1984 Will Not Arrive

Bradbury’s New Year’s Eve appearance with Orson Welles for a televised reading and discussion of George Orwell’s novel 1984 opens chapter 21. Bradbury’s countervailing optimism to the Orwell scenario centered on his view that everyone should share in the achievements of Space Age science and technology, including immigrants who continued to arrive on American shores. The chapter also shows his similar work as chair of the newly founded World Interdependence Fund and co-host of NASA’s 22nd Space Congress. Chapter 21 concludes with Bradbury’s first official visit to his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois in October 1984, where he reestablished his roots in the town he had left a half-century earlier.