Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

KJA: Well, it’s a little hard to draw real generalizations for Bradbury because he wrote hundreds of short stories. But a story like “The Foghorn” or “A Sound of Thunder”, those have great plots and great ideas and a great sense of wonder.

And yes, Bradbury did have a lot of nostalgia stories, snapshots of childhood…and frankly, those were the ones I didn’t like so much. But just the way he wrote… I grew up reading pulp sci-fi—Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke—but Ray Bradbury gave science fiction a lyrical poetry. He changed my perspective on science fiction. I would spend hours poring over collections of his stories. And later on—it was on cassette tapes with Bradbury reading his own stories—that brought them all back to me and I realized how much he had influenced me. I think he was a terrific writer, and he’s one of the ones that will stick around, because he had such great ideas. I got a lot of my story ideas from him. He gave me a way of reprocessing my childhood in the Midwest.

SRM: Which of your stories were inspired by Bradbury?

KJA: None that I’ll admit! But my Tucker’s Grove stories, which are being published as a collection, are like Bradbury.

SRM: So for you, Bradbury gave science fiction more of a body, made it more substantial?

KJA: He gave it more poetry—whereas Asimov and Heinlein were the nuts and bolts and equations. Ray Bradbury put the music into science fiction.

SRM: Hey, you brought us back to the beginning!

KJA: Full circle.

About Grand Admiral Sean 7 Articles
Grand Admiral Sean lives in Colorado.