Robot Museums

Abstract

Bradbury’s spring 1980 trip to Washington, D.C. rekindled his relationship with the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum and resulted in a detailed treatment for a new planetarium show titled “The Great Shout of the Universe.” Chapter 14 also documents Bradbury’s day on Capitol Hill with Senator Claiborne Pell and his evening lecture at the Smithsonian’s Baird Auditorium. Bradbury’s summer in France was followed by the release of his hundred-story retrospective collection, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, a collection he compiled with Knopf editor Nancy Nicholas and Knopf president Robert Gottlieb. Chapter 14 concludes with a survey of reviews, with special attention to Thomas M. Disch’s unsettling New York Times piece.