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This chapter examines Kirk’s friendships with Robert Nisbet, Leo Strauss, Flannery O’Connor, Eric Voegelin, and Ray Bradbury. It also tells the disastrous story of Kirk’s creation and editing of a nonideological journal of thought and scholarship, Modern Age, only to be thwarted by bigotry and editorial disagreements with the publisher.

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's creation of a kind of science fiction (SF) beyond the genre ghetto of the 1940s. The discussions cover his fascination with film; his early; his mentors; his attempts to write detective fiction and horror; his attitude toward technology; his exploration of time travel through dinosaur stories; his commentary on SF through a series of essays and interviews; and his repeated claim of a continuity between his childhood reading and adult writing. The chapter argues that Bradbury's surge of creativity in the late 1940s and 1950s coincided with the last years of the Golden Age of SF. In tandem with the publication of the fiction itself, more and more writers examined the nature of the genre. Broadly speaking, these writers all agreed that SF had emerged from its ghetto and taken up a socially central role as the literature of speculation.

This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's writings on space. Throughout his career, Bradbury expressed his sense of writing in the Space Age, a time which he felt was characterized by the visual sublime, and from his earliest writings space was an important concern. For Bradbury, space was the big subject, constantly drawing him to explore its potential in his fiction, essays, films, and other projects. He not only saw flight into space as the ultimate physical and speculative act. He figured it as a willed realization of an evolutionary destiny somehow independent of physical form. As early as 1953, he was speculating “why build rockets at all?”; space retained a speculative and spiritual fascination for Bradbury throughout his career.

This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's continued relationship with his mentors, offering advice to them while affecting the tone and diction of his apprentice years. In early 1952 William F. Nolan published The Ray Bradbury Review, a booklet documenting Bradbury's creative output as projected through the end of the year. The next year Nolan privately printed a supplemental Bradbury Index and also offered a detailed account of Bradbury's major works-in-progress as well as his media work. This chapter first considers Bradbury's mentorship of emerging and young writers such as Nolan, Charles Beaumont, and George Clayton Johnson during the early 1950s, interacting with them and giving them encouragement. It then discusses Bradbury's conscious efforts to repay the blessings he had received from his old friends and mentors a decade earlier, including Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Hank Kuttner, and C. L. Moore.

This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's writings on Mars, with a particular focus on The Martian Chronicles (1950). It covers his discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs' fiction at the age of ten; his early Mars stories; his composition of The Martian Chronicles; his efforts to move away from clichéd images of extraterrestrials; his emphasis on a seepage between the consciousnesses of his Earthlings and Martians; how the Martians in his stories emerge as projections or distorted mirror images of the human settlers; his emphasis of the importance of dwellings in The Martian Chronicles; and his later Mars publications. The final section of the chapter discusses how the Martian story “Usher II” engages most directly with the enforcement of literary censorship.

This chapter analyzes Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and its dystopian contexts. The novel widely is recognized as a classic among postwar American dystopias. It belongs in that body of science fiction published just after the Second World War, which gradually took over the function of social criticism previously performed by realist fiction. The novel shares an overall pattern common to two of the most famous dystopias of the period: Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's The Space Merchants and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952). All three novels focus on a protagonist working within an organization with which he becomes increasingly dissatisfied. Under the impact of a catalytic character or event, these dissatisfactions gradually come to a head and result in final separation from that organization.

The chapter documents Bradbury’s collaboration with composer-lyricist Jimmy Webb on a new 1989 musical stage version of Dandelion Wine, and the subsequent series of performances at Kermit Christman’s Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival Theater in Florida. “Time Flies,” Webb’s new song for the Florida production, would later be recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, and Michael Feinstein. The chapter concludes with a summary of the third and fourth seasons of Ray Bradbury Theater and the successful negotiations to clear rights (with the NBC Chronicles mini-series producers and Disney Studios) to film episodes based on The Martian Chronicles and “The Black Ferris,” the original source tale for Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Bradbury’s spring 1980 trip to Washington, D.C. rekindled his relationship with the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum and resulted in a detailed treatment for a new planetarium show titled “The Great Shout of the Universe.” Chapter 14 also documents Bradbury’s day on Capitol Hill with Senator Claiborne Pell and his evening lecture at the Smithsonian’s Baird Auditorium. Bradbury’s summer in France was followed by the release of his hundred-story retrospective collection, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, a collection he compiled with Knopf editor Nancy Nicholas and Knopf president Robert Gottlieb. Chapter 14 concludes with a survey of reviews, with special attention to Thomas M. Disch’s unsettling New York Times piece.

Ray and Maggie Bradbury’s winter 1990 stay in Paris began as Bradbury successfully negotiated a fortieth anniversary hardbound edition of The Martian Chronicles from Doubleday. Chapter 26 also narrates how Bradbury discovered that his perennial popularity in Eastern Europe was expanding as the Iron Curtain collapsed, especially in Czechoslovakia, where newly elected President Vaclav Havel proved to be a Bradbury enthusiast. The chapter closes with Bradbury’s unexpected invitation to a May 1990 luncheon for President Gorbachev held at the Russian Embassy in Washington. Bradbury and Isaac Asimov were invited as the favorite writers of the Gorbachev family. Bradbury was also beginning to learn of the scattered and informal Bradbury reading clubs that had existed in Russia throughout much of the Cold War period.

In 1985 Bradbury was invited to testify before the National Commission on Space. Chapter 23 opens with Bradbury’s testimony highlights, which trace his notion that the life force expressed in the writings of George Bernard Shaw, Henri Bergson, and Nikos Kazantzakis was inextricably involved in the human desire to explore the cosmos. The chapter also shows how Bradbury further modified his cosmic vision in the wake of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in his Guest of Honor lecture at the 1986 Science Fiction World Con. The launch of the Ray Bradbury Theater television series, his brief correspondence with Malcolm Cowley, and the great loss of literature cause by the massive Los Angeles Library fire round out the chapter.

Chapter 30 opens with a surprise proposal from Planetary Society founders Carl Sagan and Louis Friedman to send a digitized copy of works by the ABC authors—Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke—to Mars in 1992. The Russian lander carrying this cargo failed, but an expanded version of the ABC project remained for a future American mission to attempt. Bradbury participated in the 1992 grand opening of the Euro Disney Resort and Park, where he had served as an occasional advisor to Imagineer executive Tim Delany as it was developed. The final episodes of the six-year Ray Bradbury Theater television series were produced and broadcast during 1992; the chapter concludes with an assessment of the series and its record of awards.

Chapter 45 concludes Bradbury Beyond Apollo with an assessment of his legacy, prefaced by an account of the memorial to Bradbury staged by the Planetary Society as the Mars rover Curiosity landed in early August 2012. Chapter 45 wraps up the three-volume biography with a summary of the well-known early story collections and novels that anchor Bradbury’s twenty-first century reputation, and a parallel summation of the important achievements of the last forty years of his career. These include The Halloween Tree’s affirmation of life over death, the six-year run of Ray Bradbury Theater, the role of “The Toynbee Convector” as Bradbury’s settled view on human endeavor, his visionary but sometimes controversial articles, and his delicate but compelling Somewhere a Band Is Playing.

This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's phenomenal year as a writer during the summer and fall of 1950. A chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood at a Los Angeles bookstore in early July 1950 provided the critical breakthrough that Bradbury needed to bring The Martian Chronicles more fully into mainstream literary appreciation. The timing of Bradbury's review copy gift could not have been better; Isherwood had just agreed to write extended book reviews for Tomorrow, a new literary magazine. Isherwood's review of the Chronicles appeared in the October 1950 issue of Tomorrow. This chapter first considers the impact of Isherwood's friendship on Bradbury's career before turning to Bradbury's new “Illustrated Man” concept for Doubleday and his creation of a 100-page typescript titled Long after Midnight. It also discusses Bradbury's deal with Bantam for an anthology of new fantasy and science fiction stories.

This chapter examines the collaboration between artist Joseph Mugnaini and Ray Bradbury for the latter's collection of short stories called The Golden Apples of the Sun. Mugnaini was a prolific book illustrator who emphasized fine arts over commercial art. He developed talent in a wide range of media, including oil and watercolor painting. This chapter considers how Mugnaini's art forged a connection between the two men that began in April 1952, when Bradbury saw a Mugnaini painting titled “The Caravan” in a Beverly Hills gallery. Bradbury regarded “The Caravan” as a grand metaphor for the long-deferred novel concept that had emerged from his story “The Black Ferris” under the working title of The Dark Carnival. In August 1952 Bradbury sent Doubleday typescripts or tear sheets for twenty-four stories which, after several revisions, became The Golden Apples of the Sun. This chapter discusses how Bradbury was able to link the Golden Applestories together visually through Mugnaini's cover art and interior illustrations.

This chapter examines the new and largely unexpected opportunities that were beginning to open for Ray Bradbury in Hollywood during the 1950s. During the summer and fall of 1952, Bradbury was able to establish his first writing credits in the motion picture industry. The proximity of the studios and the proliferation of affiliated and independent theaters in greater Los Angeles created many opportunities for him. Bradbury was already beginning to forge some lasting connections in Hollywood, thanks in large part to his friendship with cinematographer James Wong Howe and his wife, Sanora Babb. Howe introduced Bradbury to some of the legendary directors he had worked with, including Fritz Lang. This chapter considers some of Bradbury's notable Hollywood projects, including the screen treatments for Universal Studios's It Came From Outer Space, which he complemented with a variation of the story “A Matter of Taste,” and an offer to write a film titled Face of the Deep for Twentieth-Century Fox.

The volume introduction describes how Bradbury Beyond Apollo takes up the threads of the author’s life from Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound, seeking to follow the patterns he wove through the final four decades of his career. The introduction situates Bradbury Beyond Apollo in the context of his earlier works, which were rapidly becoming contemporary classics, and maintains that his later-life works of significance, including his essays and reviews, were sustained and crafted within the greater fabric of his deepening engagement with the American space program. Along with the earlier volumes, Bradbury Beyond Apollo forms a biography of the mind, recording life as Bradbury experienced it, and not necessarily how the public saw it.

“The Great Shout of the Universe,” Bradbury’s planetarium scenario for the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, proved too far removed from the more factual presentation that the Smithsonian expected, and the project did not move forward. Chapter 15 shows how Bradbury was able to salvage the concept and have it mounted instead in the Aerospace Museum in Los Angeles as “The Windows of the Universe.” Bradbury went on to compose original verses in the Spanish saeta tradition for “Our Lady Queen of the Angels,” built by Hollywood set designer Tony Duquette and mounted in the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. Bradbury’s work with the American Film Institute seminars and the George Pal Memorial Lecture concludes the chapter.

Chapter 18 centers on the 1982 filming of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Disney Studios, and the 1982-1983 reshooting and reediting stages of production. Producer Peter Douglas and his father Kirk Douglas were able to convince Disney to finance the film, with Jack Clayton as director. Bradbury’s 1976 script was subsequently reworked by Clayton and British writer John Mortimer. Bradbury’s reaction to these changes, his fascination with the Green Town set built on the Disney studio lot, and the dynamics of the reshooting relationships between Bradbury, Clayton, and the studio form the focus of chapter 18. The chapter concludes with post-production work and promotions involving Orson Welles and Bradbury, and a brief summary of the critical reactions and awards the film received.

Bradbury advanced his visionary role through his keynote address for NASA’s 1987 Goddard Memorial Dinner. Chapter 24 documents how he established a balance between criticism and motivation in spite of his mistrust of the military industrial establishment represented at the event. The chapter also discusses The Toynbee Convector and the importance of the title story, which offers Toynbee’s “challenge and response” insight as the best illustration of Bradbury’s self-perceived purpose as a writer: to show how humanity can shape the future by believing in it to the point of certainty. The chapter concludes with his summer trip to France and his journey to the grave of his uncle Samuel Bradbury, felled by influenza in the final days of World War I.