Video

TRANSCRIPT - my thoughts in the comments

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all right good evening my name is Dr Jason ockerman
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I'm a faculty member at the uh in the IUPUI School of liberal arts
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and I'm the director of the Ray Bradbury Center what is the Ray Bradbury Center it is a
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one of the larger single author archives in the United States it's also a small Museum we have
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recreated Ray Bradbury's basement office with entirely original artifacts and we do offer tours to the public on
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occasion so please follow us on social media if you'd ever like to come and see the collection
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on behalf of the Bradbury Center and the school of liberal arts I want to welcome you to our literary Festival Festival
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451 Indy we have events throughout the month of September to celebrate our literary
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Heroes two of mine are going to be taking the stage uh in in just a moment to encourage people the festival
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encourages people to cultivate an active reading life and to celebrate the humanities our
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Festival references Ray Bradbury's most famous work Fahrenheit 451.
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a cautionary tale about the consequences of the cultural devaluation of literacy
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his words you don't have to burn books to destroy a culture just get people to
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stop reading have only become more poignant and relevant today
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that's why we felt that a festival like Festival four or five when Indy was necessary so thank you so much for for being here
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tonight and being part of it hopefully you picked up some note cards
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as you're listening to the speakers today please write down your questions and I think these two aisles here if I'm
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wrong somebody will correct me okay I got the thumbs up from the boss so these
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two aisles here you'll be able to approach a microphone and address your questions so please stick around for the Q a sometimes that's the best part
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although I think everything about tonight's going to be great we also want to thank the aw Clues foundation for sponsoring tonight's
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event and for sponsoring the entire Festival um that lasts the entire month of
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September their generosity made this Festival possible uh in your programs
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tonight there's a short survey if you could fill that out and turn it into one of our team members at our information
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table uh in the lobby that would be super helpful for us we do have to do a grant report for Clues and your your
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response to the event tonight would go a long way in helping us craft that report we definitely appreciate it
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before introducing our speakers I want to share a brief land acknowledgment
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IUPUI acknowledges our location on the traditional on the traditional and
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ancestral territory of the Miami padawatami and Shawnee people
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we honor the heritage of native peoples what they teach us about the stewardship of the earth and their continuing
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efforts today to protect the planet founded in 1969 IUPUI stands on the
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historic homelands of native peoples and more recently that of a vibrant a vibrant black community also unjustly
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displaced where we sit tonight Madame Walker theater is one of the last vestiges of
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that Vibrant Community as the present stewards of the land we honor them all as we live work and study
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at IUPUI today people in this state who teach about the
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injustices of the past are under attack and I want to affirm tonight that we
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stand with our public Educators our public libraries and librarians
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we honor their expertise we will never correct the injustices of
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the present if we fail to acknowledge our past especially the parts that make us uncomfortable
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if there are Educators and Librarians in the art in our audience tonight would
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you please raise your hand so we can honor you [Applause]
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thank you thank you for what you do um you know tonight in part we honor Ray
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Bradbury a great author who spent his life standing up for public libraries because knowledge
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should be free and accessible to everyone no matter what
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we stand against any attempt to whitewash our history the old adage that
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those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it rings true but I would add it seems clear that
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those who actively try to prevent history from being taught intend to
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repeat it we will not let that happen so tonight the red Bradbury Center is
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thrilled to partner with our friends at the center for Africana studies and culture and presenting a night with two
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legendary authors Dr Charles Johnson and Stephen Barnes
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tonight's event will be moderated by my dear friend and colleague Dr lasatien
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executive director of the center for Africana studies and culture Dr Les the stage is yours my friend
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good evening good evening good evening everyone thank you for coming out um a little little housekeeping before
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we get started because we are breathing rarified air here tonight so I want to
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acknowledge uh in in right in the front here to also legendary writers uh Ms
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Sharon Skeeter and also miss Tanner nariev do right here in the front
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and big thanks to to Jason uh and the the staff and and Folks at the Bradbury
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Center for putting this on and also giving us an opportunity to play a role in it um some colleagues from Liberal
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Arts are sitting right there shout out to y'all hello um and also our Dean
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um let me say oh and look Rob Robbin uh our other colleague but our Dean is also
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in the house here tonight as well uh Tammy Idol so I'd like to bring up uh Mr Barnes and Dr Johnson if they could hear
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me to come on up and we'll get started let's give a round of applause
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you wanted the right I'm gonna go to the right thank you
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all right welcome welcome welcome thank you thank you both for being here greatly appreciated I think it's um it's
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always good uh to introduce uh folks uh to who we have this August panel that
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we're in here tonight so if you wouldn't mind if we just get started Jump Right In but also I think there might be
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people in the house that would want to know uh about uh who we are are sitting
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with tonight no I'm always curious about who I'm sitting with especially when I'm sitting
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alone in a room exactly okay there we go so you know what I forgot to say what
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did you forget to say we have Mr Maurice Broadus in the house tonight as well yay
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foreign yes that's right yes yes so if you don't
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mind I will start with uh the youngest of us um
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[Music] okay if you don't mind um because uh you know uh I think it's
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it it's it's very important for us to understand um the value uh in in the work you've
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done uh in the literary World um but also you know in Academia and and
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it's you know and some of these other other places if you don't mind just giving us giving a brief brief bio a
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little bit about yourself okay uh you got 30 minutes
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um first I want to say this is a joyful occasion for me to be on the stage with
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this gentleman but especially that gentleman on the end we have collaborated on any number of projects in the past
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most recently the Eightfold Path yeah uh which is uh award-winning as it turns
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out uh graphic novel all of it all the credit goes to Steve they're all of his
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stories okay I came on and I I you know I took
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the ride with you and it was like anything we do together um a great pleasure we have a lot of
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overlap you know I did a book in 1988 called
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um being in race black writing since 1970. and in the last chapter it's a
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survey of black writers uh up to 1970 in the last chapter I I mentioned this guy
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I keep running across um his you know he's a martial artist and he writes science fiction
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um he's a black dude too I'm thinking that's me that's me but then I really no
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it's this character over here Stephen Barnes who um has been my hero for a
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very long very long time um my history my journey
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and to creativity had it was truly influenced by the man who did this book
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he was in and the Art of writing uh brave adverry but I come to this
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from being a journalist and a cartoonist that
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was my first love my first Passion was drawing in high school I became a
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professional illustrator when I was 17 I did some illustrations for a magic Company catalog in Chicago and
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um I saved that dollar by the way too that I got paid it's framed and there were times I was I was gonna
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use it because I was so broke in grad school but I started out as a as a Cartoonist and a journalist
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and along the way read you know voraciously of course you know cartoons
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do read a lot so we can get ideas from all kinds of different you know sources and it was around the time when I was 18
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I got exposed to philosophy and decided one of these days I I have to get a
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doctorate in philosophy I just have to and one of the lights I discovered is
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how much Bradberry admired Socrates and Marcus Aurelius you know among the uh
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the stoics right so so my journey took me from drawing to to scholarship and
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then to writing at a certain point uh you know novels and short stories and
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essays and and other things uh one of the things I want to emphasize which I'm sure most of you know already but I have
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to remind myself of it repeatedly is all of the the liberal arts in the
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humanities are interconnected one thing will lead you to another thing
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you know if you might want to get up one day and draw but then the next day you
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might want to get up and start a short story and the third day you might want to get up and write an essay on a
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question that's been troubling you about the mind-body relationship there is no reason why any of us should have to
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allow anybody to put us in a little box and say this is all that you do you know
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if you see my name crop up with something it'll be Charles Johnson novelist but that's not the only thing I do so all of these Arts feed each other
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you know create creatively and I when I was young looking at Bradbury's movies reading his short stories I felt that
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Spirit you know of openness and the excitement that just comes from doing
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something not as Bradbury said for money or fame first is for the love of doing
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it you get money in Fame later if you get it well that's fine but that's not your motivation your motivation is the
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fact that when you create you're creating yourself
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with every canvas with every novel with every story with every poem you're
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realizing your own individual inherent potential as a human being who can
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through craft give a gift to the world of beauty goodness and Truth goodness and beauty
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that may enrich the lives of others that's why I think we create and why we
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honor this guy now shut up [Applause]
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goodbyes if you wouldn't mind just no I was uh relatively poor kid grew up in a broken
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home in South Central Los Angeles and I knew that the world that was presented to me was not the real world I knew that
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there were some things that were said to me about who I was and what my potential was and what my people were that was not
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accurate so I as many people did I think a large number of people in the science fiction fantasy fanish Community are
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people who grew up feeling like the world was not the world inside them that they connected with was not the same as
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the world that they saw and that they looked to the Stars they looked to the past they looked to other worlds and
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other winds to get a sense of in some ways what might be truer that science
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fiction is a fiction of ideas and Concepts that you know what if if only
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if this goes on often anchored to physics but sometimes about
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the human heart but usually if there are two questions that are Central to philosophy those questions are probably
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who am I and what is true what is it to be human and what is the world that human beings perceive and science fiction approached it in one way fantasy
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approaches it in another fantasy is not about the world of physics it's about the world of symbols and the human heart
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and the way these things interact it's about the Poetry what's happening kind of between the atoms kind of between the
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events so whereas science fiction has to be both internally and externally consistent connected to physics as I
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said fantasy has to only be internally consistent that within this we're
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talking about human heart human perception and what are we and how do we feel this
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Bradbury Drew my attention I was reading voraciously at that time because I was
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looking for you know that question who am I and what is true so am I slept in a
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bedroom with the walls aligned with books and Ray Bradbury was interesting because he
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wrote he was published in science fiction magazines but he was not writing about what if in that way it wasn't
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interested in the physics of the situation he was interested in the Poetics of it as if he were a fantasy
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writer he was about where is the human heart in all of this so the Martian Chronicles were not it was not what
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Voyager landed on or whatever it was that were our first Rovers I forget what the name of was he was interested in
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Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars he was interested in barsum you
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know he was not he was interested in the Poetics of Science and because of that
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he touched my heart he was a poet writing science fiction stories being published in science fiction magazines but you weren't going to learn anything
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about science by reading Ray Bradbury which you were going to learn about was what is it to be human what is it to see
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the stars what is it to yearn for a meaning to our lives you know what what
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are we in the vastness of the universe and that really touched this young kid
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trying to figure out who he was that the vision of the universe in that sense was so large the individual political or
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philosophical differences that that deviled us on Earth are meaningless once
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you start backing up you know when astronauts talk about how when they were in orbit they looked down at the world
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and there were no divisions of Nations and they had a spiritual experience where they said the first day everybody
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was pointing out the city they came from you know the next day when they were talking about the the the the
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International Space Station they were talking about what nations they came from the next day after that they were
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talking about the continent and then by the fourth day they're just looking at the world and those individual
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differences dissolved when you look at the world in terms of a sound of thunder
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going back 100 million years or forward into the future the problems that we
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have right now politically or in terms of nations in the in the the the joining
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together of just different groups of people who've been separated by large amounts of geography
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all that stuff disappears the question of what is the difference between this civilization and that Civilization
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it might be a thousand years of development but a thousand years of development is
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nothing in terms of the 13.7 billion years that this universe has existed
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it's nothing at all those differences dissolve and when that was the world
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that I wanted to live in a world in which those differences that were necessary because the human mind works
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in terms of what is similar as opposed to what is different we're very that dualism created a lot of our science and
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so forth and so on but ultimately getting caught in the middle of that you are not this because of that you are
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this because of this if you feel caught in that then taking that larger perspective can feel like taking a
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breath of fresh air for the first time of stepping outside anything anyone ever said about who you were or what your
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potential was and being lost in the Poetry of experience so my connection to
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Bradberry was that I sought The Poetry in the mundane the the unusual in the in
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the daily and he went went there every time he went there from his earliest
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stories which were often what are called biter bit stories where somebody does a
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bad thing and they are destroyed by the consequences of their action in these old you know uh pulp magazines you know
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and stories of ghastlys and murderers and ghosts and goblins I just ate that
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up because I I would read him and I would read other people wrote the same thing but Bradbury was always about
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something more than the events and the actions there we go absolutely absolutely so you know who I am growing
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up in the shadow of giants one of whom was the man that we come here to honor today
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is a kid who grew up in South Central Los Angeles wanted to be a science fiction writer found a great mentor in
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Larry Niven who's one of the great science fiction writers of the 20th century took me under his wing showed me how to do it gave me opportunities I was
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able to build a life I published over three million words and you know the New York Times bestseller list in this award
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and that one that's all fine but the important thing is I got to spend my life doing the thing I dreamed of as a
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kid that was the reward just to be able to do that to be able to every day talk
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to the little kid inside me and say I've kept the faith and for him to look at me and say Dad you sure did that is worth
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you there is nothing I would exchange that for and and Ray Bradbury was one of
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The Shining lights that said it was possible to get all the way there and never sell yourself out yeah can I add
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something to that of course um one of the things Bradbury gives us it
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gave me as a young person I hear you saying Brad baby gave it to you too as a
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sense of mystery and wonder about this existence in which we find ourselves the whole thing with the view
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from The Sciences right from the solar system moving all the way out to galaxies as our problems seem so
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infinitesimally small and trivial and race so small and trivial when we you
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know take that perspective um so science fiction has an intellectual discipline
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um allows us to dream you know one of my colleagues um the late Joanna Russ
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once pointed out that the female man yeah yeah
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um and at UW University of Washington she she once wrote that a woman wrote to
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her um about why she loved science fiction she lived in a in a kind of ordinary
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town you know very very boring and conformist but science fiction what she
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really found appealing were the Landscapes the
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landscape's so different from the ones that she was living in right it opened up the imagination science fiction has
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always served that purpose I think well you know Ray Bradbury if I if I may add to what you're saying is that he might
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quibble with something that you said there it isn't about developing your ability to dream it's about remembering it that we we go we all go quietly
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insane every night but we forget that and that creativity
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to a certain degree is simply opening up a pore between our unconscious minds that dream every night in the conscious
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mind that that performs it does the performative part of our mind the part of us that says I am uh and the child
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has that and life keeps telling the child be practical right stay here and
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we'll start shutting that down Ray Bradbury never lost that thing he never
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lost that connection with the child and their people will say that all there is of Genius is maintaining the creativity
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of a child with the disciplined knowledge of an adult that if you can do that if you can maintain a connection
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there you are going to be performing at the highest level that you are capable of performing it isn't it isn't
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gaining something that you don't have it's remembering how you started it's
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remembering the creativity and the aliveness and the sense of wonder that sense of Engagement that every child has
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that gets squeezed out of us by the adult world yeah I know I know and
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that's what we want to keep alive yes that child um Bradbury also put a lot of emphasis on
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the importance of the subconscious too so I'm glad I'm glad you pointed that out
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um you know we we always have to I think of you know think how do we get back to to
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that innocence that that openness that we had as children before the world beat
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it out of us or before critics you know beat it out of us um and and so what's that's one of the
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reasons that uh Sharon skies are there and I are both practicing Buddhists
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um our my practice at least gets rid of an awful lot of that conditioning
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from childhood on from parents and field teachers so that I can experience the
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world where that sense of newness and wonder and mystery you do have that I've
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I've commented to people that one of the things I love about you is how easily you are astonished
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that it's like you're constantly rediscovering yeah so you just you see it right there
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oh the world is here still have that you're not numb it
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hasn't been it hasn't been scabbed over your nerves are alive you're strong enough that you're not afraid to feel
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okay and I think that when we lose courage you know fatigue makes cowards of us all often as we age or as we get
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tired or as we shape our egos to fit into the different molds that people want us to shape into we start
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forgetting who we are and and that we started this life to enjoy it that that
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we want that sense of joy and instead of that we sack we settle for not being afraid if at best
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yeah we can't lose that you cannot yeah a human being cannot lose that and still be fully Alive one of the things I would
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like to think is my capacity one of the things at least in my work as a
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philosophical novel is I think that literature should liberate our perceptions liberate our perception you say
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astonishment I would like to be able to look at some look at you know look at
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something as if I've never seen it before it's often been said or very creative people they look at something
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strange as if it's familiar and the familiar is if it's strange right so we're constantly working with
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Consciousness and our perception and here every moment that we're alive is new
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every single moment is alive the past I've written a lot of historical fictions and so forth but the past has
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passed in the future I'm not going to worry about it because it ain't come and it never will because that's a horizon the
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future that we can never reach the only moment we have right here with each other is right here right now
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before I came over here I sat for a little bit of meditation I always do that I would not meet a group or a crowd
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or do anything in public and so I had that chance to sit if only for 10 or 15 minutes so that I can be
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here right here with all of you right now and the only moment that exists in
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time not worrying about what am I going to do when we're done with this or what what was the flight light getting us
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here with no sleep you know from Seattle right here right now new never like this
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moment before you get up in the morning why wash your face you got the soap you know okay that has never happened before
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you might think I'm doing a routine thing no not that soap not that water
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not that moment and not that version of you and not that version of me you're
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right you can't step in the same piece of water twice because your foot is never the same and the water has changed
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that's right so it's it's that awareness that the sacred is in the mundane that
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it is in this moment it that what I try to do is to Center myself and then ask
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myself what is the task to do next it task may be to get out of bed and have breakfast it may be to embrace my wife
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it may be to counsel my son it may be to play with the cat it might be to answer an email it might be to write a story
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but all those I'm not different people when I do those things I'm the same person playing different roles so let me
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be appropriate the question is can I be appropriate in this moment can I be here with this moment and the demands of this
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moment with the story that I'm writing or the person that I'm speaking to or the task that I have to do be here
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totally right now yes 30 of yourself isn't trapped in the past remembering
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regretting 30 is not projecting into the future what you're going to do you bring back all of yourself 100 to this moment
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right now whether it's writing whether it's talking to your your son or me
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talking to my grandson uh you're here totally right at this moment so one of
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the reasons why the martial arts have are such a great tool for learning
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that because one second of not thinking about right here and you get hit in the head that's right you know so there's
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nothing like a smack upside the head to wake you up no I better be here now you know you better forget about the
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hamburger I had yesterday or what my wife's gonna say when I get home this guy's Gonna Knock my head off right here
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right now in this instant there is no more other moment in time there is no other moment that that's it and that
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that sense of being there is consistent across all arts and so this conversation
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concerning getting hit in the head it's like an athlete in the zone yes in the
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zone right yes so go on well no it's the dissolution of the subject object relationship there is not a you and it
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there is there is a there's something that is happening here and you're not observing yourself doing it because when
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you're observing yourself some of the energy that you would have put into that moment is put into creating a self to
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observe and what's even worse is when people observe themselves observing themselves now you're two steps removed
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yes and you've lost all the energy you need to liberate your true self so in
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one sense Society will try to keep you in the place of observing yourself and judging yourself because that way you
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become dependent upon Society to say that you're okay because if you're in the moment you you know you're okay
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you're always okay when you're in the moment you're you're not okay once you observe yourself and start judging
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yourself but when you're there and it's just happening that's when you're totally alive and that's what we look
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for in sexuality in driving on the freeway in in heavy traffic in the rain
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in fighting in in writing in Reading is the sense of total engagement in the
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moment the eye is not observed it is it is
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subsumed in the process of the interaction that that thing of the page
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opening up and you fall into the page can happen only once this component skills have been
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reduced to unconscious competence right right as you can tell we we've talked a lot together [Laughter]
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and we have long conversations like this but this gentleman here may have I was
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going to say that this is the easiest job I've never had if they were paying me
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man I you know um and uh I I definitely the interesting
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thing is you know the the one I think it was like the one time I got a chance to I think Jason and I were on a zoom with
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you in a similar conversation happened and we were like in the chat like hey man let's just stay here they don't
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notice us let's just listen and and get it so that's what I and I also would be remiss if I didn't mention that I am a
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fill-in uh Dr Rhonda Henry uh was uh ill and could not make it she would have
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been the person here today uh so I didn't want to lift her up and mention that as well
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um so thank you first of all thank you for for that first that opening sound thank
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everybody for coming see you later oh no we're still we got one more got one more so I do have one more uh thing and and
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this is more specific uh you you've certainly touched on it you you showed us uh these were uh yeah yeah these uh I
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I purchased uh some years ago of a complete line of Planet stories
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from the late 30s to the early 50s these are the original issues and they have Brad Barry's Original Stories in them
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and a lot of other people too who became famous because this is this is where he
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began you know with the pulse I wanted to have the actual feel of that
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um underneath my fingers see one of the beautiful things about Bradbury and the
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pulp Riders to me they're prolific they they were not worried about am I
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writing something that will last for the ages no Bradbury is getting 20 to 40
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dollars per story he's making himself right a thousand words a day a story a
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week he's got to sell um to a month in order to pay his bills
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okay he is immersed in the moment these precede comic books okay by a few years
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and the comic book artists were the same people you know you you were not looking back you were immersed in the moment of
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creation you had a deadline to meet that's right um and and you produced all
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this stuff not thinking that this might shape called culture that the characters that you're creating from Edgar Rice
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Burroughs to the Marvel characters that these would be installed in popular
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culture 50 cents uh you know 50 years later so that even my grandson knows
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these characters right um I I admire artists who work like that
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who don't think that what they're doing is precious but what they're doing is absolutely everything they can do at the
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present moment yes and then you let it go and you go on to the next one yes and you go into the next one and you're
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blessed to be able to have the opportunity to do that and and that certainly was going to be you know kind
33:40
of the next question I wanted to throw out there very open-ended of course but just the idea of you know Bradbury's
33:46
influence I know you've touched on a little bit but just maybe if there was any any particular specific oh I
33:52
absolutely can but yeah go you can go first or you know I can go there or whatever whatever is appropriate I want
33:58
to hear your stories about bravery okay anybody want to hear my stories about rape River okay
34:04
because he was very important in my life and I did not write this out because I know for a fact that I'm going to get
34:11
choked up so get ready for that um and I wrote down some dates just so I
34:16
could I could get as precise as I could but this is not a formal you know
34:22
scholarly thing so if any of the dates are wrong you know apologies in advance so
34:28
I I grew up and I had a dream of being the science fiction writer it was a thing
34:33
that I I really loved to do because I didn't understand math well enough to be a scientist so I did the other thing I
34:39
could wrote write poetry of the sciences and so I was a little kid growing up South Central L.A and had dreams of
34:45
being a writer and I was writing as much as possible and everything around me told me that I could not do it you know
34:51
my mom my dad was a backup singer for Nat King Cole and I was in the studio when they did the the background vocals
34:58
for Ramblin Rose yeah just watching dad and every time it's on the radio I hallucinate that I can hear my dad's
35:05
baritone and my dad's singing career ultimately floundered and
35:10
it led to a divorce and so my mom was terrified that if I followed the Arts that I would have a similar failure and
35:17
she used to tear my stories up and burn them because she was so scared that I would go down that path but I you know I
35:23
just kept going and kept going and kept going and by the time I got to college I had
35:31
um tried I knew my mom wanted me not to write and so I tried to step away from
35:36
writing I would but I was tricking myself I'd take all kind of other classes I would take you know drama and
35:43
composition and English and speech and stuff like this work in the radio station I think things adjacent to
35:49
writing without writing and then finally they had a contest a writing contest on campus
35:56
where the winner would read a story to the to the alumni and I won the I won
36:03
the contest and I read the story to the alumni and I watched them react to me
36:09
and I realized this is who I'm supposed to be that there is I would rather fail
36:15
as a writer than succeed at anything else so I dropped out of college my girlfriend at the time who later
36:23
became my wife and are living together she was an artist and I was a writer and I was taking jobs adjacent to Hollywood
36:29
trying to work my way and I was also writing stories and I was starting to send them out and I was you know getting rejected and rejected and rejected and I
36:36
I think that at some point I started getting like a fifth of a cent a word and you know getting paid in
36:42
contributors copies but I think before my first sale uh I wrote a story a
36:47
Halloween story called trick or treat about a guy who it when he was a kid he
36:55
his candy is snatched by the kids in the neighborhood they were bullies and when he becomes an adult he starts you know
37:02
the kids in the neighborhood he's living in the same house they're playing tricks on him so he plays tricks back and the
37:08
next year they play a nastier trick and they asked that he plays a nastier trick on them and it goes back and forth and
37:13
back and forth until one year he plays a trick and the kids he accidentally kills a kid and he knows it next year they're
37:20
going to kill him and so this story is called trick-or-treat and I found out that Ray Bradbury was doing an
37:28
autographing at a bookstore and so my girlfriend was an artist and I created a
37:33
a a Halloween card that contained the story and artwork and we went to his
37:39
signing and we gave it to him in an envelope that had my address on it and about six weeks later I got a letter
37:45
back from Ray Bradbury saying he loved my story and this was the first time a
37:51
professional human being a person who was doing the thing that I wanted to do let alone somebody who I admired so much
37:57
had said yeah kid maybe you've got what it takes it meant more than I can
38:03
possibly say and inspired me to keep going so I kept going I'm writing and I'm trying to do this I'm trying to do
38:09
that I'm still not succeeding very much but I was starting to make a little bit of progress my mom
38:15
who had always been terrified finally realized that there was no way I was going to give it up and so she kind of
38:21
got on the bandwagon and she found a course that was being taught at UCLA
38:27
extension by Robert Kirsch who was the literary editor of the LA Times in about
38:33
1980 let's say 1975 1975 and
38:39
uh no no this is about about 1980 about 1980. uh and so I took a class from
38:46
Robert Kirsch and it was a strange class you know it was the little blue-haired lady writing astrological poetry and it
38:52
was the guy writing this going and I was writing these strange stories and I wrote one very strange story called is
38:59
your glass half empty about a compulsive Gambler who Hawks his pacemaker and he
39:06
Kirsch looked at me and he didn't know quite what to make of the story and he said
39:11
I've Got a Friend I'd like to show this story to would you mind if I did that and I said sure go right ahead and about
39:17
six weeks later I got a note I got a letter from Ray Bradbury who was Robert kirsch's friend writing telling me again
39:24
he didn't remember the earlier story he just said hey you know kid you know this is this is good you know this you know
39:30
that you've got something go for it don't ever give up doing that Ray Bradbury inspirational thing I kind of
39:35
said I got two letters from him you know this is this is cool so let me keep going
39:41
I eventually met Larry Niven and began working with him and started getting my
39:47
career going and in about what year did you publish your first story I published
39:52
my first story in probably about 1980 1981 somewhere in there maybe 79 to 81.
39:58
somewhere in there and it was like a fifth of the center word you know and then I finally the first story that was
40:03
published in a professional magazine was called uh it's called endurance vial about an
40:12
athlete who accidentally discovers a meditation that triggers his ability to
40:17
be more of an athlete and he starts running and he can't stop you know so that I think that was my first my very
40:23
first publication and I was working with Larry Niven and I had the balls to walk
40:29
up to Larry you know at the Las Vegas science fiction thing and I said hello Mr Niven my name is Stephen Barnes and
40:35
I'm a writer and he looked at me and said all right tell me a story I I found out that from the way I'd come
40:40
on to him I had about 10 seconds to prove I wasn't an luckily I just put that story is your
40:47
glass half empty into the mail that morning so I was able to stumble out you know I
40:53
think and that led to us eventually working together in my CR in my working he gave me a chance to work on an
41:00
earlier story of his that he hadn't been able to finish to his satisfaction called the locusts which was about a
41:06
group of space colonists who go to a planet and their children begin to devolve to australopithecines and they
41:13
don't know how to deal with it and if the problem in this story who would right if the problem of the story had
41:19
been biology or a cryptozoology or
41:25
physics or astrophysics I would have been lost but luckily the problem in the story was the psychology that Larry did
41:33
not understand group psychology as well as I think he could have such that he did not understand the impact that would
41:40
have on that little Colony if these things happen he was underestimating the emotions involved so that gave me an
41:47
opening a way that I could contribute something this story and it led to a Hugo nomination and my first real
41:54
publication you know with lyrics it was like you know wow this was you know I'm on my way so one of the things that I
42:00
was asked to do in this process was there was something called the planetary society in which I was asked to be a
42:07
presenter to be an announcer so I introduced several luminaries that were there astrophysics I mean there might
42:14
have been an astronaut so forth and one of the people was Ray Bradbury so Ray walked up on stage and before he walked
42:20
up on stage I told my story about how I was he was responsible for my me getting published by giving me inspiration at a
42:28
time when I was getting rejection after rejection after rejection started to question myself and he walked up on
42:34
stage and gave me a big hug and it was just a great moment everybody applauded it was very nice about eight years after
42:40
that um I was teaching a class at UCLA
42:45
and it was a a symposium and every week we had a different notable come in one
42:51
week it was Ray Bradbury so when I went to Ray's house came to class he came to
42:56
yeah he came and talked at the Symposium he was one of the I think seven notables that we had coming there
43:03
um and before the class I took him to dinner at in Westwood and
43:12
Larry Niven had asked if he could keep me but before Larry got there
43:17
ah I for 20 years I was the only black male
43:24
science fiction writer in the world so far as I could determine chip Delaney had left the field he'd gone into
43:30
Academia and queer fiction because he couldn't make a living in science fiction I survived largely because of my
43:37
partnership my mentorship with Larry Niven because I would I do collaboration with him and I'd make enough money to be
43:43
able to keep food on the table in the roof over our head but I was starting to wonder was I losing myself
43:49
was had I sold myself out was I losing
43:55
my art and I remember I had dinner with Leo and
44:01
Diane Dillon who we were just talking about in in Greenwich Village and they
44:06
are they were the essence of art it was like we're one they work they did Art together where one would start a line
44:11
the other one would finish it and back back so far and I was sitting at that table talking to them about the career
44:19
of an artist thinking I'd get some tips for my wife who was interested in being a professional artist and I suddenly realized that I didn't care about that
44:25
but I wanted to know was had I sold myself out had I sold out
44:31
my heart and I sat there and I just poured my eyes out and I just started crying finally I realized because I was
44:38
in the presence of real artists here this this was this was for real and I felt like a fraud I felt like a phony
44:44
and I was I just you know I poured my heart out to them and I finally said it is it too late for me
44:51
and they looked at each other and Diane looked at her husband and then she reached across the table and she took my
44:57
hands and she said Steve if you can even ask that question it's
45:04
not too late well that helped but I'm sitting at the table
45:11
with Ray Bradbury my childhood Idol who somehow I had choreographed an
45:16
opportunity to to be with him and and break bread with him and speak with him and I it was pretty much the same
45:23
question it's like you know I I've been hiding behind Larry Niven and his partner Jerry Purnell I'm writing these
45:29
things and I've gotten these Awards and made this money and so forth but I feel like I don't know have
45:36
am I broken you know is it too late for me is it can I can I still touch that
45:42
part of me that that is that's sacred and he asked me of course
45:48
he said have you published and I said oh yeah I published all these
45:53
stories in about six books and this that he just started laughing he just laughs oh you are going to have no problem at
46:00
all and hearing that for the second time is what made the difference I was able to see
46:06
that that I was just on this road I did not see Rey again
46:11
for many years and then in maybe the end of 2011 or the
46:18
beginning of 2012. I would I was asked if I would make a presentation at a more
46:24
at a at a acknowledgment dinner for Ray Bradbury who was very ill he could barely speak
46:31
he was in his wheelchair and it was held at the Universal Sheraton Sometime Late
46:37
2011 or early 2012. and I got up on the stage
46:44
it was so good to see him and he was so diminished physically but
46:49
the child self was still so alive in him his eyes were still still alive and I I told the
46:57
story of how he had reached out to me when I was getting started and he'd
47:03
written these letters giving me hope ing me believe that maybe it was
47:09
possible for me to have the life that I wanted how grateful I was for a chance to say
47:16
thank you to this great man and after I finished he held out his arms and he
47:22
gave me a hug and I went home and six weeks later I got a letter from him
47:32
telling me thanking me for the words I'd said
47:38
and how it had reminded him of his own path and his own Joy in his gratitude for the life that he
47:46
had had and the fact that he'd been able to touch others in the last words in that letter were
47:53
some of your tears are my own Ray Bradbury
47:58
and about six weeks after that he passed away and I just
48:05
wanted to say there's is no greater gift in life than
48:12
being able to take a look at the child you were and the truth and the dreams that they
48:18
had it realized that you were actually able to live that life
48:24
and that there was no possible way that you could have done it alone and that being able to talk to other
48:31
people along the path who say you know you're not remotely at
48:37
their level not remotely but they don't care all they care about is are you
48:43
writing are you reading are you teaching where are you what does the territory
48:48
look like from where you are and I just wanted to say that everybody in this room
48:55
has walked a path that others wish they could walk has answered questions that other people can't even formulate yet
49:02
and you never know what a kind word or a kind act is going to mean
49:09
his actions meant the difference between life and death
49:16
for part of my soul and I could not be who I am we're not
49:22
for people who had been kind to me who saw me and saw some potential Within Me
49:31
it reached out their hand and said you're going to have no problem at all
49:38
and I think you for the chance to come here and say
49:44
publicly how much I owe those people in one specific man one great man
49:53
Ray Bradbury who changed and saved my life
50:11
I'm going to pick up on like two things that you said Steve I know in my life there were individuals
50:18
who encouraged me when I couldn't get that encouragement from anywhere else
50:23
and when you're young you're tender you know you're in your teens and um
50:30
you know I'm not gonna belabor you know and bore you with those individuals who
50:35
did that for me but that's an extremely important thing for a young person an
50:41
old person too to have somebody who gives you permission
50:46
to go that route and to trust yourself and to trust your passion that could be
50:52
a teacher you've also written about a teacher in high school who um you know
50:58
positively gave you reinforcement yes so those those teachers are
51:04
extremely important um in our lives and I've had a a a several you know uh when I was a
51:12
cartoonist and then the novelist John Gardner when I started writing novels
51:18
and he led me into the book World which I knew nothing about and then later you know when I was in philosophy with my
51:25
dissertation director who became a dear friend who's actually passing away right
51:30
now but those teachers are extraordinarily important but there's something else you said I'd like to know
51:36
I'd like you to say a bit more about you've worked with Niven yes collaboratively yes and you're wondering
51:43
what's happening to me you know where am I you know so is that the opening that
51:50
question that led you to and to Nana Reeve to afrocentrism
51:56
is that how you found your way there well okay afrofuturism yeah I'm sorry yeah
52:03
for future futurism um well all that happened is that I worked with Larry Niven and his partner
52:09
Jerry Purnell and um I learned the basics of my craft and
52:16
I already had the basics of my craft I came to them with a certain amount of skills that were developed but then they
52:21
took me to being professional I remember you know Jerry I never I don't know how many writers in world history have ever
52:27
had the experience of two world-class writers best-selling writers award-winning writers sitting on opposite sides of the room tearing apart
52:34
their work at the same time because I was working on a book with the two of them and Cornell was taking great
52:40
pleasure in this how Burns we're ripping apart barnes's precious Pros Barnes was your mother
52:47
scared by a gerund I mean he would take he took such Glee in ripping me a new
52:55
one every single time I would drive home from working with them crying sobbing
53:01
because you know just taking this battering but it was like it was like being asked to spar with the black belt
53:07
class you got your butt kicked every night but you would crawl off the mat
53:12
but you'd know if I can survive this I'm going to be a fighter so I knew if I
53:18
could survive this I will learn things that are taught in no school in the world now one of the things is that
53:23
Jerry wrote stories that Jerry wanted to read Larry Niven wrote stories Larry Niven wanted to read so in order to be
53:30
like them I didn't it wasn't writing like Larry nibbon or Jerry Purnell I had to write stories that Stephen Barnes
53:37
wanted to read what were those stories into a huge degree
53:42
there is that question what was missing from the field and what was missing was people who
53:48
looked like me right and it wasn't passive it was active insult Edgar Rice
53:54
Burroughs would write stories you know in which in which uh the
53:59
Enterprise Burrows stories were the the core of Tarzan was specifically racism
54:05
specifically the idea that a British that an English Lord gentleman raised by Apes is still a gentleman and he made
54:11
racism specific in one of his stories in the jungle Tales of Tarzan where he says
54:16
white men have imagination black men have little animals have none I mean that was specifically so you can't get
54:23
away from it but I needed those stories because I was trying to Define myself as a man where I
54:29
am in the universe so as I once said to a group that I I sacrificed my melanin
54:35
on the altar of my testosterone I mean I I wanted to be a man more than I cared
54:40
about being black I would I would add something you brought something to Parnell and and Niven that they didn't
54:46
have yes from your perspective in your history they did not have the black orientation any of that no but but I
54:52
don't know if that worked into the books not that much I mean Jerry was was by
54:58
his own uh statement took politically to the right of Attila the Hun so it was
55:05
difficult to navigate that territory but one of the things I learned was how to argue with somebody smarter than you because Jerry was just smarter than me
55:11
just you know he's you know Jerry's brain had a rocket attached to it Larry's brain had a transport a
55:19
transporter attached to it whereas I could understand how Jerry would do stuff it was just an ordinary brain with a lot more information working a lot
55:25
faster but Larry would dematerialize and materialize someplace I was just like I don't even know how you got there so
55:33
taking their lessons and then writing my own stories demanded that I write for my
55:39
own experience so I'm then dealing with the fact that you know my my first book
55:45
was a book with Larry my second book was a book with Larry my third book was a solo book and I wrote a black character
55:53
I specifically wanted to create a black hero that was Street Lethal yeah but the
55:59
book company Ace put a white guy on the cover he's very clearly described as being as dark
56:05
as Zulu and they put a white guy on the cover and my poor editor called me up and she's in tears you know Beth Meacham
56:13
is her name very nice lady not her fault she said that they had done this Susan Allison who was the head editor I don't
56:20
have as good a feeling about her because she kind of blew it off she wasn't upset well it's one of those things that
56:26
happened it was the marketing department and I talked to the marketing department oh no it's the advertising it's the art
56:32
Department I talked to the art Department the art Department said well it's the sales department and the sales
56:39
department said well the truck drivers who are going to put the books on the stands would think that this was shaft
56:45
in space and so I realized at that point I can either hate white people I'd
56:52
rather not do that did I say that out loud no
56:57
I could either hate white people or I consider that what's going on here is an
57:03
example of how human beings think that human beings feel protective of their
57:08
tribe and almost all human beings are tribal they happen to have that power Everybody wants to rule the world
57:13
everybody wants to feel that the world reflects who they are in the mirror so this is I'm just at the an unfortunate
57:21
unfortunate effect of this what do I do with it I can either use this and say
57:27
the world kicked my ass or I can say this is where we are right now my dad
57:35
working with Nat King Cole performed in in hotels in Las Vegas where he could
57:42
not stay the world has gotten better than that
57:47
it's just not as good as I would like it to be how much longer will it take and I
57:54
projected trend lines in my mind I thought it might take two generations it might take two generations it might
58:00
take another 30 to 40 years before the world is ready for the stories that I want to tell
58:07
can I survive long enough to do that and so I started a program of I am going I'm
58:14
going to stay in this field and I'm going to create my stories and I'm going to do everything I can do
58:20
because I'm going to make it first of all I'm going to write stories that the kid who started this path would have
58:25
wanted to read and I'm going to create a career path so that other people coming in will have an
58:31
easier time than I have an Octavia Butler and I were the only black people working in the field we had many
58:37
conversations about this we lived walking distance from each other and Octavia was a level above me as a writer
58:42
she was often not happy with what I wrote Because she felt I was not living up to my potential
58:48
she would write and they put green people on the covers of her books but they wouldn't put black people you know
58:53
so we had lots of interesting conversations about that what do we feel about it what are we going to do I felt
58:59
I if I can stay in here and write the stories that I want stories that would
59:05
nurture the younger person I was that no matter what happens I've not been beat
59:10
and then I found out one day that there were Scholars studying something called afrofuturism and I was considered to be
59:16
an afrofuturist I didn't try to be one I was just trying to write Stephen Barnes stories
59:21
casually said that you lived walking distance from Octavia but I want to point out oh yeah you know we
59:27
used to come over for dinner and I'd go over her place and then we would just sit and we'd talk writing in life she was like my big sister I was wondering
59:33
you know um you go back to what is it the 20s the 30s and you've got black no
59:39
more that that early yes um and then you fast forward a little
59:44
bit and you got chipped Delaney and yeah you he said he couldn't make a living so
59:50
he moved on incredibly um once again elegant Pro stylist amazing and and then
59:56
you have October Xavier Butler and then there's you yeah that's about it and now
1:00:01
we have a lot of people tons of sci-fi can't even count them yeah but you guys are the best you guys were the pioneers
1:00:09
you seriously you were Pioneers um which is really quite incredible when you think back about it remember Pioneers
1:00:16
get arrows in the butt you know I was just trying I was just trying to
1:00:22
be the best writer that I could be in trying to survive trying to take care of my family and trying
1:00:28
to to survive in Hollywood and I made mistakes I made mistakes I betrayed that
1:00:34
little creative spark inside me a couple of times and it hurt I mean I was just
1:00:39
you know you can only sell yourself out so much yeah you know what's even worse is if you try not to sell out and then
1:00:46
one day you sell out nobody's buying you know so that's even worse but I remember
1:00:52
one of my agents I lost or walked away from one of my agents in Hollywood because I walked in there with my heart
1:00:59
on my sleeve and I said you know I don't know what's going to happen in my career but when I leave Hollywood I want to
1:01:06
leave with my sense of Honor intact and he looked at me and he said you'll be the only one and I realized at that
1:01:13
moment he and I did not understand each other at all I need to find a new agent because I'm not going to sell my soul to
1:01:20
do this I'm going to do everything I can and I will not sell out but I will rent myself
1:01:25
you know and I will stretch as far as I can but I'm always going yeah I'm I'm I'm kind of a hoe but
1:01:36
enjoy my work
1:01:43
if I write an episode of Baywatch and I have I wrote four episodes of Baywatch
1:01:48
people say that's not science fiction I said you ever see those silicon life forms running around on the beach
1:01:53
um I found something in every episode that I could actually care about and there's
1:02:01
another story I can go into that I might tell another time where the producers did eventually end up turning on me but
1:02:07
I got revenge but that's another story that's
1:02:13
um let's let's we'll uh well first okay before I think we can open up to a
1:02:22
little bit of a q a um but before we do that of course we want to just really thank you for your
1:02:27
words and Candor have you have you said everything you wanted to see you came prepared with some comments you came
1:02:33
prepared with some comments have you expressed what you wanted to express I came prepared with you no you had some
1:02:39
comments you were almost going to write a talk to do this but instead of that you prepared some comments I just wanted to be sure that that Charles has had an
1:02:46
opportunity to express himself no no no no I'm fine okay I think it's probably a
1:02:51
good idea if you want to move to that next question yes but before we did that look at this beautiful let's thank these
1:02:57
uh these these wonderful discussions
1:03:04
respect just trying to be like you no you don't want to believe me so uh
1:03:12
what what we could do um is you know
1:03:18
the the aisles could be your your pathway or if you so choose you could
1:03:23
just kind of raise it I can't see you because of the lights so perhaps you might want to stand up over okay that
1:03:29
they just raise the house lights yeah they just did so I could see folks so if
1:03:34
you have a question if you have a comment please just raise your hand and uh I will uh
1:03:39
catch you not everybody at once there we go Tumbleweed we got one yeah
1:03:47
and you'll have to project because I don't think we have a walking mic you're a big boy oh it's over here there we go
1:03:53
okay
1:03:59
no they were right even better
1:04:07
okay so they're gonna they got questions on index cards oh I see that people wrote already yes all right all right
1:04:13
good this is good because I can read them all okay come on yeah I just get them all at
1:04:21
once
1:04:29
don't do it all right
1:04:36
all right I'm gonna start here okay we're ready okay so I think this one is
1:04:41
for both of you and so this person says that they want to say that they appreciate uh that you both came out to
1:04:47
speak with us this evening and they love hearing your story um the question is is there a book that
1:04:53
you wrote that holds the most significance to you um if so would you be okay with sharing
1:05:00
your thoughts on the story um and then there's a little statement uh
1:05:06
at the bottom it says on the day when life seems to be too much to handle with all that you do okay that's the second
1:05:12
question so just go with the first question is there a particular book that you wrote that holds the most significance to you
1:05:19
um and if so uh would you share your thoughts on the story I can do that easily okay uh most significant book for
1:05:25
me was my second novel called oxygen tale which was rejected two dozen times nobody understood it my own Mentor
1:05:34
um John Gardner did not understand it and actually was afraid of the Buddhism that was in this
1:05:41
novel which is in the form of a slave narrative philosophical novel no form of a slave narrative with access to Western
1:05:48
and Eastern philosophy and my editor didn't understand it for my first book and um but that was critical
1:05:54
had I not done that book all the other books that I've done 26
1:06:00
after you know total 27 I would not have done it I had to do that book and once I
1:06:07
did that book I understood some things about myself I wrote the book to free myself of my
1:06:15
passion in reading of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism from my teens so I'm going to write this book you know and I'm
1:06:21
going to be free of it got to the end of the book I realized no this is the beginning for me so everything I've done has been in a
1:06:28
way referenced back to Oxford and tail which has a Bradbury connection because there is a soul catcher a slave Hunter
1:06:35
and Coors of Adam who has tattoos all the black people that he captures
1:06:42
are killed he gets tattoos on his body that where where is that going to come from except the Illustrated Man right
1:06:48
we're not which I read when I was younger so that that was a critical book for me I'll say that much
1:06:55
um yeah so that's mine for me it would almost certainly be
1:07:01
lions blood which Lion's blood you know which uh was my statement on race
1:07:08
relations in America uh basically it was it took me six years of research and I
1:07:14
basically created an alternate history which was an alternate America that was colonized by Islamic Africans bringing
1:07:20
in this particular instance Irish slaves here and so the story it deals with a
1:07:26
young Irish boy named Aiden Odair who is kidnapped by Vikings and sold to the Moors in Spain in andalus the word
1:07:32
perspective and brought to balalistan the United States to the province of nujibouti Texas where he becomes the
1:07:39
foot boy slip of Kai ibiz who is a young Islamic nobleman and the
1:07:46
story covers their friendship for about eight years from childhood to the beginnings of adulthood and um that I
1:07:53
don't know if I'll ever work that hard on a book again I probably will not I remember what you said you invited
1:07:59
Scholars to a party yeah to ask them questions yeah I basically knew that I could spend a hundred years researching
1:08:06
and still not touch one percent of what I needed to know so I did one of the smartest things I've ever done it's probably one of the 10 smartest things
1:08:12
I've done in my life I invited a room full of the smartest people that I knew and people came from from hundreds of
1:08:18
miles in addition to my invitation and we had a pizza party all day long I fed them pizza and beer and I had graph
1:08:25
paper and butcher paper on the walls and I passed out notebooks with the basic
1:08:32
premises of the world you know the politics and the economics and so forth of this alternate universe and I had a
1:08:39
videographer following people around and all day long we theorized about this
1:08:45
world that I was trying to create and they showed me everything they showed me so many things that I had not thought of
1:08:50
that by the end of that single day I had enough research to begin the writing process that I'd done six years of
1:08:57
research before I did that party so I my attitude is you want to know enough to
1:09:03
ask the right questions of experts and if you can ask an expert the right
1:09:09
question and they say oh yes well that's you know and they go off then you know enough to write your story you this is a
1:09:15
perfect example of what they call World building yeah World building and you went on to do a sequel or at more than
1:09:22
well I I did two of them Lion's bullet in Zulu heart Zulu heart yeah
1:09:27
all right and so we have we have a good number of questions I think we can okay I'll keep it shorter no no but we're
1:09:34
good I think everybody here is enjoying uh being able to hear is this okay guys I think we're all right this is what you
1:09:40
came for it's all it's all about you you can't get you can't Prime me out of the house but once I'm out of the house I really
1:09:47
do want to serve whoever brought me out so this is your chance okay and then for anyone out there if I misread anything
1:09:53
feel free to correct me um uh given that we celebrate uh
1:09:59
creativity originality and the process of fantasy is naming things a reductive
1:10:05
Act
1:10:11
is naming things a reductive Act well that's a big epistemological
1:10:18
question of course I mean how would you answer that um to name something is given of nature that's one way you could
1:10:24
talk about this to name something is to limit it uh to whatever name you you've given it uh given to it I there's a lot
1:10:33
of ways you could take this but but naming can be extremely important um guys how to talk about I guess people
1:10:41
who are Chinese have four or five different names you know a birth name and it it I'm going to let you you feel
1:10:48
that one um it is reductive but then again all language is reductive all language is a
1:10:55
reification of of something all language is a symbol and it's possible to mistake
1:11:00
the menu for the meal you know if you go you know kind of stepping into my core zipski for a second
1:11:06
um but language is all we have you know we're communicating with people
1:11:12
he said when you go in the other room and get what do you say you know the the salty thing you know it's all you know
1:11:19
the thing that makes things taste sharper you've just use labels for things the the concept of taste you've
1:11:26
used the label for the concepts of something that is bitter as opposed to sweet as opposed to Salty all those
1:11:31
things are labels all words are nothing more than that and
1:11:37
what you do with language I remember chip Delaney in his book The Jewel hinge jaw on writing he talks about the fact
1:11:44
that every word creates an impression you know the okay is this definite article the boy okay we
1:11:51
getting a noun in here the boy ran he got a the boy ran from oh okay now we're getting a sense of direction that that
1:11:57
just as music is what happens between the notes poetry is what happens between the words
1:12:03
as you hear a word and your brain does what's called a transderivational search for the meaning of that word it's the
1:12:10
journey that people go on between the words that creates the impression of art it's like you know this note followed by
1:12:16
that note what happens in between there the negative space is what an artist is manipulating or it's the thing that we
1:12:23
don't see we see the words but we don't see the space between the words let me see the tree the trees but we don't see
1:12:28
the space between them but it's a space between them the trees punctuate that space to create a forest so the labels
1:12:35
that we use we use not necessarily to Define things but to guide Consciousness you know think about this now think
1:12:42
about this now think about this what is the journey you go on between the words that's the thing that the artist plays
1:12:49
with that people do not see and that is in some ways the most important thing and you only learn to get there by
1:12:56
concentrating on the words and then at some point you see the forest that you have created with the use of those words
1:13:03
it's one of the reasons why the first draft it's so important it just as far as I'm because it just vomited out your
1:13:09
first draft should be trash just get it out there what what Bradbury referred to as running Barefoot through the grass
1:13:16
let your first draft be done from Pure Love then
1:13:21
the rewrite process is where you're adjusting and playing with it but just
1:13:26
get that first draft out there don't try to make your first draft meaningful they'll try to make it good don't try to
1:13:32
you know make the work of the Masters just write down the music that you're hearing and adjust it later
1:13:38
and then rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite that's right that's right
1:13:45
okay and uh so um you keep mentioning trials uh Delaney
1:13:51
uh Samuel I'm sorry okay I don't know I'm well enough to you know I know who he is
1:13:58
I've read his work but I don't I don't know him see I know you know you just casually mentioned Octavia Butler so I'm
1:14:04
sure you know chip Delaney wasn't enough to come to anyway I'm stop joking around here um so this question is about uh Mr
1:14:11
Delaney why is Delaney out of fashion and the person mentioned that they loved
1:14:17
reflection of light in water I would say it's simply because different styles of writing go in and
1:14:24
out of fashion chip Delaney came into the science fiction field in the 60s was called the new wave where
1:14:30
people see the first generation of Science Fiction were people who knew science and literature you know Jules
1:14:35
Verne and H.G Wells and so forth the next generation of Science Fiction Olaf Stapleton and people like that knew the
1:14:42
work of wells and and the the Next Generation after that people like uh
1:14:47
Robert Heinlein they knew the Olaf stapletons and so forth and they were doing the same thing but by the time you
1:14:52
get to the 60s there was enough science fiction literature that it actually started coming back around instead you
1:14:59
know the that science fiction of the 30s and the 40s was justifiably mocked by
1:15:05
literary establishment because it wasn't interested in literary qualities it was interested in ideas Big Ideas you know
1:15:11
back it up to yeah to the first science fiction magazine which is what
1:15:16
if uh analog astounding uh no no it's
1:15:22
even earlier than that something planets or something the whole purpose of it was to teach young people science you talk
1:15:29
about Hugo guernsbach gernsbach gertzbach okay yeah yeah the grinsberg and that's where you get the term
1:15:34
science fiction it was to teach and be didactic right however the earlier guys
1:15:41
if I don't mischaracterize them would give us a science but they really weren't good with certain things like
1:15:47
characterization yes and and the virtues that go along with literature by the time you get to the 60s you see
1:15:55
the shift from the hard Sciences physics you know and in chemistry and all that kind of stuff to the soft Sciences yes
1:16:02
that is to say sociology and anthropology and blah blah blah so you
1:16:07
and my colleague Joan Russ was was part of that I interviewed yes she was I interviewed her and Chip Delaney because
1:16:14
we did a special issue of the Seattle review which I was at fiction editor of for 20 years devoted to science fiction
1:16:20
so I interviewed them together in the office at the University of Washington
1:16:26
um so so I want you to finish this off what happened to chip Delaney what happened to chip Delaney is that in the
1:16:33
new wave people like him and Ted sturgeon and Harlan Ellison were playing with language
1:16:39
they started playing with language and deconstructing the the relationship
1:16:45
between language and Consciousness to create effects in their work so they weren't telling you know uh
1:16:51
straight forward stories Bradbury was an early person who was grounded in the
1:16:57
pulps but used that manipulation of negative space emotionally and
1:17:03
artistically to create an effect you would put down one of the stories and say this wasn't science fiction but somehow you know I want to look at the
1:17:09
stars okay chip Delaney was in some ways well there were ways in which he was
1:17:15
limited from writing about what he really wanted to write about which was his sexuality and race and he could not
1:17:20
write about those things at that time so he would deconstruct language in concepts of race and Consciousness and
1:17:26
so forth and he was friggin brilliant he was one of the very first if not the
1:17:31
first black writer that John W Campbell who was the editor of astounding which
1:17:36
became analog would published because Campbell was a racist I mean he right there he would I know two people who
1:17:42
have letters from him where he stated straight out you can't write about an advanced application of civilization
1:17:48
because Africans aren't smart enough to create one that was and he was one of
1:17:53
the foundations of the field so Chip Delaney had to hide who he was in order to write so he hid in the world of the
1:17:59
intellect I will be so brilliant I will people when people think chip Delaney
1:18:04
they will not think black they will think brilliant he he deliberately expressed his intellect so that people
1:18:11
wouldn't notice his skin color but that where and that's my interpretation
1:18:17
that's nothing he ever said directly to me about it but that wears on you how do
1:18:22
you write stories for people and you feel in your heart they don't want to know who I really am they if they
1:18:28
acknowledge my intellect they're making me an exception oh if they were all like chip Delaney we wouldn't have a problem
1:18:33
that that eventually can turn to ashes in your mouth and lead to you asking
1:18:39
questions of Ray Bradbury and Leo and Diane Dillon um and he at some point got out of it
1:18:46
but the field moved on that the 60s broke the box that Olaf Stapleton and
1:18:52
Robert Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov created by asking us to you
1:18:57
know the 60s were a time of experimentation and drugs and love and peace and so forth and so on
1:19:03
the generation that came after the 60s took all of that for granted and they began exploring Science Fiction with
1:19:09
simultaneously a sense of the Aesthetics that lead to literature and by the 80s and the 90s you actually
1:19:17
had a body of Science Fiction where the best of the best had both mastered storytelling and the sciences and the
1:19:24
capacity to create art and so Chip Delaney was forgotten to a degree because we no longer needed
1:19:32
what it is that he had brought to the field there was a recent issue of a magazine National magazine I can't
1:19:39
remember what it was a friend told me about it I didn't read it was a long piece on Delaney it's a long piece under
1:19:45
like a genuine genius huh Delaney was a genuine genius no question about it he
1:19:51
was one of Octavius teachers okay and you know so to act to him he Octavia is
1:19:57
insane Octavia she's a good writer sometimes better than others and so for you know and he's for real you know he
1:20:02
really means that um and both of them are above my level
1:20:08
but they what they were
1:20:13
helped make the field what it is they were foundational so let's get we got
1:20:20
four more I think we could get through them we will need to potentially move a
1:20:26
little quicker a little quicker okay I'm sorry because I'm I'm getting the signs but I don't want to disrupt the flow of
1:20:33
what's Happening Here so this person says growing up reading comics there was plenty of violence but now graphic
1:20:39
novels have the power to push out I believe it's saying out peace what are
1:20:45
your thoughts on that if you could push out peace I don't even know what that means if they mean that art is going to
1:20:52
make the world more violent I disagree with that wholeheartedly okay I think that that violence comes from being you
1:20:59
know it's like the Billy Budd syndrome you know the the greater your vocabulary and the more ideas you can express
1:21:04
through language the less you have to hit people there is an inverse relationship in prisons between the size
1:21:09
of vocabulary and the violence of the crime it's been noted many times by sociologists so the people who can play
1:21:15
with ideas don't need to stab you okay okay [Laughter]
1:21:25
moving at a steady clip we're gonna get there um thank you Elders for sharing your wisdom uh with your stories and the
1:21:31
question is how do you uh nurture the connection between your adult self and your child's self
1:21:40
how do you nurture the relationship between your adult self and your child
1:21:46
self you know I'll give you a meditation that I've seen other people use I don't know
1:21:52
if anybody here meditates but you can visualize this visualize yourself
1:21:58
as your younger self what what if you had a time machine and you could this has been done in movies
1:22:04
go back and talk to your younger self on a bad day when he or she just everything
1:22:10
went wrong getting beat up and so forth visualize yourself giving yourself that
1:22:16
kid you were a hug and holding that kid for you know a
1:22:22
breath or two and telling that kid you know it's pretty bad right now
1:22:28
but you don't know what's going to happen in the future that I do and it's going to be good
1:22:33
see that's perfect you know in in my system you know our pedagogy we teach we
1:22:39
have a podcast you know the life writing podcast and www.lifewritingpodcast.com and we talk
1:22:46
about a technique called the ancient child what the ancient child okay it is
1:22:51
a technique and it's like you imagine that at one end of a string is the child
1:22:57
that you were at the other end of the string is the old the Elder you're going to be on your deathbed you know just
1:23:02
just you're gonna die tomorrow be on all ego Beyond any need to look good or any
1:23:08
of that nonsense and all you're trying to do is move with Integrity between the dreams of childhood and the knowledge of
1:23:15
what values are real that you will have on your deathbed on the other side of ego and if you use a meditation like you
1:23:22
just suggested and you visualize the child self you can ask the child what it wants you to do
1:23:28
and you can also visualize the child and the Elder simultaneously then just sit
1:23:33
back and listen to them talk to each other and they will express everything you need to live your life with Integrity I've got another variation
1:23:40
that might be interesting particularly if you have difficulties with your parents
1:23:45
with your mom or dad visualize them and also maybe when they were young yes
1:23:53
they give them a hug love it I hadn't thought about that I
1:23:58
love that that it's not original to me that's multi-generational healing yes that's great yeah no I I didn't invent
1:24:06
that it's it's a meditation that people do in in the Buddhist tradition but also
1:24:12
I do the one with my younger self every time I meditate I give younger me a hug
1:24:17
yeah I do that I've never done that with my parents though and I'm going to do that within the next 24 hours that's
1:24:23
great I love it thank you last two very quick because these are quick ones what
1:24:30
are you reading now or watching
1:24:35
um I'm studying a time and energy management system I'm not reading any well actually no I'm reading the new
1:24:41
Stephen King novel of Holly and I'm studying a time in energy management system okay thank you well on the plane
1:24:46
from Seattle which left at seven in the morning so we had to be up at four in
1:24:51
the morning and I didn't get to bed but nevertheless from Seattle to Chicago I
1:24:57
read the essays in this the uh sin and the Art of writing by Bradbury okay and
1:25:03
that that was it was great well from Atlanta to Indianapolis I read a story
1:25:09
by one of the greatest living writers a guy named Charles don't go there don't
1:25:14
go there him a story that I just finished two
1:25:20
three days ago that's right because it's about martial arts I gotta show this to Steve and you promised you'd read it on
1:25:26
the plane and you didn't I thank you yes I did thank you I worked and one word possibly one quick word yes and we're
1:25:33
gonna bring Dr ockman back up but one quick word for any aspiring uh graphic
1:25:38
novel novelists writers who that was one of the questions so I'm terrified okay if you told me for just a second I've
1:25:45
got something specific I like to say the six step process that we teach in life writing and we learned this from Ray
1:25:51
Bradbury and studying other people like this the first step is write at least one sentence a day every day just make
1:25:56
that commitment second step is right between one and four short stories every month the third step is finish those
1:26:02
stories and submit them the the fourth step is do not rewrite your stories
1:26:07
except to editorial requests once you finish them don't rewrite them go on to the next door the fifth step is you read
1:26:14
ten times as much as you write and the last step is repeat this process 100 times we teach this to our students and
1:26:21
not a single person who's following this advice has failed to publish by story 26. okay well I used to teach at the
1:26:27
University of Washington in 33 years and I give my students assignments but one of the things I got them to do that I
1:26:34
found extremely valuable is keep a writer's workbook do not let your day go by in which you
1:26:40
have a thought a perception an image that comes to you and you don't put it down in your writer support workbook you
1:26:46
see an article that you like clip it this these These are extremely valuable I have
1:26:52
writer's workbooks that cover three shelves and go back to the early 70s
1:26:57
they're like memory memory aids keep a writer's workbook blank pages put
1:27:03
anything you want to on it you know like just descriptive passages you see somebody that you run into and they're
1:27:10
dressed in a distinctive and interesting way oh they got an interesting tattoo that goes the world is yours to process
1:27:17
through perception and you put that these scraps into your writer's workbook
1:27:22
and I assure you that they will be of use to you when you're I go through my writer's
1:27:29
workbooks I see I've thought about and written something on every subject Under the Sun literally since the early 70s so
1:27:37
it triggers my memory and I see my younger self actually because what is it you're paying attention to in the 70s
1:27:44
different than the 90s it's almost like an archeology of your own Consciousness
1:27:50
what you're focusing on during a particular decade I just filled up one
1:27:55
and I was I was telling one of my friends here I'd like to go by the bookstore to see if I can get another
1:28:00
blank book because I have to have that during the course of the day put stuff
1:28:06
into it is my journal every day yeah yeah I mean writers have them if you
1:28:12
want great examples of what they look like look at Hawthorne look at Chekhov look at um no I'm not Starcher I'm
1:28:20
thinking of some of the great writers we have their workbooks they have plot
1:28:26
outlines for stories they've never written they have observations of people um it started writers and just keep it's
1:28:34
just for you not for anybody else I'd like to make one quick comment
1:28:39
that if you like the way we've been talking about writing here you might want to come to a screenwriting Workshop that my wife and
1:28:46
I are doing you can find out about it at www.hollywoodloop hole.com and what I
1:28:51
will say is ignore the price on there if you need a price where we just want good people we don't care if you can afford
1:28:57
the full price for people who we know just write us a letter and saying that you you need a break on the price we'll
1:29:02
take whatever you got what we want is people come on September 23rd and really
1:29:08
want to learn how to write and about screenwriting
1:29:13
www.hollywoodloopole.com all right and folks please uh
1:29:19
make sure you're going to the events for the the festival 451
1:29:24
um tomorrow at the cancan theater will be filming uh screening Horror in the
1:29:30
war with uh Tanana you do wonderful you have an opportunity for book signing in
1:29:35
the back here thank you thank you thank you
1:29:40
[Applause]
1:29:51
thank you all so much that was amazing that was amazing thank you thank you and
1:29:57
uh there is an opportunity to get your books signed by Steve Barnes Dr Charles
1:30:03
Johnson Sharon Skeeter antonina review there are four tables up here at the front please put on your note cards what you
1:30:10
would like them to write in your book to my left the aisle in the far left
1:30:16
your right we're going to line up over here we're going to pull the tables forward and we're going to to get your
1:30:21
book signed if you need to purchase a book in order to have it signed uh The Book Table is still up in the in the
1:30:28
foyer to the back there where I'm pointing and thank you all for a wonderful night thank you for such a a
1:30:35
stimulating discussion and uh we love you thank you [Applause]