Ray Bradbury celebrates his birthday with a little help from his friend, Hugh Hefner.
It’s not every day you see Mr. Playboy, the real-life Buzz Lightyear, and the greatest living science fiction author together in the same room.
It’s Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles, because one day just wouldn’t be enough to celebrate such a prolific author. A resolution by the city council made it official, thanks to the efforts of novelist and screenwriter Steven Paul Leiva, who organized the week’s festivities. 
I was fortunate enough to attend a special screening of the 1966 film by Francois Truffaut of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which also featured a conversation with Ray and Hugh Hefner, moderated by Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times Hero Complex blog.
A year ago, when Bradbury was about to turn 89, Leiva wrote a column called “Searching For Ray Bradbury” that became the spark that lit the fire for celebrating Bradbury’s 90th in a fashion befitting the author’s stature.
Chatting onstage before the film, Hef recounted when Playboy magazine was just starting out how he contacted Bradbury about publishing Fahrenheit 451 in serial form. Continue reading
