Ray Bradbury at NASA JPL, 1971, reading his poem "If Only We Had Taller Been" (video)

[Video Link] A beautiful video from NASA JPL honoring Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday, June 5 2012 at 91.

Through the years, Ray Bradbury attended several major space mission events at JPL/Caltech. On Nov. 12, 1971, on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit at Mars, Bradbury took part in a symposium at Caltech with Arthur C. Clarke, journalist Walter Sullivan, and scientists Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. In this excerpt, Bradbury reads his poem, "If Only We Had Taller Been."

(Thanks, Stephanie L. Smith)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: astronomy • aviation • Mars • ray bradbury • Science • science fiction • scifi • sf • space exploration • space travel

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jaytkay

RIP Ray

I love his story of writing his stories on a rented typewriter in the library in LA.
noah django

There is no finer novel for a twelve-year-old boy to read than Dandelion Wine. I have not read him in many years, but he had quite an impact on me as a reader.

(pedantic aside: it really is a shame there aren’t any sound engineers over at Caltech.)
ocker3

Up with this kind of thing.
winter67uk

“The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant’s shoulder to mount on.” – Coleridge, riffing on nine centuries of previous ideas on the subject. Bradbury has more fun with it. Sagan seems to think so too.