"My Mars": Ray Bradbury’s Foreword in National Geographic Magazine

The website of the National Geographic Society has an online version of Space: the Once and Future Frontier, the new 120-page, soft cover, newsstand-only issue that examines the history and future of space exploration. Packed with interesting articles, insightful charts, and stunning photographs, the foreword to this collector's edition publication was written by Ray Bradbury and is titled "My Mars." A nonfiction tale Bradbury has told in various versions over the years, here’s the opening of "My Mars":

When I was six years old I moved to Tucson, Arizona, and lived on Lowell Avenue, little realizing I was on an avenue that led to Mars. It was named for the great astronomer Percival Lowell, who took fantastic photographs of the planet that promised a spacefaring future to children like myself.

Along the way to growing up, I read Edgar Rice Burroughs and loved his Martian books, and followed the instructions of his Mars pioneer John Carter, who told me, when I was 12, that it was simple: If I wanted to follow the avenue of Lowell and go to the stars, I needed to go out on the summer night lawn, lift my arms, stare at the planet Mars, and say, “Take me home.”

That was the day that Mars took me home -- and I never really came back. I began writing on a toy typewriter. I couldn’t afford to buy all the Martian books I wanted, so I wrote the sequels myself. ...

National Geographic's Space: the Once and Future Frontier will be available at newsstands until late January 2009.