"Science Fiction: Before Christ and after 2001" (in the 1975 Filmex catalogue)

Los Angeles: Los Angeles International Film Exposition. Near Fine. 1975. First Edition. Stapled wraps. [nice clean copy, faint external handling wear only]. (B&W photographs, ads, graphics) An original essay by Bradbury, contained in the official catalogue/program book for the fourth (1975) iteration of the once-beloved and still-lamented Filmex (the Los Angeles International Film Exposition), which was a major presence on the L.A. film-cultural scene from 1981 until its demise in 1985. This was also the festival's first year in its best venue, the Plitt Century Plaza Theatres, a two-screen facility which made possible one of its most anticipated and treasured events, the 50-Hour Movie Marathon. This year's inaugural Marathon was devoted to science fiction films: 25 full-length features were screened, along with excerpts from twenty more, plus several dozen trailers and all 13 chapters of the original 1936 FLASH GORDON serial. Bradbury was credited as "Special Advisor" to the Marathon, and contributed the original four-page essay that appears on pages 50-53 of this catalogue. (To those in the know, it's notable that two of the guiding intelligences behind the program -- credited with "assistance" -- were then-future-director Joe Dante and then-future-producer Jon Davison, who had more or less pioneered the cobbled-together "movie marathon" concept with their now-famous THE MOVIE ORGY, which took college campuses by storm in the late 1960s and early 1970s.) In his essay, Bradbury provides a very personal look at the history of science fiction as a genre (including some commentary on his own early writings), and its relationship to (especially) American society and history during its formative years. He writes: "Science fiction is insidious. It is secretly subversive of all that you have believed in the past. It is revolutionary in that it may well make you want to go out and invent better empathy-machines, which repeat truths and amiably shape dreams, such as those strange robots, the motion-picture projector or the record player." As far as I know, this essay has not been reprinted in any Bradbury collection. .