As I mentioned a month or so ago, UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Utopian Literature (which has a cool new web site, by the way) will host its periodic Eaton Science Fiction Conference, this year titled ‘Chronicling Mars,’ May 16-18.  Today’s San Bernardino-based Press-Enterprise has an story and interview with the conference’s keynote speaker, Ray Bradbury.

“What I’m going to talk about is going back to the moon,” said Bradbury by phone from his Los Angeles home. “We should not have left the moon 30 years ago. We should have stayed there and built a base. And in the next few years, we need to build a base.”

He sees that as a jumping-off point.

“Then we will go to Mars and colonize Mars and it’s going to take about 100 years, and then we will go out into the universe and other planets,” he said. “Space travel is going to make us one single race.”

The conference will be a little bit of Mars-mania, with speakers including Greg Benford, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Frederick Pohl, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, and more.  I’ll be there, in my Clarion t-shirts — look for me!