Branson, Bradbury, and, of course Fellini.

12 july

I am haunted by Bradbury. There are others, many others writers of science fiction that can claim to have predicted, or even invented, our current reality. Let’s not even talk about Jules Verne but consider the radio satellites of C. Clarke, Asimov and his sentient robots or the earlier versions of Internet that Heinlein described. Now and then feels like people that write science fiction that do not predict the future have somehow failed. On that count Bradbury is a total failure. On top of that, his otherness in the science fiction cannon is not only about his failed futurologism. It is not that firemen are not burning books around, at least not yet. It is about the tone, perhaps the melody of Bradbury’s work. Whether Asimov and other creators of space operas can be seen as makers of beautifully precise, technological driven puzzles, even nice to solve puzzles, in my mind Bradbury is a painter of soft landscapes, landscapes that only when look at long enough, reveal their intrinsic cruelty. It is not about the future as a goal, with technology as the motor getting us there. Bradbury is the future as a canvas to paint the endlessly turning kaleidoscope of human nature. 

In these days of ours, I am haunted indeed by a short tale of Bradbury, “the rocket”. The main character, Bodoni, is a family man, working as steel recycler, those persons that buy pieces of steel to  compress and sell it for further uses. An upper class garbage man, if you want. Now Bodoni is not only that, but is also a space fan. Meanwhile working he sees the rockets go to the stars and dreams with going along, knowing that his meagre salary will never allow it. Up to one day, that is, the day that he has the chance to buy a rocket itself. Actually a rocket made for a film, so one supposes an empty shell of a rocket. He buys it, puts it in his garden and works on it, day and night. To the dismay of his wife, he expend their savings in buying it and buying strange supplies. Finally he takes his family for a trip, his son, his daughter and his wife. She, of course, refuses to go. How could a simple garbage man rebuild a rocket? they will surely die trying to fly away! But the kids go up, and Bodoni himself and they close the hatch, and strapped to their chairs they see the stars and the planets pass by the round windows of the rocket. Till the kids fall sleep, which is when Bodoni steps out, opens the hatch and walks into his garden. So we realise that he has installed film screens and sound machines and whatnots to make his family inside the rocket believe they are travelling. Because that illusion is all what he, a space fan, can ever give his family.

 

And so in these days,  with our own screens in our own houses, we have seen Branson going up, in his very own rocket. A pioneer of space tourism, they say. A segment of the tourism industry with a very well defined public, those capable of expend millions in a few hours trip. In what will, undoubtedly become the cruise ships of our age, the ships that for prices beyond the imagination of any of us, will transport the rich and affluent to travels that we can barely -and only- imagine. 

So I remember the boats of that small italian town of Amarcord, rowing into the night of the mediterranean sea because the big cruise will sail close to their shore. And i remember, me acuerdo, m’arcôrd, the boats and their rowers dreaming with the huge cruise, stepping in and out the fog of their own coast, all hoping for taking even if a small peek into a ship that will never host them, that will not even stop at their small and provincial harbour, that carry persons, perhaps, that will never talk to them, that will never share none of their daily toil, their daily pain, or their pleasures and joys. 

And so I realise, perhaps not by first time, that you need not be a science fiction writer to paint the future. And that I have underestimated Bradbury and his capacity of describing the future from a side view, again.   

PS: you can read “The Rocket” in here. If you haven’t, you really should.