This Week in Feeling 15 Again

Resuscitate your little, hidden-away nostalgic hearts: on Saturday morning, Ray Bradbury will speak at the Fountain Valley Claim Jumper, unrolling all the imaginary blueprints he tapped out on his 9-to-5 typewriter and pasted in the minds of pulp-sick youth as though they were dead scrolls in childhood basements. The placement of this legendary fantasy writer-cum-cultural critic in a suburban slaughterhouse chain restaurant is interesting itself—it seems a perfect example of reality confusing itself with its own novelization; an event even too fantastical to make it into the 85-year-old science-fiction (a term he scoffs at) master's wonderfully vibrant, creative and intelligent oeuvre, Fahrenheit 451. Never read it (and we're looking at you, Will Swaim)? Well then: 50-some years ago, Bradbury's celebrated tale on the horrors of censorship catapulted the author into the Olympus mons of dystopian addicts. Spurred to pen the hit by a Big-Brother-meets-James-Dean-type encounter with a police officer on the streets of LA, Bradbury's fecund home for most of his life, he explains that the novel's about "the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news and the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids." Did you ever get inspired by Jeopardy trivia? Or understand more about the world or life after a Fox News binge and purge? Orwell's bleak socio-scape might not happen for a few more revolutions of the Earth, but Bradbury's predictions about society have proven to be more than just pillow talk.

The Southern California Writers Association and Sam Weller present the Bradbury Chronicles featuring Ray Bradbury at the Claim Jumper Restaurant, 18050 Brookhurst Blvd., Fountain Valley, (714) 963-6711; ocwriter.com. Sat. Program starts, 9:30 a.m.; Bradbury speaks, 12:30 p.m. $20. RSVP urged.