In 1952, an imaginative author ran into a flying saucer lecturer at a science fiction convention. In a different time and place, perhaps they could have been the best of friends. here's what happened instead.
The Man
for Mars
Ray Bradbury grew up reading about spacemen like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, loving fantasy and science fiction. In 1937 at the age of 17 he met Forrest J. Ackerman, joined a club and became involved in fandom writing for (and publishing) fanzines until making his first professional sale in 1941. By the late 1940s, he was a family man and an established author. A snapshot of Bradbury’s career highlights from Current Biography Yearbook, 1953:
“He has had 170 short stories published and twenty-three radio dramas and five television plays produced…with imaginative themes which combine advanced technology with subtle fantasy and have what has become known as ‘the Bradbury twist.’ His stories were first published in science fiction and fantasy magazines… [then the mainstream] Collier's, Saturday Evening Post and the New Yorker. … His most recent work, The Golden Apples of the Sun, is the fourth of his published books, the others being Dark Carnival (1947), The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). … He has also done much writing for the moving pictures… Of Bradbury's prolific output Punch (August 1952) has written: ‘"It is hard to speak with restraint of these extraordinary tales which raise Ray Bradbury to a secure place among the imaginative writers of today.’"
A Friendship
with a Flying Saucer Author
In the summer of 1950, Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920-2012) was thirty years old. That was when he met Gerald Heard (1889-1971), a science fiction author twice his age, who was interested in the paranormal, UFOs, and many other unconventional subjects. In the 2011 book, Becoming Ray Bradbury, Jonathan R. Eller described how they became good friends:
“In spite of Heard’s growing eccentricities… he offered Bradbury more than his passion for Eastern philosophies. Bradbury was not drawn to Heard’s beliefs, but he was drawn to his [talent, intellect, and personality].”
 |
| From the slightly re-titled US edition. |
Heard’s book The Riddle of the Flying Saucers: Is Another World Watching? was published in the UK later that year. In 1951, Heard was a founding member of the group Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles (CSI), the first UFO organization with a board of scientific and aeronautical experts. Riddle also lectured on saucers and revised his book for the 1953 Bantam paperback edition, adding two new chapters on recent sightings. This all goes to show that Bradbury had a trusted friend who was knowledgeable on the UFO topic, but Ray had no desire to be any part of it.
However, in the Imagination April 1951 science fiction magazine, Bradbury’s "In This Sign..." appeared, a UFO story of sorts about anomalous aerial spheres of blue light, later revealed to be sentient beings. The story was later retitled "The Fire Balloons." For a closer look at this from a historical UFO perspective, see: Ray Bradbury's Orbs from Mars at Blue Blurry Lines.
The Man
for Venus
In 1952, two
rising stars crossed paths, a young science fiction author and an aging flying
saucer lecturer. Although they had much in common, the two were sharply divided
about their opinions on the reality of alien visitors. It happened at the fifth
annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference, which was held June 28-29, 1952,
at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego.
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| Ad from Science Fiction Advertiser, July 1952 |
"Sou-Westercon" was a major convention sponsored by the San Diego Science-Fantasy Society. Their guest of honor was author Ray Bradbury. It was considered a curiosity or quirk, but Bradbury chose not to drive a car or fly on an airplane. That’s why he travelled from his home in Venice, California, to the San Diego convention by train.
Anthony
More’s report on the convention in Shangri-LA (newsletter of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society)
#32, Fall 1952, said Sou-Westercon was, “the
largest fan group ever assembled, and included the largest professional
collection ever brought together at one time at a fan affair.” He noted that Ray
Bradbury was supposed to give the opening remarks, but didn’t arrive on time (possibly
his train was delayed). The convention started without him, the first of their
schedule problems.
The 4-page program for Sou-Westercon was chiefly their directory of the events, but there
was also a page featuring an ad for the booklet “Ray Bradbury Review.” Another
unconnected ad below it was for “Cosmag S-F Digest,” which included an
illustration of two flying saucers zipping through space.
Most of the speakers covered topics related to science fiction, but one talk was a bit different. The lecture for Saturday at 1:30 pm was “a discussion of The Flying Saucers” given by “Dr. Adamski.”
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| FATE Magazine, July, 1951. |
That was George Adamski (1891-1965), before his greatest claim to fame and bestselling book. (See: The Professor's Message from Space.) At that time, Adamski was an obscure figure, lecturing on flying saucer and selling the photographs he claimed to have taken of them. The convention report wryly mentioned Adamski’s presentation in passing:
“The ubiquitous flying saucer then wheeled into view, and a scattering of fans listened to a ‘Dr.' Adamski, who competes from the foot of the hill with Palomar Observatory, tell about that unusual form of iron known as carbon.”
It’s not
documented how long it lasted or exactly what he talked about, but the lecture was
scheduled to last 30 minutes. In other appearances around the same time, Adamski
spoke about saucers as coming from our neighboring inhabited planets and
displayed (and sold) his photos. Adamski sometimes talked two hours longer than
planned, so he’d likely have run past his half-hour given the chance.
Ray
Bradbury arrived from the train station while Adamski was lecturing, and on the
way into the hotel he encountered some people who’d walked out on the talk. (We’ll
hear his recollection of that later.) We don’t know how much of the lecture
Bradbury saw or if he spoke to Adamski, but he was left with an unfavorable
impression. After the convention, both Adamski and Bradbury both went on to
greater successes, and both were the subject of much media coverage. As far as
we know, they never crossed paths again.
It
Came from Outer Space
Universal-International
hired Ray Bradbury to come up with the story for a 1953 science fiction movie
to be filmed in 3-D. One of their working titles was “The Atomic
Monster,” but Bradbury resisted the idea of writing about monstrous flying
saucer invaders from outer space.
The 1953 United Press interview promoting It Came from Outer Space mentioned that the author was opposed to riding in a plane, then discussed his taste in films.
“Bradbury also is anti those science fiction movies in which the
visitors in the flying saucers are usually villains. He
approves of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ which featured a robot who was a
hero. But in ‘The Thing,’ he complained, the man from another world started out
believable but wound up as a monster.” Giving away the plot, in his
film, an alien who landed here would just seek “to get away safely before
somebody got panicky and killed him.”
Instead of space invaders, Bradbury’s aliens were not hostile, just visually repugnant to humans.. Their motive was only to repair their damaged ship and resume their voyage. Still, the studio sold the movie as being about a spaceship that “carried terrifying beings from outer space [who] planned to conquer the world…”
Meanwhile, George Adamski had also been busy. It's possible that when the skeptical audience bailed on his 1952 convention lecture, he decided that talk and photographs were not enough. On November 20, 1952, Adamski claimed to have encountered a flying saucer and spoke to a man from Venus, and it was backed by photos, physical evidence, and multiple witnesses. The fantastic story gained traction in the press, and became the subject of a best-selling 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed (coauthored with Desmond Leslie).
The Los Angeles Daily News, Oct. 19, 1953, carried two side by side ads featuring authors Bradbury and Adamski.
The 1960s
The UFO controversy had a resurgence in the 1960s, but Bradbury seems to have avoided taking part in public conversation on the topic. Bradbury wrote an article for his friend Forrest J. Ackerman in the Warren magazine Spacemen # 8, June 1964, discussing his favorite science fiction films, among them: “The Day the Earth Stood Still strikes me as a fine attempt to speak to mankind today about its problems on Earth.” Bradbury didn’t mind flying saucers as fiction, he was more concerned with a good story.
In 1967, the paperback collection, Man Faces Extra-Terrestrial Life In Contact edited by Noel Keyes listed Bradbury’s name first and reprinted his 1951, story, "The Fire Balloons."
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| Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1963. Contact, 1967. |
George Adamski went on to write two more books about his series of interplanetary adventures. Despite being exposed as a fraud, he still had devoted followers when he died in 1965 at the age of 74.
1970s:
Close Encounters
Bradbury
was quoted in “’Saucer Cults’ Reread Bible in Light of UFOs” by Russell
Chandler in the Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8, 1974:
“Religion and science are always circling each other,” he said. “It's like flesh and skin. There is a continuum between the two… The deep gap between them is just talk. But Bradbury, who believes “humanoid creatures like us” could exist on other planets, added that both science and religion “deal in ignorances,” and that theory is, in fact, faith. “We need to hang loose on this,’ he concluded. ‘There is always the danger of a new quack religion forming, but we need to allow this to proliferate in a free society.”
The 1976 reprint of Ralph and Judy Blum’s 1974 Bantam paperback book, “Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs,” carried a cover blurb from Ray Bradbury stating: “We have needed a new, comprehensive UFO survey for many years now. … This is that book.”
Bradbury didn’t care for flying saucers, but he was deeply moved by Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His loving review, “Opening the Beautiful Door of True Immortality,” was published in The Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1977 (Reprinted in the UK magazine Starburst, March 1978). He had nothing to say about the UFO lore in the film, just focused on what he felt was the true message:
“The great truth it teaches is that human beings, no matter what their shape, size, color, or far star-country of origin, are on their way to Becoming, Deciding to Be, deciding to travel in order to stay, deciding to live rather than dooming themselves to graveyard pits on separate worlds.”
Interviewed for the Jan. 12, Merv Griffin show, Bradbury talked about his love of Close Encounters: “I've seen it twice and cried both times…it's a very emotional experience, a very beautiful one...it's probably the most important film of the last 20 years.”
When Bradbury was a guest on the Tonight Show on March 1, 1978, host Johnny Carson asked him about UFOs and alien contact:
“The fascination lately of course with... Star Wars, Close Encounters… where people become involved again in reported flying saucers, what's your personal observation?"
Bradbury evaded the question, saying, “I'm very open. I think we you have to keep your mind totally open…” He later hinted at his true position by saying we had begun exploring space and “that we're going to be the Martians from here on in...” Carson persisted, “Do you feel personally that we are being observed? A lot of people believe that… if that's so, why don’t [aliens] contact us?” Bradbury mentioned the possible bacterial or cultural concerns, then gave his real answer.
“I don't really think they're that close to us at this point, but I think that we'll make the contact… We can't travel fast enough right now… it will be possible, let's say 200 years from now, to make it to Alpha Centauri at almost the speed of light.”
1980s: A Saucer from a Martian Hoaxer
To promote the 1983 movie adaptation of Bradbury’s Something Wicked
This Way Comes, a version was produced for radio. It was narrated by Orson
Welles, notorious for The War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938.
Bradbury was unhappy with the script changes, but rewarded afterwards with a
nice memento when Welles, “handed Bradbury the reading script with a hand-drawn
flying saucer inscribed, ‘For Ray from his admiring friend, Orson.’” From Bradbury
Beyond Apollo by Jonathan R. Eller, 2020
The Turn of the Century
The debate about aliens and UFOs got a boost in 1996 when scientists reported
possible evidence of cellular life in an ancient meteorite thought to originate
on Mars. The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 1996, article stated there was a
prominent non-believer:
“It’s ridiculous,” said author Ray Bradbury, whose Martian Chronicles painted a far more vibrant picture of Martian life. “They don’t have any proof. They’re not even sure [the rock] came from Mars. It’s a theory.” Bradbury compared the announcement to claims about UFOs and mysterious crop circles. He doesn’t believe it for a minute. “It’s stupid,” he said.
Ray Bradbury suffered a stroke in 1999 that left him with many physical problems. While his memory was dimmed by age and illness, he was still sharp and continued to work. During his final years, Bradbury spoke about UFOS and aliens several more times. Jim Cherry interviewed Bradbury for Arizona Republic August 31, 2000 (reprinted in Conversations with Ray Bradbury, Steven L. Aggelis, editor, 2004).
Cherry: “What do you think of alien visitors and UFOs?”
Bradbury: “No such, no way. It's ridiculous; there's absolutely no proof anywhere, at any time.”
Ray Bradbury wrote the foreword for the 2001 book, The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars' Invasion of Earth from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles. Entitled, “H.G. Wells, Master of Paranoia,” and it included a passage to the UFO topic:
“Wells and Welles prepared us for the delusional madness of the past fifty years. In fact, the entire history of the United States and the last half of the twentieth century is exemplified beautifully in Well's work. Starting with the so-called arrival of flying saucers in the 1950s, we've had a continuation of a mild panic at being invaded by creatures from some other part of the universe. It started with that alien professor who sold hot dogs with saucers of Invaders at the foot of Mt. Palomar. It then ravened up the years with half-baked sightings to end in Roswell and while true believers who claimed they never met a bug-eyed monster they didn't love.
Dr. Hynek disagreed, and he was the expert on flying saucers hitting the fan, having started the Center for UFO Studies. People said yes to his truths but snuck off the next day to Bide-a-Wee Martian Shoals in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The myths proliferated, all the way from the friendly beasts that invaded Meteor Crater in my It Came from Outer Space to the incredible mothership landing in firework illuminations in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. God reaching down to judge Adam's upstretched hand.
So the invasions will never cease. Or, not until we landfall Mars, build towns, and become friendly invaders to the universe. We will arrive in peace, and hopefully go with God.”
Ray Bradbury only mentioned Roswell in passing, but he recognized the story as something that had been manufactured by UFO mythmakers. In 2003, Bradbury had a heated exchange with Paul Davids, the producer of the 1994 Roswell TV movie. Bradbury was “an arch skeptic,” according to Davids, who said the disagreement happened at a Hollywood luncheon:
“When he heard that I had made Roswell he started yelling at me! He started attacking me! Saying ‘what are you doing making a piece of fiction like that and trying to pass it off as something that’s true?’”
The last
documented comments by Ray Bradbury on UFOs take us full circle. In 2009, Jeff
Krulik filmed an interview of Bradbury, whom he found “still gracious and full
of life and big ideas.” Almost as an afterthought, Krulik asked him, “Do you
believe in UFOs?” In a hyperbolic reply, Bradbury said that George Adamski
“invented” UFOs, blaming him for the popularity of the belief in them as alien
spaceships. Bradbury described arriving at the 1952 Sou-Westercon:
“I went down [by] train to go to the science fiction convention in San Diego… in the U.S. Grant Hotel… people were rushing out… ‘We're leaving… [a] man that has a hot dog stand at the base of Mount Palomar, he's talking about some flying saucers… He's a nut, stupid nut.’ So I found out that... it was a complete lie that he made up… and people believed him. I talked on various radio shows and TV shows and told people not to listen… they asked me about that, I said, ‘Go talk to that hot dog salesman, it's a complete lie.’”
Ray Bradbury died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. The Los Angeles Times obituary for Bradbury quoted his view on his writing:
“I’m not a science fiction writer. I’ve written only one book of science fiction [Fahrenheit 451]. All the others are fantasy. Fantasies are things that can’t happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.”
Bradbury
viewed flying saucers from outer space not as science fiction, but as fantasy.
. . .
This article
is an offshoot of a project that began years ago, “Science Fiction vs. Flying
Saucers,” examining the opposition of many of the field’s authors to beliefs
about UFOs. If you’re interested in seeing more on this topic, please let us
know in an email or comment.
CE3K Trivia: George Adamski’s Revenge?
Steven Spielberg’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind presented a story based on a
potpourri of events, concepts, and legends from UFO lore. Spielberg had scared
moviegoers with Jaws, and all the advertising for CE3K was dark
and menacing, telling us to “Watch the Skies,” and that “We are not Alone.” For
most of the movie, the mystery of the UFOs is treated as menacing, but in
the final act, the Mothership lands we learn that these ancient and
technologically advanced aliens were peaceful and benevolent. Except in appearance, just like George
Adamski’s space brothers.
