Bradbury and Theme Parks with Dr. Phil Nichols, or Pete and Kelly Become Desperate for Validation and Call an Expert!

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
I think it's important to build something
like an upcoming warrior for thematter Disney World or
Disneyland because we attractyoung people, minimal people,
who have made up their mindsabout the future.
So therefore the kids come in aswe older at a certain age
looking for their own futuresthere.
We go into libraries for thesethings, we go to movies for

(00:22):
these things, but we go to worldfairs.
And somewhere along the line,we're passed through the
experience.
I look upon the Hipcomb Center,the center of it, the very
center of it, the SpaceshipEarth, as a kind of Schweiter
centrifuge.
Schweiter was always telling uswhat?
That we should set examples,someone may imitate them,

(00:43):
preferably good examples.
So if you put the children inthe centrifuge of Spaceship
Earth and world them aroundfilled with the ideas of the
former past, the immediatepresent, and the former future,
they'll come out galvanized andcare very much about getting out
of bed tomorrow morning.

(01:04):
That's what you must do forchildren.
The educational process must doit, teachers must do it, and we
must do it.
And let's be there ahead of theteachers this time, huh?
Let's say to the children, forGod's sake, the future is worth
building.

SPEAKER_04 (01:32):
Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a
podcast where we look ateveryone's favorite theme park
attractions, lands, textures,and novelties.
We talk in, over, about, andthrough our week's topic, and
then, with literally no concernfor practicality, safety, or
economic viability, we come upwith ways to make them better.

(01:52):
My name is Kelly McCubbin,columnist for the theme park
website Boardwalk Times, andwith me as always is Peter
Overstreet, University Professorof Animation and Film History in
Northern California.

SPEAKER_05 (02:15):
So Pete, yes.
What are we talking about today?
Well, last our last episode, wetook uh our listeners on an
extraordinary journey intonothingness.
And uh it was uh it was our itwas one of our annual what if
episodes where we like to uhfind proposals of theme parks

(02:37):
that never existed or just comeup with our own suppositions as
to why a particular uh themepark was never developed.
Um two years ago we didFleischer Land, and last week,
uh uh is it really it feels likelast week, um, we released our
episode on um the uh was it theelectrical time maze?

(02:58):
Is that what that was?

SPEAKER_04 (03:00):
You've forgotten already.
It's the great electric timemaze.

SPEAKER_05 (03:02):
See, it doesn't it doesn't even exist, that's why I
forgot it.
Um yeah, so it and it is basedoff of a proposal that was
written by Mr.
Ray Bradbury, one of the greatscience fiction authors of the
20th century.
And um we carried it through toits to its climax of waxing
poetic and building wax eloquentall the way through.

(03:24):
And it um it was a lot of fun todo.
Uh and some of you may belistening and wondering.
Yeah, it was harrowing.
But it in the end, we had to leteverybody off the hook and say
this does not exist, sadly.
It would have been a greatattraction, but it's not.
Um and some of you may actuallybe wondering about the validity
of some of our facts that wespewed about Ray Bradbury.

(03:45):
And even we're wondering, evenwe're wondering some of the
validity of these facts.

SPEAKER_04 (03:50):
We're gonna add some air quotes to the word facts on
the phone.

SPEAKER_05 (03:54):
Yeah.
So uh so we have brought anexpert uh as who's a guest on
our show today.

SPEAKER_04 (03:59):
That's right.
Uh just to add some credibilityto the nonsense that we spew.
We have brought Dr.
Phil Nichols.
Hello.
Uh Dr.
Nichols is in England, so uh, wehave this great what eight-hour
time gap between the three ofus, but we've managed to work it
out.
Dr.
Nichols is a universitylecturer.
He has so many letters after hisname.

(04:21):
Many of them I don't know whatthey are.
I recognize Masters, I recognizePhD.
There's there's others we canget into later.
He is the editor of the new RayBradbury Review, which but puts
you in a lineage with WilliamNolan, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 (04:36):
Yes, he he edited the original uh when it wasn't
even new, and it was just calledthe Ray Bradbury Review, which
was a kind of a one-off, really.
Right.
In the um, I don't know when itwas, sixties, seventies?
Yeah, it was then revived as anacademic journal.
Well, semi ac semi-academic.
Uh and that's when I uh steppedin.

SPEAKER_04 (04:57):
That's great.
He's a senior consultant at theRay Bradbury Center.
He uh broadcasts two podcaststhat I myself listened to, which
is how I got in touch with thegentleman.
He does Bradbury100, which is awonderful podcast, and with his
friend Colin.
He does Science Fiction 101,which is also delightful.
He also does the Bradbury 101YouTube channel.

(05:18):
Uh that basically, if you havequestions about Ray Bradbury,
this is your guy.
Yep.
So welcome.

SPEAKER_03 (05:26):
I don't always have the answers, but I'll I'll
always tackle the question.

SPEAKER_04 (05:30):
I can almost guarantee your answers are
better than ours.
So welcome.
We really appreciate you beinghere.
Thank you.
So uh let's just uh as a kind offirst shot across the bow.
You very kindly and and bravelylistened to our great electric
time maze episode.

(05:51):
What did we get egregiouslywrong?

SPEAKER_03 (05:54):
Nothing.
I don't think you got anythingegregiously wrong.
In fact, I thought you broughtit to life incredibly well.
Oh wow, thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, what people need to knowis that it's just a a few pages
of text.
Well, actually, it might beabout twenty pages.
But um, it sure feels like it ifnot.

SPEAKER_05 (06:12):
You know, it's no offense to Mr.
Bradbury.
It he obviously had a huge blockof cheese and some schlitz beer
and just typed away, you know,just crank it away at this
thing.

SPEAKER_03 (06:21):
So what I find amazing about it is that he he
stuck it in this book of hiscalled Yes Tomorrow, which is
not a terribly well-known book,but it's a book of essays.
Yeah.
And uh it's in there without anyreal explanation of what it's
there for.
Um and so you just read it andyou think, what was that?

(06:42):
And if he'd given it somecontext, you know, I think m
most readers would be able tomake more sense of it than they
can at present.
I mean, it's an interestingread, but it's probably the most
peculiar piece of Bradburywriting you will ever see.

SPEAKER_04 (06:57):
Yeah.
It's it it's really interesting.
And there's a moment, uh I thinkit's maybe the last couple of
lines of it where he sayssomething like, and now I'm
exhausted and and I have to goto bed, you know.
And it just seems like he justwent, it was some like
caffeine-fueled mania.
He was like, I'm going to writeeverything that I have been

(07:17):
holding back writing about themeparks, and I'm just gonna do it
in this one run, and it's gonnabe a little bit insane, and it's
going to be fascinating.
Really interesting, uh somereally interesting stuff going
on in there, and then just getit out of my system and put it
away, and it feels like that tome.

SPEAKER_05 (07:36):
Yeah.
He's kind of uh emulating RobertE.
Howard there a little bit withjust the first draft of Conan.
It's like you will write this,you know, in the middle of a
rainstorm in Texas.

SPEAKER_03 (07:46):
I mean, he was known, as you said in the in the
podcast, um, he he was known forsaying, don't think, and just
trying to get the words to flowout of him.
So I've I've no doubt at allthat he did write it in a sort
of a continuous flurry of ideascoming into his head and and
ending up on the page.
But usually, certainly when he'swriting fiction, he would go

(08:08):
back to it later and edit.
Right.
So it it wouldn't look like afirst draft.
But this piece is I don't knowhow you found it, but I found
there's quite a lot ofrepetition in there.
Yes.
He quite often will state anidea and then sort of rewind his
steps and then say it again.
And uh it really does feel likehe did not go back and do a a

(08:30):
further draft of it.
In the context of the YesTomorrow book, it he sort of
gets away with that becauseeverything in that book is uh
what you referred to last timeas blue sky thinking.
Yes.
Um he most of the essays inthere were written for an
architectural company to givethem inspiration.
And so he he was paid to come upwith basically crazy ideas which

(08:55):
other people could then bounceoff.
Um and so uh one of the thingsthat was in the time maze is
that whole first section wherethe first thing you do when you
enter the time maze is you eat.
Yeah, yes.
And this comes out of one ofRay's other essays, and I've
forgotten what it's called, buthe he basically says at the

(09:18):
beginning of this other essaypeople don't go out to shop,
people go out to eat.
And while they are out, theyshop.
Now I can see the logic of that,and I think that's possibly more
true of Bradbury, who perhapsdidn't like going out shopping
with the family, but he loved toeat.

(09:40):
Well you can imagine that that'show he coped with shopping, is
that he would you know, he wouldgo and sit in the food court or
whatever, and then face up tothe shopping that he had to do,
which was like a chore to him.
But that that simple conceptthat um we don't actually go out
to shop, we go out to eat.
And then while we're out, weshop.

(10:03):
That is what caused theinvention of the food court.
Like of every shopping mall thatyou've ever been in, yeah.
Nowadays, there's a food court.
Yeah.
And that comes from, I believe,from Bradbury's essay, which he
wrote for John Jurdy uhArchitectural Firm.
They then built one of theearliest malls in America, which

(10:25):
I think was probably the one inSan Diego.
If not that, it was in Glendale,uh California.
Um and those were built eitheraround a food court or with a
food court at the heart of them.
And ever since then, mm allshopping malls have had some
kind of food court.
Yeah.
So, in a sense, Bradbury isresponsible for that.

SPEAKER_05 (10:48):
For better or for worse.
We're gonna lay it at his feetone way or another.

SPEAKER_04 (10:54):
We we uh you know one thing that I noticed, and
reading over yestermoro on thewhole, which I I did uh a couple
of years ago for some someother, I was looking for
something else, but I I found itinteresting.
And one of the things that kindof dovetailed for me into some
other research and some otherpodcasts that we had done, is

(11:14):
that uh what Bradbury tended topropose as far as urban
planning, and yesterday is in ina large way about urban
planning.
Yeah.
What he tended to propose wasvery similar to the things that
Victor Gruen had proposed.
Which Victor Gruen's known muchto his chagrin.

(11:35):
He hated this, but he was knownas the the father of the
shopping mall.
What the shopping mall becamewas not what he intended.
But I thought I thought it wasreally interesting because you
have this sense of, you know, uha sort of central place for a
community to come.
It's it's once you at least onceyou get there, it's very
walkable, uh, which obviouslywould have been very key for

(11:58):
Bradbury who didn't drive.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
And so I just I I thought a lotof the ideas sort of dovetailed
with Gruen's ideas, which uh wewe learned doing some research a
little while ago that uh wellDisney was also fascinated with
Victor Gruen.
So they have similar sort ofideas, like this is how a

(12:19):
community should work.
It should have a centralizedplace that you can go to that
has uh shops and food and butmainly bookstores if you're
talking about Ray's writing.
So we we get things like thewritings in Yestermorrow, but we
also get kind of Disneylandcoming out of Victor Gruen's
writing, uh, which obviously Raywas was fascinated with.

SPEAKER_03 (12:40):
Yes, absolutely.
And Ray really thought thatDisneyland was the template for
uh downtown areas.
He really believed that Disneyhad perfected that in
Disneyland, the way that youhave the the kind of the go in
you go in through the gates atDisneyland and you're sort of on
Main Street.
Um he felt that was the perfectsmall town, and it reminded him

(13:05):
of the small town that he grewup in and other places that he
had um seen over the years.
Um and in fact he even said toDisney, apparently, allegedly,
he said to Disney, um you shouldrun for mayor of Los Angeles.
Yeah.
Um because he really thoughtthat that was a model you could
apply.
I think he was I mean th Ithere's a lot of truth in that,

(13:27):
but I think he's also losingsight of the fact that
Disneyland is it Disneyland is aplace you pay to go into.
You expect perfection, you know,you expect everything you want
to be laid on exactly there.
Whereas when you go to a town,you're not necessarily paying
anything.
You're you're getting it forfree up to the point where you

(13:49):
go in somewhere and spend money.
So I uh to me they're not aperfect analogy, Disneyland and
the small town, but for Bradburyhe saw it saw it as a uh a real
model to follow.
And he certainly was influencedin that with his own ideas.
Plus, he was influenced with hisnotions of uh European cities

(14:09):
where you know you would have acentral plaza uh which would be
surrounded by cafes, and uh eachcafe would have seating outside
as well as inside.
So he kind of saw that as beingthe perfect uh model as well.

SPEAKER_04 (14:25):
Yeah, and it's interesting because you you read
through some of the things in inYestermorrow, and I forget which
essays in particular, but thereare essays where he suggests
that these these town centresare places where you should be
able to go to specificallywithout paying for anything.
With without even shopping orbuying books or eating.

SPEAKER_03 (14:47):
Yes.
Yeah, so so it it is thedisnification that of um the
town that he he wants to see.
Yeah.
But then he does add things tothat.
And one of the things, um, Idon't know if you remember this
from your own reading of thebook, but there's an essay in
there which is called somethinglike The Aesthetic of Lostness.

(15:09):
Yeah.
And the idea is that when we'rein a place uh l like a shopping
mall, we don't actually,according to him, we don't
actually want to be able to seeeverything from where we are.
We want to be able to go down uhsort of branching corridors,
some of which will be dead ends,and we don't know exactly what

(15:30):
we're gonna come across when weget down there.
Right.
Um now I think there speakssomebody who, again, probably
found shopping very boring, andhe he thought having avenues to
explore would be interesting.
But I I don't know about you,when I go to a shopping mall, I
just want to be in and out.
I don't want to spend any timethere.

(15:51):
So to me, branching corridors isthe worst thing you could have.
But for him, that idea of beinglost so that you can uh explore
things at your leisure andbacktrack and find new byways
and so on, he found that veryappealing.
And again, that was that wasacted upon by the uh uh John
Jurdy architecture agency andsome of their mole designs.

(16:14):
So he you know he had a aninfluence with this.

SPEAKER_04 (16:17):
It wasn't just theoretical stuff, unlike the
time maze, which um which waspurely theoretical, but there it
very much is there they aremazes.
You know, they they are you areintended to get lost in them.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is which is contradictorywith the weird narrative thing
that he tries to put together inthe second time maze.

(16:37):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (16:38):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (16:38):
I I can understand his his fascination with getting
lost in an especially in aneatery situation because of his
love for places like Clifton'scafeteria, because um he was a
regular there, and I don't knowif you've ever been there, Phil,
but it is quite a maze.
And it is like three or fourstories of redwood trees and

(17:00):
taxidermy.
I mean, it's a cabinet ofcuriosities, is what it really
is.
Um but that's that's whereForrest J.
Ackerman and uh Ray and uhanother Ray, Harryhausen, all
kind of founded their theirlifelong friendship together.
And since Ray was, you know,Bradbury was such a regular

(17:20):
there that probably some of hisideas also sprung out of
Clinton's uh Clifford Clinton,who created Clifton's cafeteria,
was very much into utopic uhideals, especially when it came
to feeding people.
Um he seriously, I mean, becausehe had he operated his
restaurant, he would serve50,000 people a day during the

(17:40):
depression.
Wow.
And um and he ran it by thegolden rule.
It's like pay if you can, and ifyou can't, don't worry about it.
We gotcha.
And so, you know, I I can seeRay Bradbury definitely having
some of that rubbed off on himby being exposed to that.

SPEAKER_03 (17:57):
Yeah, I I can see that as well.
Um, I mean it lest anyone thinkthat Ray was some kind of
gourmet who uh perhapsappreciated fine European dining
or whatever.
Um he wasn't.
I he he was more of a junk foodeater than anything else.

SPEAKER_05 (18:13):
Yeah, um Yeah, I keep making jokes about Schlitz
beer.
I only get that because of a TVinterview that he did, and he
famously like pulls out a plateand he slices a huge chunk of
cheddar and he pops open a slitand he goes right back to his
typewriter and starts going.
And so that's why I make thatjoke.
But that's kind of evocative ofhis of his diet.

SPEAKER_04 (18:33):
So this kind of leads me to a track that I'm
sort of interested in.
You know, we think aboutBradbury as particularly kind of
at the 50s, like the kind of thepeak of his career, uh, as a as
a writer of about old towns andlike you know, Greentown and and
nostalgia.
But you know, talking aboutCliftons and talking about urban

(18:56):
planning, Bradbury was anAngelino.
He was he r really adapted in alot of ways for a long time to
Los Angeles.
Do you do you have do you havekind of thoughts about that?
Is that is that contradictoryfor him?

SPEAKER_03 (19:11):
Um To me it's not contradictory because I I've
I've lived with that knowledgefor a long time.
But I I guess if y you you'resort of learning about Bradbury
for the first time, that wouldseem contradictory.
To me, I think the reason itisn't contradictory is that the
small town represents his pastand his childhood and the

(19:32):
nostalgia element.
But the big city and the theurban sprawl is the science
fictional future.
Um so I I don't see them as thatcontradictory.
And if you if you listen to anyof his speeches or read any of
his essays or interviews forthat matter, you'll find that

(19:54):
he's frequently referring backto the same touch points.
He keeps referring back to KingKong, he keeps talking about
dinosaurs, he keeps talkingabout um the small town.
And uh he will also talk abouturban transport, the trol the
trolley that he used to ride inwell, I can't remember if Walk

(20:18):
Eagan actually had trolleys, butfrom his childhood, Chicago and
Walk Eagan, plus the oldtrolleys that used to run in Los
Angeles, and for years he was uha campaigner, an active
campaigner for having a monorailin LA.

SPEAKER_04 (20:34):
He was thrown out of a s a city council meeting,
wasn't he, for for advocatingfor that.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (20:42):
Took some notes from John Houston, did he?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (20:46):
But it it it again it relates to that thing of he
didn't drive.
Um through choice, he he founduh cars very scary because he
witnessed accidents and umwanted nothing to do with
driving.
So to him, having a monorailsystem or any form of urban

(21:07):
transport would have been ideal.
But um for some reason themonorail is the particular form
that uh he he always fancied.
Um maybe because of Disneyland,I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 (21:18):
I yeah, I have I have to expect it was because of
Disneyland.
And as I understand it, what wasgoing on with that particular
monorail project was that theAllweg Company, who is the
company that ostensibly builtthe Disneyland monorail, but
really they just kind of tooksome plans and built it on their
own.
But the Alweg Company was tryingto make inroads in the United

(21:40):
States, and they decided thatLos Angeles was going to be a
perfect place to install amonorail, and it was really
going to take off.
And uh, which does it make a lotof sense, and they were
basically going to give it tothe city for free.
They they they were going totake some sort of fair uh

(22:03):
payment, but they weren't gonnacharge Los Angeles anything to
build it because it was going tobe good press for them.
And they were like, look, we'vewe've connected Los Angeles, and
and they would let the fares paythem slowly over time.
And uh I I don't know howaccurate this is, but evidently
there was some sort of lobbyingfrom the gas companies or tire

(22:26):
companies or something like thatthat shot it down.
So I I think maybe uh part ofBradbury's frustration and and
why he was so focused on it washey, this is a free thing for my
city.
It's gonna be great.
And seeing it shut down, I Ithink infuriated him.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (22:44):
We weren't gonna get pneumatic people tubes, so we
were definitely gonna try andget it.

SPEAKER_03 (22:53):
It's that kind of science fictional vision of the
future, you know.
It's um I don't know if you'veever seen Logan's Run.
Oh, yeah.
The um, you know, the the sortof the mo the it's really very
corny model of the the domedcity that they keep showing in
the film.
That is the the the vision thathe would have grown up with.
Uh not from Logan's Run, butfrom the pulp magazines, which

(23:15):
were full of those sort of citydesigns.
Gernsbeck and all thoseillustrators, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 (23:20):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (23:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (23:21):
That's so cool.
Yeah, this kind of leads me toanother thing I was uh going to
bring up.
Uh I I recall actually on onyour podcast, Phil, a while back
talking about Bradbury beingaccused, or uh you'll you'll
correct this story for me, butuh I think his his publisher had
put out something that suggestedthat he might be anti-technology

(23:44):
and he had to sort of lay laydown the law and say, no, no,
no, no, I'm not.
And it it occurred to me, Iactually uh when I heard that, I
was like, this is interestingbecause in a way, uh a lot of
science fiction writers from the50s and 60s, truly great science
fiction writers, were a littlebit anti-technology, they were
cautionary tales.

(24:05):
Um so I don't think that thatwas wrong.
But w what's interesting to meis that there seems to be an arc
from yes, there they are sort ofcautionary tales, to especially
when you get to Ray working onon things like Epcot Center,

(24:25):
where he seems to be a true,pure, optimistic futurist.
And do you do you see that as anarc or do you see it as sides of
the same thing?

SPEAKER_03 (24:36):
Um it it is a definite arc.
Um but it's I I it's it's quitecomplicated how he m moved from
position A to position B.
I think he always had those twomindsets um going in, because as
you say, science fiction is fullof cautionary tales, but science

(24:57):
fiction is also full ofoptimistic visions of the
future.
And I think he he always heldthose two elements within him.
I think, though, that his earlystories, the ones that were
successful, tended to be theones that were a bit dark or
that had some kind of twist, orthat were a uh a severe warning

(25:19):
to us all.
So he wasn't anti-technology, hewas just wanting people to be
mindful of what they were doing.
Um so if you take a story likeThe Velt, for example, which is
the one about the children'snursery, yeah, where these
parents pay for this complicatedvirtual reality room.
This is written in 1950, Ithink.

(25:39):
Wow.
Um build they build this room orbuy this room for their
children.
The children can go in there,they can play in any world they
want.
Yeah.
Um, and of course, what thechildren do is they conjure up
things from their imagination,including um lions, tigers, and
all sorts of things.
And um the the parents end upbeing consumed by the lions.

(26:02):
Sorry to spoil the story foranyone.
Yeah.
But um that story people say,oh, anti-technology, he's anti
this virtual reality thing.
Well, the story isn't aboutvirtual reality.
What it's about, in my view, isbad parenting.
It's precisely about thoseparents who would take their
children, plonk them down infront of the TV, and then go off

(26:24):
and do something moreinteresting while the TV was
entertaining the kids.
So he was just taking that andum being metaphorical about it,
setting it in the future,extrapolating a trend to its
logical negative conclusion.
Yeah.
That's not because he's againstthe technology, it's because
careful folks, this is what thiswill end up as if you don't use

(26:47):
it sensibly.
So that was always there, and Ithink that's where he was
getting his early success.
But then I think as time wenton, you got a different kind of
Bradbury.
You got Bradbury the essayist.
Um, from about the mid-50sonwards, he was not only selling
fiction, he was selling essaysto magazines.

(27:09):
And probably I'm sp speaking outof turn in a way here, because I
don't actually know this, butI'm guessing he probably got
paid just as much for an essaythat he could type out in half
an hour as he would for a shortstory that he had laboured over
for a couple of weeks.
Um and as time went on, hestarted writing uh screenplays

(27:31):
for Hollywood and is selling therights to his books to
Hollywood, and he made a goodincome from this stuff.
He he he often said that he umselling the options on his books
to Hollywood is what put hisdaughters through college.
So he found and I and I I'm nottrying to make it sound as if he

(27:51):
was purely about the moneybecause he wasn't.
Right.
But I I think there came a pointin his career where he found
that the the money would come infor relatively little effort,
and the story writing wasgetting harder and harder
because he kind of used up a lotof his best ideas.
Yeah.
Um and so I think as we get intothe sixties and the seventies,

(28:14):
you see the emergence ofBradbury, the public figure, the
public speaker, the interviewee,the lecturer.
Um and if you look at some ofthose public performances, he's
very good.
He's very persuasive.
Even when sometimes he's talkingstuff that is a bit well, hang
on.
Hang on, Ray, I don't I don'treally see how that's gonna

(28:36):
work.
But he's so persuasive.
Um that video of him umpre-Epcot talking to I think
businessmen uh about um whatEpcot can be about and how we're
all gonna work together on this.
He goes through some crazy ideasof his, some of which are

(28:57):
beautiful, some of which are abit disjointed.
Um but that he he's he's almostlike a preacher in that.
He gets quite shouty at times,at times he's like a politician
who's telling you this is howthings have got to be in the
future, you know.
Um so he it's a a differentaspect of his personality, which

(29:18):
is being given permission tocome out, I think, in in that
era, which really stretches fromthe sixties through to the end
of his career, really.
Um and and I think what he foundis that he was more in demand to
speak optimistically as a visionvisionary, so that's why that

(29:39):
second half of his career heseems to have become an
optimist.
But I think he always had thatuh as part of him in the early
days, except he wasn't writingstories like that in the early
days, he was writing thesecautionary tales.

SPEAKER_04 (29:52):
Well it yeah, and it's interesting because it's
certainly fun to look at sciencefiction stories from the
thirties and forties that aresort of.
Early space operas and they'reyou know with Buck Rogers and
and Flash Gordon and and they'refun for sure but there's not a
ton of meat on the bone.
And I think once the writing ofscience fiction becomes more

(30:15):
sophisticated, they have to becautionary.
That is almost at the point.

SPEAKER_05 (30:21):
Yeah.
I mean fifth Fahrenheit 451,written in 1953, is that
correct?
Rightly then?
Yeah.
You have to understand.
You think of it like he's areflection of his time.
And um I think of 1953 kind oftrepidatiously because, first
off, his stories were startingto get ripped off by EC comics.

(30:42):
And then he busted them becausehe was very good at that.
Hold on a second, wait a second.
This is a very good story, butit reminds me a lot of another
story that I wrote one time.
You know, could you please sendme royalties?
You know, it was his very verydirect but very polite way of
getting you.
So they actually startedputting, you know, written Brave

(31:03):
Brave Bradbury, but 1953, thisis the time in which the Senate
subcommittee hearing on juveniledelinquency is going on, and you
have comic book burnings goingon.
And I'm sure that actuallyseeing his own name on covers
like weird fantasy and vault ofhorror, etc., being incinerated
certainly mod probably broughtback memories of Nazi book book

(31:25):
burnings during World War II andleading to Fahrenheit 451 of him
going, Hold it, hold it, wait asecond.
I'm operating in this realm.
You know, so those types ofcocastery things are very, very
personal to him.

SPEAKER_03 (31:37):
Yes.
And also, of course, uh theMcCarthy hearings.
Which didn't directly affectRay, because he, you know, he
was never um called to testifyor anything, but a lot of his
friends were affected, directlyor indirectly.
Um and he thought it absolutelyoutrageous that people were

(31:58):
being called to rat on eachother.
So he he was really disturbed bythat.
He took out um a I think a fullpage ad in some magazine,
probably Variety or somethinglike that, condemning McCarthy.
I didn't know that.
That's cool.
You know, that that in itselfcould have got him in some
trouble.

(32:18):
But he he he knew when and whereto take a stand.
And so all of that was feedinginto Fahrenheit 451, plus, of
course, general Cold Waranxieties, the fear that we're
we're going to be blown up atany moment.
Um and I think it it's it'sprobably in the 60s when the

(32:38):
space programme really takes offthat he begins to feel a bit
more confident again because heuh I mean obviously World War II
ends with the atomic bomb, andthat was a big shock to the
science fiction field in a way,but also a validation of it,
because a lot of science fictionwriters had been writing about

(33:00):
super bombs and super weapons.
So the people in the field of ofscience fiction were kind of
vindicated when um the theatomic bombs were made public.
And uh also in World War IIyou've got Werner von Braun's V2
rocket, which is every sciencefiction fan's dream was rockets

(33:25):
that could fly just like that.

SPEAKER_05 (33:27):
Yeah, yeah.
Um it's just where they land,that's the problem.

unknown (33:31):
That's right.

SPEAKER_03 (33:34):
That's right.
But by the time you get to the60s, of course, the that's that
rocketry is being used forpeace.
I mean, it's also being used inweaponry as well.
But yeah, um the the colossalachievement of the Apollo
programme is where Ray reallyfelt vindicated as a science
fiction writer because all thisstuff that people have been

(33:55):
saying, ah, that's silly stuff.
Going into space, ah, sillystuff.
All of a sudden in the 60s, wow,I was right all along.
Basically, what he was able tosay, as other science fiction
writers were as well.
Um so again, that's part of thatshift from being, oh my god,
we've got these dreadfultechnologies which we've
foreseen science fiction writersare partly to blame for these

(34:19):
bombs and oh my god, to wow,we've left our own planet,
everything we've ever dreamed.
So, you know, I can see reasonsfor a shift, if there was a
shift, uh, in his outlook,really.

SPEAKER_04 (34:33):
Yeah.
You know, and and this this sortof takes us to I'm I'm glad you
brought up that uh speech, theone that he he gave in uh I
think it was 1975, uh, becauseuh it it is it's an incredibly
optimistic speech.
Yeah.
Uh it's it's it's quitepowerful.
There's some some stuff in itthat is of its time where you're

(34:57):
like, mm, okay.
But but uh it it's it's quitemoving, and as I understand it,
it really kicked the Epcotproject back into gear.
It was a project that had allbut died at that point, uh,
while Disney having passed away,and you know, it was what they
were were trying to do is isactually build a functioning

(35:21):
city.
And when uh Disney passed away,they really couldn't keep the
propulsion going for that.
It was just going to it involvetoo much civic work, too much
government work, uh too muchplanning, and things started to
die, so they had to figure outanother way to go with it.
But Bradbury coming in, I mean,he feels like a full-fledged

(35:44):
futurist at that point.
And it's really powerful.
He makes that speech, theproject gets kicked back into
gear.
A few years later, I don't knowhow much he's actually doing on
the project for a while, butit's pretty clear that once they
hit up near 80, he's involved.
Oh yeah.
Do you know much about thistime?

SPEAKER_03 (36:05):
I I do, I do.
Um he I'm uh and what I knowbasically comes from the
documents I've seen inBradbury's papers, which are
held in Indianapolis.
Um and in there, uh among themany, many files, uh are his
ideas for Epcot, which are allof course centered around

(36:28):
Spaceship Earth, which for thepeople who who aren't
particularly familiar with it,the the famous uh white sphere
that you always see wheneveranyone talks about Epcot, they
always show this sphere.
It's kind of the symbol ofEpcot.
That was Spaceship Earth, andinside it was Spaceship Earth,
the I don't know what you callit, a ride or attraction.

(36:50):
It is it is a ride.

SPEAKER_04 (36:51):
Um yeah, you you you go through the the history of
communication, the spirallinginclinator.

SPEAKER_03 (37:00):
And so Ray wrote that, basically.
I mean he he created the ideafor it, and he wrote the
dialogue that you hear as youtravel through it.
And he started work on that in1976.
Yeah.
So shortly after the speech thatwe've just been talking about,
which was 75, um, the earliestdocuments I've seen relating to

(37:23):
it are from 76.
And 77 is when he begins to uhapproach a f a kind of a final
draft of the idea, and then Ithink it passes to the
imagineers or whatever they werecalled in those days, uh, to
develop it as a practicalproposition.
Um and obviously there werechanges made uh as it went

(37:45):
through through that.
Um but yeah, so more or lessafter that meeting he was
putting ideas on paper andworking them through.
And pretty much the um SpaceshipEarth ride as it became is what
he wrote.
It is what he proposed.
They obviously they've modifiedit over the years.

(38:06):
I think it's had about threefacelifts.
Um right now, actually.
Right.
And every time they've replacedthe narration because they've
wanted to add things, and theonly way of doing that would be
to, well, we can't get whoeverit was last time.
Um Jeremy Iron.

SPEAKER_04 (38:25):
So each time she uh I think I think she's she's
about to be replaced thoughbecause they're replacing the uh
the narration again.

SPEAKER_05 (38:32):
Yeah.
Eddie Deeson.
Welcome to Spaceship Ice.
What?
No, no.

SPEAKER_04 (39:00):
Belowdown on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times
podcast.
At Boardwalk Times.net, you'llfind some of the most
well-considered and insightfulwriting about the Walt Disney
Company, Disney history, and theuniverse of theme parks
available anywhere.
Come join us atBoardwalkTimes.net.

SPEAKER_03 (39:30):
But the the interesting thing for me is uh
with Spaceship Earth, as withthe Time Maze concept, is Ray he
comes up with the narrative andthe the kind of what what you
will see and hear as you gothrough this experience.
But he does also address whathappens as you enter the
building and what happens whenyou leave.

(39:51):
He doesn't just write the show,he also thinks about audience
flow, um, uh how to keep peopleoccupied and interested while
they're really just queuing upto get in.
Right.
And what they're going to dowhen they're released.
Because you don't want them tojust run off somewhere else and
forget what they've experienced.
You want to somehow consolidatewhat they've learned or what

(40:13):
they've been uh shown.
So you give them someinteractivity to to think about,
you know.
And it tends to be, I mean, Ihaven't been to Epcot for years.
Um, it's probably had at leastone facelift since I went in
there.
But um, my understanding fromhaving read uh descriptions,
detailed descriptions of thevarious scenarios over the

(40:34):
years, it tends to be thosebeginning and end bits that
Disney have changed.
And the middle bit hasn'tchanged a huge amount.

SPEAKER_04 (40:42):
But but you know, it's interesting because you
talk about that the sort ofsealing off of the experience by
having something as you leave.
That seemed to be a an importantpart of early Epcot, at least.
Pretty much everything you didemptied into something that was
more like uh a science fair ormore like uh interactive screens

(41:06):
uh to do exactly that.
And I wonder how much of thatcame from from Bradbury.

SPEAKER_03 (41:13):
Yeah, I'd I'd I'd like to know that as well.
Um even the earliest drafts I'veseen include those kind of uh
topping and tailing of theexperience.
But it may be that that came outof Ray's discussions with the
Disney people, you know, becausehe um he he very much believed

(41:36):
in sitting down with them andgiving them his blue sky
thinking, and they would say,Well, yeah, but maybe we could
do it this way, and they wouldgive him this kind of practical
understanding, which he wouldthen build into his um later
drafts.
So I'd I as I say, thedocumentation I've seen does
include the pre and postactivities in a in a very

(42:02):
rudimentary form, but thatdoesn't mean to say that's where
the ideas began.
They they may have begun in ameeting, they may have begun in
a phone call, and there's nodocumentation of it, and Ray's
not here to ask anymore.
Right.
And we don't know precisely whohe was talking to at the time.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (42:21):
Um I mean there was certain key people, but he's
he's very much like a sponge, Ifind, in in his writing.
And maybe uh please correct meif I'm wrong, or at least I'd
love to hear your observation onthat.
It seems that Ray, you know,definitely picks up new
techniques, new ways ofthinking.
He's very open-minded to thatsort of thing.
So at first when he's workingwith the pulps, he's very open

(42:43):
to that type of style of writingand those types of ideas and
concepts, and then he moves intothe comics industry, and you
have something very similar, andthen he branches off into film
and television, you know, havingto have to having to endure John
Houston's ragging for a while inIreland, you know, etc.
etc.

(43:04):
And then he finally comes backand he's very transformed.
Like his his work transformsafter his Hollywood connections,
you know, in his film filmconnections.
And it wouldn't surprise me thathanging around Walt Disney a lot
certainly rubbed off on him in away where he's like, wow, this
is a whole new way ofstorytelling.
I can't just do it with mytypewriter, but I don't have

(43:25):
access to anything else, so I'mjust gonna do it with my
typewriter.

SPEAKER_03 (43:27):
Yeah, and I I think you're right.
I I think he uh he he did absorbideas from elsewhere.
He's he he was never one ofthose writers who believed that
he was the only one who had goodideas.
He believed that they could comefrom from elsewhere.
You were talking about Houston.
Um Houston is the classicexample of a a film director who

(43:51):
was also a writer who wanted tocollaborate with Ray, but then
changed Ray's words.
And that always rubbed Ray upthe wrong way.
If you employed him to writeyour film, he wanted to write
your film.
When it came to the theme parkstuff, I think it was so

(44:14):
obviously a collaborative formthat he he would sit down with
these people who knew thetechnical stuff because he knew
he didn't know the technicalstuff.
So he would come up with thefantastical idea and then
basically look at them and say,How can we do that?
Right.
Um I don't know, don't know.

(44:34):
So there there does seem to be aa difference in how he responded
to being rewritten by producersand directors and how he
collaborated with Imagineers andsimilar people.
But it it may be that the Disneypeople were more respectful of
him.
Um I I have read, for instance,that he found working with

(44:59):
technical people, withengineers, much easier than
working with other writers,because uh every writer thinks
they can second guess you.
Right.
Whereas an engineer won't tryand second guess your idea,
they'll try and facilitate youridea.
The one exception to that that Iknow of is when he worked with

(45:20):
the Smithsonian with an idea forthe Air and Space Museum, and he
wrote this essentially it's aplanetarium show that he wrote,
and he got a ton of feedbackfrom these astronomy people who
said, no, that's not how the sunis created.
No, that's not where planetscome from.
No, that's that's not how lifebegins.

(45:42):
And in each case, he'd writtensomething metaphorical about the
sun berthing the planets uh oror whatever.
So he'd written thesemetaphorical things, and the
scientists were taking themliterally and saying, nope,
that's not correct.
So he had a hard time workingwith those people.
Although his planetarium showedthat he didn't get to work with

(46:03):
the Smithsonian, he then sold tosomebody else, and it was in
California instead.

SPEAKER_05 (46:09):
So that's why it explains the plaque out in front
of the Griffith ParkObservatory.
Everybody welcome except Ray.

SPEAKER_04 (46:17):
No, it's interesting, it reminds me of
there was an old ride atDisneyland, long gone now, that
Pete and I have talked aboutbefore.
It was a ride called AdventureThrough Inner Space.
And I was it was uh sponsored byMonsanto.
Oh boy.
And uh it was supposed to beabout how atoms and molecules
formed everything in in theworld.

(46:39):
The designers of that ride wasstarted kind of building it up,
and and you when you talk aboutthese things, they have to be
metaphorical.
You you can't really show thatkind of scale.
And Monsanto kept coming intothem and saying, no, no, no, no,
this is not how this works.
And finally the designers had tojust shut them down and say,
Look, it's just it's a metaphor.

(46:59):
You can't I can't like make anatom this you know size of the
Empire State Building.
I don't have room.

SPEAKER_05 (47:07):
We only have styrofoam and glitter, like give
me a break.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (47:13):
So I I uh I'm curious, like it kind of in this
Epcot period, and and also Iknow that Ray worked a little
with design for um the park thatI believe is now called
Disneyland Paris, but was at thetime called Euro Disney.
Yeah.
Um do you do you know of I ideasor uh things that he worked on

(47:33):
that weren't used?

SPEAKER_03 (47:35):
Not for Disney, no.
Um I'm pretty sure that what wewhat we got is what he wrote.
I don't think there were anymajor proposals that were
shelved or anything.
Uh I mean, having said that forEuro Disney or Disneyland Paris,
as far as I know, the only thinghe worked on was the Orbitron.

(47:57):
Yes, that's what I was.
Yeah.
Which is isn't that complicated,really.
You know, it's not it's notsomething with a a narrative
particularly, it's just a rideas far as I can see.
Yeah.
It's it's pretty.
Oh, it is.

(48:17):
It's a beautiful, beautifulthing.
I I I haven't been there, but Ihave seen um there's a a
walkthrough video on YouTube,which has been done very well
without any narration oranything.
It's literally somebody walkingslowly with a camera through it
and going through the ridemultiple times.
So you get a really good senseof what it is.

SPEAKER_02 (48:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (48:35):
Um but I I find it hard to believe what Ray's input
to that would have been becausethere isn't really a script for
that.
Um the o the only thing thatI've um seen relating to the
Orbitron is that the designersat one point were saying we're
struggling to make it feel thatthe rockets are going very fast,

(48:56):
because they're just goingthey're just going around in a
circle, basically.
Right.
Fairly slow.
It's a fairly sedate ride, andthere are these sort of planets
going around in a kind of an orI can't say this word, or
arrangement.

SPEAKER_04 (49:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's a hard way.
Or or like in the dark crystal.

SPEAKER_05 (49:12):
I love those cookies.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (49:16):
Um and apparently Ray said, Well, if you made the
planets go the other way, so theway the rockets are going,
they'll appear to be going twiceas fast.
And ah, yeah, brilliant idea.
Yeah, really.
They seem they seem to havebuilt that into it.
Although if you look at theactual Orbitron, there are some
planets that go one way and somethat go the other.

(49:37):
So you know, whether they reallydid take Ray's idea on board or
not, I don't know.
But um it is alleged that that'swhat happened.

SPEAKER_04 (49:46):
Now you you say uh not for Disney, but are there
other rides, theme park thingsthat he worked on that uh didn't
get used?
Other than the Great ElectricTime Maze?

SPEAKER_03 (49:57):
Yeah, there are loads.
Um I I have to tell you this.
I was researching in theBradbury Centre in I'm gonna say
2014.
I may be a little bit out there,but I was I was there at a
certain time, uh, which was justa few months after all of
Bradbury's materials wereshipped to Indianapolis, where

(50:18):
the Bradbury Centre is.
Uh Ray died in 2012.
He left his papers to theBradbury Center, and that's
where the papers are now.
All shipped across fromCalifornia to Indianapolis in
the original filing cabinets, sothat Ray's filing system was
preserved.
I was the first person to gothrough all of the cabinets.

(50:41):
They were still wrapped inplastic when I was there.
Wow.
I was given permission to ununveil them, and the only
restriction placed on me was ifyou take anything out, put it
back exactly where you found it.
Okay, I'll do that.
And so I was there primarily tolook for scripts because I was
focusing on Ray's uhscreenplays, his film work, his

(51:03):
TV work.
Right.
But every time I came acrossanything that was narrative that
I hadn't seen before, I wouldmake a note of it.
So here are my notes.
Some of these things ha have nocontext to them.
They're in a file, and youthink, what's this?
So there is one.
Oh, let me go to the right pagehere.

(51:24):
There is one called Aviopolis.
Okay.
All that is there in the file isjust one page, and it's page
three of some document.
Uh-huh.
And we don't know how long thedocument should have been, or
what was on page one or pagetwo.
It doesn't say what it is, itjust says Aviopolis.
It's in Ray's handwriting,Aviopolis, and there's this one

(51:46):
page r sort of randomly takenfrom a script.
And it looks like it might befor the air and space museum,
the Smithsonian maybe, or someother air and space museum.
Don't know.
Wow.
Very mysterious, but it's somekind of experience that involves
people travelling up escalatorsas they learn about the history

(52:06):
of avi aviation.
That's all we got for that one.
There's one called ChartshipUniverse.
Where the only page that I foundis page one.
So the rest of the thing isn'tthere.
We just give an introduction toit.
Um and this is some kind of ridethat you would uh there'd be
some kind of pre-ride activity,and then you'd get in the ride,

(52:30):
and you'd basically be takenthrough the universe.
Uh I don't know how far youwould get because there's only
one page of it there.
I'm not sure who this was for.
Um probably was for DouglasTrumbull, you know, the guy who
did the special effects for 2001A Space Odyssey, directed the

(52:51):
film Brainstorm and SilentRunning.

SPEAKER_04 (52:54):
We ran into him when we talked about the Back to the
Future ride at Universal,because he directed that film.

SPEAKER_05 (52:59):
We even mentioned him.
That's bizarre because we evenmentioned him in the Time Maze
episode as doing some of theeffects for the time thing.
And I had no clue that this iswhat this was for.
This is hysterical.

SPEAKER_03 (53:12):
That's awesome.
Yeah, so Doug Trumbull was umhad a company that specialized
in these rides.
He was um an early pioneer ofmotion control electronics, um,
which probably came from hiseffects work originally, like
building motion control camerasfor the I don't know whether it

(53:32):
would have been the it wouldn'thave been the Star Wars films,
probably for close encounters orsomething.
Yeah.
Um so he developed all of thisstuff for entertainment
purposes.
And of course he was also apioneer of high definition
video, and so that would havebeen built into some of these
ride things that he worked onwith Ray and with other people.

SPEAKER_04 (53:53):
I got to do one of his show scan theatre films
once, uh, because one of thefirst ones uh was in uh Texas,
where I grew up.
So I I I I got to see it, Ithink you know, one of ten
people who ever actually sawthem functioning.

SPEAKER_03 (54:08):
Brilliant, brilliant.
So there's a couple of thingsfor Trumbull in the Bradbury
papers, but again, with verylittle context, you you don't
know where this would go, orwhether it was just a blue sky
thing, or whether it was uh akind of a a genuine script for a
real ride that did turn upsomewhere.
Yeah.

(54:28):
It's really hard to pin down.
I think what is needed is forsomebody, and I I don't have the
the energy to do this, butsomebody needs to go into the
Trumbull archive if there isone, and uh find his side of the
discussion, you know.
To put it together.
We in the Bradbury papers youonly get the Bradbury side of

(54:49):
things mostly.
He doesn't always copy incomingdocuments, he mostly just stores
his own document.
Then there's that thing that Imentioned earlier for the
Smithsonian, which variously wascalled Great Shout of the
Universe, uh or I think justuniverse or something like that.
Um and then there are all sortsof things that he did for I'm

(55:14):
gonna say large-scale videowalls, which is again one of
these sort of big technologiesof the eighties and nineties,
the idea that you could puttogether a huge screen out of
lots of monitors.
And he he wrote a number of uhexperiences that were for
display on these, and in thosecases I never found any

(55:36):
documents about them, but I didfind video recordings where
people had basically for as atest, they'd set the video wall
running and then they'd set acamera up and filmed the whole
thing so that people could havea look, have a representation of
of what it would look like.
And of course, this is all lowdefinition um VHS, because it's

(55:58):
from the eighties and nineties.
Yeah.
So so there's a whole load ofthis stuff that Bradbury was
doing, and very little of itcame to a final product, as far
as I know.
Yeah.
Uh but I think it's a it's ifthere's anybody listening to
this whoever wants to do a PhD,this is something that would be
a fantastic research project,because there is a ton of

(56:21):
material in the files, but itneeds somebody to study it
carefully, more carefully than Ihave, and uh piece it together
and come up with a timeline andfigure out who Ray was
interacting with, Trumbull orMarty Sklar at Disney or whoever
it was, you know.
I think there could be a book inthat.

SPEAKER_05 (56:40):
Sounds like a challenge.

SPEAKER_03 (56:42):
Absolutely.
I'm I'm I'm I'm reallysuggesting that somebody do
that, please.
Somebody.

SPEAKER_04 (56:47):
Oh, it would be so interesting.
So uh just to to investigateRay's uh activities in in
experiential art.

SPEAKER_03 (56:56):
Yes.

SPEAKER_04 (56:57):
Which he which he he he obviously was was fascinated
by.

SPEAKER_03 (57:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's it in a way it issimilar to his work in film
because if you look atBradbury's published output,
yeah, he was a prolific authorfrom the late 1940s, well no,
sorry, from about 1940 onwards.
His output began to decline interms of quantity, not quality,

(57:24):
but in terms of quantity, beganto decline in the late fifties.
During the sixties, he didn'tpublish many books.
70s, not many books, has a bitof a comeback in the eighties
with books, but his career lookslike it's disappeared.
But what has actually happenedis that in the sixties he
started writing poetry, some ofwhich was published.

(57:46):
He started writing plays andproducing his plays.
He started working in Hollywood.
And a lot of these resulted inprojects that have no shelf
life.
So the Hollywood scripts weren'tfilmed, so they just disappear
effectively.
The plays were staged, but whena play is finished, it's gone.

(58:09):
I mean, you can publish the bookof the play, obviously, but
nobody reads those really.
That's right, yeah.
So and and these tended to comeout over the last couple of
decades in uh limited editionbooks from small presses.

(58:30):
So you can find them, you canfind Bradbury's film scripts
nowadays.
But to the average reader whojust you know goes into a Barnes
and Noble or whatever, it itlooks as if Bradbury stopped
writing in about 1960.
He didn't at all.
He was writing constantly, buthe was doing it for non-book

(58:52):
projects.
And there's a whole load ofthese rides and experiences
which um with the exception ofEpcot have just evaporated.

SPEAKER_05 (59:03):
It's it's interesting you mentioned like
his all these scripts thatdisappeared.
One of his more famous books andalso something that lives on in
Disneyland was actually spawnedout of a script that he
originally wrote, which is theHalloween tree.
Um it originally started off asa script in 1967 with Chuck
Jones.
And um it didn't come tofruition until much, much later.

(59:26):
Hannah Barbera produced a veryversion of it.
Um I honestly think that likeLeica or some or Ardman, you
know, some sort of stop-motionanimation studio would do a
great job of doing an adaptationof the Halloween tree.
Um so if you guys are listening,go to it.
Um but but uh he published theit as a book in 1972.

(59:50):
And eventually in 2007, Raycollaborated with a historian
and writer named Tim O'Day, whomI've done some business with in
the past.
uh in erecting a tree.
And originally they were goingto build like some sort of
elaborate fiberglass tree withall of the pumpkins with Mr.
Mound shroud somewhere in theside of it.
But now it's just a tiny littletree with orange lights in it,

(01:00:11):
you know, in Frontierland.
But Ray visited it over and overagain.
It's great.
It's a nice little touch, youknow, it's a nice little touch
to Frontierland.

SPEAKER_04 (01:00:19):
This is actually it's interesting I'm glad you
brought that up, Pete, becausejust last week I saw a thing
that Tim O'Day had posted aboutI guess I gather that Disney is
about to start streamingSomething Wicked This Way Comes
again.
Because it had not beenavailable for a long time.
And he made a post about it andPhil he posted a link to your

(01:00:42):
podcast where you spoke I guessyour three podcasts where you
broke down the history ofSomething Wicked This Way Comes.
Yeah.
So I just I I I thought that wasnice synchronicity.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:54):
Yeah I mean but both of those uh Halloween Tree and
Something Wicked are examples ofin a way of Ray recycling unused
projects because somethingwicked started out as a film
script that never got made so heturned it into a novel and then
he turned the novel into a filmscript again.

(01:01:15):
Idea after idea yeah Halloweentree as you say was a script
didn't sell turned it into abook and then the book became a
script which became a film.
So there's a process ofrecycling going on there.
But always creative he never wwith one or two exceptions, he

(01:01:35):
he never slavishly translatessomething from one form to
another.
He always it it's as if he uhkind of reads the story and says
right yeah okay that's the storyputs it down and then types
everything afresh so now I'mgonna write a script and I've
got that story in my head butI'm not retyping that story.
I'm telling a new story based onwhat I've just read and off he

(01:01:59):
goes.
So you always get nearly alwaysget something different when he
recycles.
He will recycle but always withadded value or nearly always
with added value.
But um the specific case ofHalloween tree reminds me as I
was looking through the TimeMaze script again and some of

(01:02:19):
the other scripts like the Epcotum spaceship Earth script I was
reminded that the Halloween treeis the same sort of thing.
The story of the Halloween treeis basically a bunch of kids,
Halloween time, one of theirfriends goes missing and they
have to travel through time totry and rescue him.

(01:02:41):
And that is essentially the plotof uh the time maze I think the
second maze yeah yeah yeah soit's one of his go-to ideas is
to have this kind of search andrescue operation with time
travel.
And in the case of the Halloweentree what they do is they go

(01:03:02):
back to Halloween in the past.
You know so they look at theorigins of Halloween they look
at the for some reason I can'tremember they look at the
building of Notre Dame Cathedralin Paris.

SPEAKER_05 (01:03:13):
It's all about the origins of why each kid is
dressed you know so one of themis Quasimodo and so it's like
yeah let's climb up climb up thecathedral and blocks form
underneath their feet as they'rerunning and I'm sorry I read
this book once a year atHalloween so I'm a big big nerd
for this one but um but uh yeahit's I I I saw that when we got

(01:03:34):
to the October country portionof the Time Maze area and I went
and that's when I had a verysimilar realization like wait a
minute that sounds like the sameplot like and a lot of authors
we talked about his influencesit makes you wonder what
happened in his past that makesyou think like was there a kid
that went missing and if so didhe have some sort of fantasy as

(01:03:55):
a child like maybe I could goback in time and find this kid
and it just kind of stuck withhim and it just like a like a
song you can't get out of yourhead he keeps coming back to
that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:05):
I I don't like to psychoanalyse authors usually
have you ever heard of his storyThe Lake?
No, I don't think I have heardof this one.
Remind me what the one of hisearly stories uh from about 1943
I think and it's basically itcentres around a girl of Lake

(01:04:28):
Michigan um building a sandcastle with her little friend
she goes into the lake and shenever comes back until thirty
forty years later the man goesback to his childhood home he's
on the beach and somebody'sfound something in the water and
it's all covered in seaweed andyou know I'll I'll I'll leave

(01:04:48):
listeners to go and find thatstory.
But that apparently was based ona real incident from Battery's
childhood.
Wow.
Some somebody went I I don'tknow if it was somebody that he
knew personally but it wassomething that happened where he
lived that uh a girl wentmissing in the lake.
So years later it becomes thebasis of this story where he's

(01:05:11):
sort of reminiscing uh about hischildhood.
And it may be that the missingcharacter in the Halloween tree
which I think is Pipkin possiblyum it may be that he's the same
character essentially he'ssomebody who's gone missing in
childhood.

SPEAKER_05 (01:05:29):
It's interesting put the world to rights.
Yeah it reminds me a little bitof his story I I see you no more
where it's about um extraditionof a um uh person by immigration
forces in the 50s and it waslike based off of a neighbor of
his that got uh deported duringthe Great Purges in Los Angeles
and you know he a friend of hisbeing taken away never seeing it

(01:05:52):
never seen again it's a heartwrenching story.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:55):
There's also a story called um John Huff's Leave
Taking which is about two twelveyear olds and uh John Huff is
the friend of the narrator orthe the focal character of the
story.
And John Huff is leaving hisfamily is going to another town
and it's basically the theheartbreak of this little twelve

(01:06:17):
year old kid losing his bestfriend.
Yeah um not because of anythingevil that's happened but just
because you know this is this iswhat happens in life and that's
a very very touching story anduh in that particular instance
Ray spoke about that story andsaid that well it's a tr
essentially a true story but itwas actually the other way

(01:06:39):
around in real life that in reallife he was the one who went
away leaving his friend in thelurch.
Yeah.
But for fictional purposes he hesort of took the opposite point
of view and showed what it'slike when your best friend
leaves you.

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:55):
What a great expression of empathy.
That's so good.
Which is I suppose really in anintensified way what something
wicked ultimately is.
It's it's about is your bestfriend going to be pulled away
from you.
Oh yeah it certainly is I thinkthat the the thing I struggle
with was the film version ofsomething wicked which I I like

(01:07:16):
is that it seems to havereframed the story to be a story
about a son and a father and andI don't feel like that's what
the story was.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:25):
Jason Robarts was gunning for an Oscar you know
it's the awkward thing with thefilm is that Robards I I think
is is very good.
He's incredibly good.

SPEAKER_05 (01:07:37):
And so is Jonathan Price.
The duel in the library is oneof the more chilling conflicts
between good and evil I've everseen on film.

SPEAKER_04 (01:07:45):
It still works so good with his resistance and
everything even if you don'tknow anything about those
characters if you just show thatscene out of context the the
visual presentation of it theripping the pages out of the
book beautifully done clearlythe the key scene in the film
yeah it's perfect hey everybodyKelly here sorry to interrupt uh

(01:08:19):
aside from all of the cool stuffthat's going on on Boardbot
Times right now uh I also havean article coming out on fanfare
uh should be coming out uhpretty much the same day that
this drops.
So uh if you want to go if youhave any interest at all in
reading about uh Orson Wellsreading poetry on the radio and
how that affected the rest ofhis career I I'm gonna hook you

(01:08:42):
up.
Check out fanfare.pub fanfaredothub for that uh now back to
Kelly Pete and Dr.
Phil Nichols let's let's talkabout Ray and Walt Disney which
I don't think we've reallydiscussed at all.

(01:09:04):
What what what's your take onthat relationship?

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:09):
Um I think in many ways they were kindred spirits
because they believed in many ofthe same things in terms of what
is entertaining and uh Disney ofcourse would although he made
these films that people think ofas light entertainment, there
are some very dark Disney films.

(01:09:30):
You know, Bambi is as dark asyou get.
Oh my gosh yes um and and thatreally echoes Ray as well.
Ray is a an entertainingstoryteller but with a a
tremendous streak of darknessrunning through what he does.
So I can see a lot ofcommonality there and um the but
the the reality of it I I lookedin some of the biographies of

(01:09:54):
Bradbury today just to remindmyself of the the sort of the
time scale.
But it appears that Bradburyfirst met Disney in 1964 and
they met in a sh in a departmentstore just purely randomly Ray
says he was doing Christmasshopping with his kids and
across the aisle there was WaltDisney carrying a whole pile of

(01:10:17):
boxes that he'd just been buyingand Ray goes up to him and
introduces himself and Disneysays I know who you are I've
read your books so there's akind of an instant oh my god y
he knows me let's go to the foodcourt yeah yeah I mean at this
point Disney was quite a wellknown face because he was on TV

(01:10:38):
all the time you know and notjust his his work was on film on
TV he was on TV as well as hewas a character yeah that's
right yeah um Ray wasn't thatkind of personality at that
point um so Ray would haverecognised Disney but Disney
wouldn't have recognised Ray Idon't think um but Disney

(01:11:01):
apparently according to Ray andI I've no reason to doubt this
Disney invited him to lunch thenext day so Ray turned up at
Disney's office they sat uhapparently at a little card
table and they had soup andsandwiches and Ray was given one

(01:11:23):
hour apparently there was asecretary who said you you you
must stick to time Mr Bradburydon't distract Mr Disney Ray was
supposed to have an hour andthey had their hour and then
Disney said let me show you somestuff and he he takes Bradbury
on a tour of the studio and heshows him the animatronics he
shows him the animatronic umLincoln the Abraham Lincoln

(01:11:46):
animatronic that was just beingworked on at that time which Ray
then goes and writes a storyabout oh which story is that uh
it's called Downwind fromGettysburg nice basically it is
basically the the Disneyanimatronic Lincoln who gets
assassinated oh wow oh terrificso they had this one meeting um

(01:12:13):
according to one of thebiographies I think it's John
Ellers biography of Ray he hewrote three volumes of a
biography of Ray I think it's inhis book um they never met
socially or outside of Disney'soffice.
So although they call each otherfriends and they spoke several

(01:12:35):
times over the years um theyonly apparently ever met in
Disney's office always at thelittle card table probably
always with the salad and soup.
But of course Disney only livedtill 66 so they just knew knew
each other personally for acouple of years there.
But I think what you Kelly whatyou were saying earlier on is

(01:12:56):
that with Epcot there was thiskind of drive to either kill the
project after Disney had died orto do something that would truly
honour him.
And I think Ray very much feltthat the thing to do was to
honour the man.
Yeah so he he always spoke verypositively of of Disney as a

(01:13:21):
person.
But beyond those little meetingsthey had um the the that they
didn't um interact a hugeamount.
Ray mostly interacted with uhpeople who worked for Disney so
he he interacted with Disney'sbrother I think and a lot of the
technical people but very littlewith Disney himself.

(01:13:43):
So they seem to have got onreally well as far as I know.

SPEAKER_04 (01:13:46):
Yeah you know it's it's interesting because you
know we talked about that 751975 speech and I mean I'm
probably projecting a little bithere but there does seem to be a
tenor that Bradbury has which isI knew Walt I was friends with
Walt I am hanging on to thelegacy of Walt and I'm going to

(01:14:09):
make sure that you don't mess itup and he doesn't say that
exactly but he does say I'mgoing to be watching you which
is very interesting I was gonnasay my favorite part of that um
speech is when he he goes off uhon a tangent about money because
he he says something like a lotof you are uh saying that money

(01:14:32):
is an obstacle here he goes offon this rant of of how money
originated and yeah he comes upwith this theory that the way
all money has ever worked isthat you do the job and then you
get paid.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:47):
So in the case of this Epcot thing um let's do the
work and then we'll worry aboutthe money later.
And uh in a in a sense he'sabsolutely right if you if you
believe in a thing you ought tocommit to doing it but um I I as
somebody who's had to bid forfunding for things in the past I

(01:15:09):
I do think it you can't get awaywith that Ray.
You can't just spend millions ondeveloping something and then
say well now let's have themoney.
You've got to have some of thatmoney there.

SPEAKER_04 (01:15:19):
Maybe he should have told that to you know we should
tell that to the current uhcompany of Disney um just saying
but but it is it's profound whenhe says it in the in that speech
you if it feels very very movingyou're like oh yes of course
you're right you we we shouldjust do what we believe in and
then the money will comeabsolutely well and to give Walt

(01:15:42):
you know credit for a quote thatRay loved to quote him on was
one of the first things that heremembers Walt ever telling him
which is nothing has to die.

SPEAKER_05 (01:15:51):
You know and that's that's evocative of both men,
frankly I th I feel I mean froma emotional and a creative point
of view.
I mean we talked about how Rayrecycled his ideas so nothing
really died with him but butwe're still talking about these
guys because they have they bothin their own ways and together
actually had a very profoundeffect on the world around us.
And that's not really anexaggeration.

(01:16:13):
I mean we've already talkedabout how Disney's uh creative
uh approach especially in hislater years we won't talk about
Disney the Huckster years but wewill definitely talk about his
the Epcot and Disneyland eradefinitely did usher in how uh
rapid transit was viewed and howpolitical points of view were

(01:16:34):
viewed how Ronald Reagan waselected you know things like
that that uh definitely haveinfluenced and the same thing
with Ray Bradbury his hiswritings you know were in some
ways we are still talking aboutthem because they are still very
very relevant.
In the current climate that wehave here in America we are
constantly bringing up two books1984 and uh Fahrenheit 451

(01:16:59):
they're both coming up and umthey are warnings for a reason
is because that they reallystrike a chord within all of us.
And so I guess Walt's quotenothing has to die is very very
true.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:10):
I I would add a third book there by the way I
would add the handmaid's tale.

SPEAKER_04 (01:17:15):
Oh yes oh yes yeah with those three you you've got
the whole thing covered that'sit I agree I might also uh I
might also add the parable ofthe sower which yeah uh it is is
almost too realistic almost likeoh no we're actually doing that
now that's not even cautionaryanymore yeah yeah no kidding

(01:17:37):
well this this seems like apretty good place to start
drawing it to a close uh isthere anything we haven't
covered that either of you uhwould like to touch on uh
actually something we didn'ttalk about really is world fairs
oh yes that's that's veryinteresting uh because Bradbury
did did he not work on the whatwe like to call the not a 1964

(01:18:01):
world's fair because it was anunsanctioned fair yes didn't he
worked on the America Pavilionis that correct yes that's right
so essentially it's it'sSpaceship Earth but rather than
talking about the whole humanspecies it's um the history of
America basically um it's andit's a ride it's but it's a very

(01:18:25):
primitive one obviously I wasn'tthere it doesn't exist so it's
good to look at it but thescript exists and there are
there are photos uh of it um andbasically people would get on
these sort of um kind of atrolley thing with with lots of
seating on and it would travelalong and they they would be

(01:18:45):
towed past various screens andtableau um in front of them and
experience a narrative of uh howAmerica became what it is.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:57):
Oh wow yeah so that's his his dry run he didn't
know this but it was his dry runfor Spaceship Earth in many
ways.
Yeah um but he was influenced byprevious World's Fairs because
he went to the Chicago World'sFair in 1933 and probably again
in 34 because it ran for twoyears.

(01:19:17):
And his aunt Neva who was theshe was the creative one in the
Bradbury family and she'sprobably the one where he gets
most of his creative DNA from isnot directly from his parents
but sideways from his aunt whohe spent a lot of time with her
as a child and she did some workon the Chicago World's Fair and

(01:19:40):
she took him along.
So he experienced that when hewas twelve or thirteen and then
in nineteen thirty nine beforehe was an established author he
went off to New York to theWorld Science Fiction Convention
the first ever science fictionconvention which was scheduled
to coincide with the nineteenthirty nine World's Fair in New

(01:20:04):
York so while he was there forthe convention he also went to
the World's Fair.

SPEAKER_04 (01:20:09):
So again influenced by that I I don't know what he
would have seen at that one butum I I can help it one of the
things that that and I believe Ithink uh Phil the first time I
ever uh reached out to you wasto ask if you could help me

(01:20:29):
locate this piece of writing butand and may maybe I imagined it
but uh the 1939 World's Fair haduh a ride that was called
Futurama oh and yes Futurama wasuh similar to what you're
describing with his Americanride where they you they

(01:20:50):
basically put you in theaterseats that were on chains and
pulled through this this alienlandscape and you kind of
circled around the alienlandscape and I I seem to
remember a piece that where hehad written about that.
And then that that ride Futuramawas revised for the 1964 World's

(01:21:13):
Fair and and there was aFuturama 2 it was a sequel ride
so uh it it seems very likely tome that he at least experienced
uh those.

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:25):
Yes all almost certainly yeah because he loved
those things.
Yeah so yeah he would have doneI'll have to uh I I don't recall
that piece of writing but I'msure you're right um so I will
try and track that down and if Ididn't ever get back to you
about it previously I'll do sonow.

SPEAKER_04 (01:21:46):
I'm just committed to you were very you were very
kind and generous and you said Idon't know offhand but I I will
I will see well I'll I give thesame answer now yeah oh I'm on
to you nichols but uh yeahthere's the interesting thing

(01:22:07):
about the there's a lot that'sinteresting about the 1964
World's Fair.
Uh uh much of what we think ofas the modern theme park starts
right there.
Uh especially with Disney butobviously with with Ray's
participation in the Americanpavilion um there's also uh just
to kind of wrap back to thebeginning of our conversation

(01:22:29):
there were proposals fordifferent World's fairs around
that time and there were twothat were very close to being
green lit and the other one wasto also to happen in Chicago
again.
And the Chicago World's Fair hada uh uh quite an elaborate

(01:22:50):
proposal and it was designed byVictor Gruen who we talked about
earlier the the father of theshopping mall but so it it's
really interesting because a lotof what Victor Gruen designed
for the 64 World's Fair uh theone the she the Chicago one that
was never actually built looks alot like what Epcot became there

(01:23:16):
there's strong similaritiesbetween the two.

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:18):
Well Gruen actually was quoted several times by
Imagineers a lot with one of hisbooks um in his design for Epcot
so that doesn't surprise me atall.

SPEAKER_04 (01:23:27):
Yeah the aft after Walt died when they went through
his library they they found asingle book about urban design
and it was Victor Gruen's um TheHeart of Our Cities.

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:39):
It all ties together doesn't it all comes around it
all comes around.
So I think we've reached a pointof our conversation here that we
do on our show that I think Iwould love to actually have you
participate in, Phil, if youdon't mind which is we we do a

(01:24:01):
thing with our show that's inour title the plus up and so
it's without any considerationof budget time safety
constraints or whatever wasthere anything in the time maze
that you would have added orchanged?
We'd love to hear your plus upon that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:24:16):
Oh anything I would have added or changed um or
inspired you yeah yeah uh let megive you uh an opposite of
inspired first and then maybeI'll come up with an inspired
one while I'm when I'm greattalking about that.
Um one thing I noticed when Iwas reading about the time maze

(01:24:37):
and and I think you you kind ofglossed over it when you were
talking about it and rightly sobecause it wasn't that
important.
But m much of what Ray put intothat time maze is revisits of
his greatest hits.
So there's a dinosaur hunt whichis basically his story a sound
of thunder there's people beingflung out into space away from

(01:24:59):
each other which is basicallyhis short story Kaleidoscope and
and there's oh there's theOctober country which of course
is a a short story collection ofhis and he puts that in there.
What I would change if Ray weresitting across the table from me
now I would say Ray you've gotto give us something new you
can't just keep recycling we'vedone mechanical hounds yes I

(01:25:29):
think that's an awesome that'sactually a great note.

SPEAKER_04 (01:25:31):
It's like Ray come on come on yeah you're right the
mechanical hound was in there aswell wasn't it's Fahrenheit 451
yeah he wanted to he wanted togive people some sort of
magnetic belt where they wouldget a mild electric shock yes
touched by the mechanicalhounds.

SPEAKER_05 (01:25:48):
Which is really nice I I think that's some Disneyland
patrons probably deserve it.
I'm just I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:57):
That's like the Mr.
Electrico which you talked aboutlast time where Mr.
Electrico would touch you with asword and say live forever and
you'd get a shock.
Some people would have a heartattack.
Yeah maybe a universal but not aDisney yeah but the thing that I

(01:26:23):
I sort of took as a realpositive from the time maze is
the the that consideration ofthe before, the during and the
after so although he presents itas three mazes it's really
pre-show show and post show andit's that kind of structural
thought which I I think isterrific because um you go to a

(01:26:45):
lot of shows that you can pay alot of money for in theatres and
whatever and people don't giveany consideration to what goes
on before.
They just play a bit of musacover the PA system while you're
sitting there waiting for theshow to begin.
But I I like things like Cirquede Soleil where before the show

(01:27:06):
begins they send clowns out intothe audience and it takes about
ten minutes takes about tenminutes for people to realise
hang on there's a clown peoplestart pointing and oh my god oh
my god it started it started andof course it hasn't started but
they're giving you a littlepre-show and I I I like that I
like that people take intoaccount what's going to happen

(01:27:28):
before the show begins and thenhow are we going to get people
out at the end?
Let's have something that isn'tjust everybody out let's have
some method and because leavinga theatre is a bit like getting
off a plane you know you knowthat you've got to wait for all
those other people to get offbefore you can get off.
It would be nice if there wassomething that entertained you

(01:27:48):
while you were doing that.
And I don't think Ray broughtthat to fruition but he had
considered it and that's what Iliked.

SPEAKER_04 (01:27:58):
What about you Pete?
Do you have a a plus up for theplus time?

SPEAKER_05 (01:28:04):
I want to see it built you know like I would I
would actually would would liketo see a a version of this built
and especially with in arevitalized interest in
retrofuturism today and designthe the Guji style etc uh I
would actually like to see thatapplied.
So it actually does like it makeit a Futurama 3 for all we care.

(01:28:26):
Yeah.
But the the very sweeping designand the very approach.
And obviously because of uh hiswidespread imagination we can't
verbatim do everything that Rayintended into it but doing a a
version of it really wouldn't bea bad thing.
Yeah.
And and uh especially today uhwhere we've talked about this

(01:28:51):
Kelly and I in our previousepisodes where there's almost a
um adversarial nature to goingto theme parks these days where
like as soon as you pay thathigh price ticket it then
becomes you better give me allmy money's worth or else I think
that something like the timemaze would be structured you had
mentioned earlier about when youpay or what you don't pay for uh

(01:29:13):
when you are entering an like ifyou're entering a town you're
not paying for that experiencebut you are paying for a
restaurant unless you're in Romewhich you pay for everything.
But still you raise the notion Ithink of introducing the
optimism and not necessarily afull utopic approach because
that's just not feasible intoday's economy.

(01:29:36):
But I think introducing conceptsthat go beyond just mild
entertainment um are very, verypossible with the time maze.
And so even though this is kindof a a a wishy washy, mealy
mouthed approach to a plus up,that's actually the main concept
I would like to see introducedto it would be A, I'd love to

(01:29:56):
see it done, but B, I would loveto see some of Ray's optimism
inserted in there to To kind ofbring back the optimism into a
themed experience.
So when you walk out, you feelbetter than when you entered.

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:08):
Yes, I I think that's great.
I think that's how it should be.
Um incidentally, I don't knowwhich version of the time maze
you read, but I looked at aversion that's in the Bradbury
Centre files, and it includes apreamble, which is basically a
kind of a business um account ofwhat this thing will be.
And it talks about the time mazerequiring, I think it says two

(01:30:31):
hundred thousand square feet ofof land.
And it talks about how many ofthese there would be, and I
think it's something like six inacross the US.
Six different locations andothers around the world.
And it's sort of some m justmade up figures, I'm sure, but
some figures suggesting how muchthis would generate, you know.

(01:30:53):
So it's it's not just an off thetop of the head idea.
I mean it may have started asthat, but it it became a serious
business proposition.
That's really cool.
Oh and by the way, three thereare three names on that
proposal.
There's Bradbury, there's JohnJurdy, who is the architect who
I mentioned earlier, theshopping mall guy.

(01:31:14):
And the third one is I've got tocheck my notes, make sure I get
this right, John DeCor, who isuh or was an art director,
production designer fromHollywood, who worked on films
such as South Pacific uh rightthe way through to Ghostbusters
in 1984.
So that you know, there's someserious thought gone into it.

(01:31:38):
It's not just Ray's proposal.
Um it's got two other peoplebehind it.
That's really cool.

SPEAKER_04 (01:31:44):
That's fascinating.
It never even crossed my mindthat he thought of this as a
serious possibility.
I you know, I just read it andit was like, this is a flight of
fancy.
Yeah he wrote it real quicklyand then walked away from it.
It never occurred to me that heactually considered trying to
build something like it.
That's wild.

(01:32:05):
Amazing.
That's really, really wild.
Well, I think as we kind of drawthis to a close, I want to uh
first off, thank you, Phil.
Yes, Dr.
Phil Nichols, for joining ustoday.
Thank you so much.
Wonderful.
It's been really delightful.
Yeah, it's been great.
Is there is there anything you'dlike to plug?
Anything that you'd like tosell?
Anything.

SPEAKER_03 (01:32:25):
Well, I would just uh suggest that if people are
interested in Bradbury, have alisten to my podcast,
Bradbury100, uh, or visit mywebsite, which is Bradbury
Media.co.uk, and on there you'llfind links to all the other
things that I do.
Fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 (01:32:41):
And we'll put those in the show notes too.
Uh uh folks, I I listen toBradbury100, so you should too.
Yep.
All right, so from me and Peteand Dr.
Phil Nichols, this has been ALowdown on the Plus Up.

(01:33:14):
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of The Lowdown on the
Plus Up.
If you have, please tell yourfriends where you found us.
And if you haven't, we canpretend this never happened and
need not speak of it again.
For a lot more thoughts on themeparks and related stuff, check
out my writing for BoardwalkTimes at Boardwalk Times.net.
Feel free to reach out to Peteand I at Lowdown on the Plus Up

(01:33:37):
on Blue Sky, Mastodon,Instagram, and all the other
socials.
Or you can send us a messagedirectly at comments at
lowdown-plus-up.com.
We really want to hear about howyou'd plus these attractions up
and read some of your ideas onthe show.
Our theme music is Goblin TinkerSoldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at

(01:33:59):
Incompitech.com.
We'll have a new episode outreal soon.
Why?
Because we like you.

SPEAKER_00 (01:34:27):
And you can't escape me.
Luckily, it's a short poem, butit sums up some of my feelings
on why I love space travel, whyI write science fiction, why I'm
intrigued with what's going onthis weekend on Mars.
And part of this has myphilosophy about space travel in
it, and if you'll permit, I'llread it to you.

(01:34:47):
It's very, very short.
The fence we walked between theyears did balance us serene.
It was a place half in the skywhere in the green of leaf and
promising of peach, we'd reachour hand to touch and almost
touch the sky.
If we could reach and touch, wesaid, 'twould teach us not to,
never to be dead.

(01:35:08):
We ate and almost touched thatstuff.
Our reach was never quiteenough.
If only we had tallered then andtouched God's cuff, his hem, we
would not have to go with themwho've gone before, who sure has
us stood tunnel as they couldstand, and hooked by stretching,
turn, that they might keep theirland, their home, their heart,

(01:35:29):
their flesh and soul.
But they like us were standingin a hole.
Oh Thomas, will a race one daystand really tunnel across the
void, across the universe andall, and measured out with
rocket fire, at last put Adam'sfinger forth, as on the cistine
ceiling, and God's hand comedown the other way to measure

(01:35:53):
man and find him good and gifthim with forever's day.
I work for that.
Short man, large dream.
I send my rockets forth betweenmy ears, hoping an inch of good
is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry backalong the universal mouth.

(01:36:13):
We've reached Alpha Centrality.
We're tall.
Oh God, we're tall.

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