Federala polisen i USA, FBI, hade en fil på och utredde Ray Bradbury. Detsamma
gällde Isaac Asimov. FBI-chefen J Edgar Hoover var känd för en rejäl släng av
paranoia och att samla uppgifter på hög (det sägs att han hade "skit" om alla
USA:s presidenter, så att de inte kunde avskeda honom - sålunda fick Hoover
leda FBI från 1920-talet fram till början av 1970-talet).
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/aug/24/ray-bradbury-fbi-file/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/ray-bradbury-fbi-file-_n_1837199.html
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a17047/ray-bradbury-fbi-file/
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in its paranoia, especially under
J. Edgar Hoover, kept files on nearly everybody who was anybody. My own
requests for information from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA), and subsequent lawsuits, forced the release of the Bureau’s files on
early Wonder Stories editor David Lasser. Perhaps this is understandable, as
Lasser was a member of the Socialist Party in the 1930s and a leader of the
unemployed movement of that era. But the only reason the FBI opened a file on
Lasser’s boss, Hugo Gernsback, was because he spoke German. Evidently, they
couldn’t discern the difference between the countries of Germany and
Gernsback’s native Luxembourg, where German is the official language.
There was perhaps even less reason for the FBI to open a file on noted
science fiction writer Ray Bradbury during the 1950s, but it seems they did
that, also. The fact that Bradbury was yet another suspicious “subversive” has
been revealed in Writers Under Surveillance: The FBI Files, just out from MIT
Press. The book collects facsimiles of the Bureau’s files on 16 famous writers,
of whom Bradbury is the only SF writer. Much of the Bureau’s information on
Bradbury came from actor and screenwriter Martin Berkeley, a former Communist
Party member who gave 160 names to the House Committee on Un-American
Activities during the McCarthyite Fifties.
Science fiction, it seems, was part of the Commie plot against America.
According to Berkeley, Bradbury, and other science fiction writers, “reached a
large audience through their writings which are generally published in
paperbacked volumes in large quantities.” This was dangerous because, “The
general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a
state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria, which
would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War which the American
people would seriously believe could not be won since their morale had been
seriously destroyed..” Berkeley couldn’t say for sure if Bradbury was a
Communist Party member, but he had heard him warn against “McCarthyites and
cowards” at a meeting of the Writers’ Guild of America, which was suspicious
enough, and therefore warranted surveillance."
Asimov då? Jo...
https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5079712/isaac-asimov-investigated-by-the-fbi-for-communist-ties
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-robprof-fbi-feared-much-loved-science-fiction-author-isaac-asimov-was-soviet-agent-8929976.html
"Science fiction icon Isaac Asimov was suspected by the FBI of being a
potential Communist informant. A freedom of information request made by
MuckRock shows that the author of I, Robot was the subject of tip-offs and
investigations in the 1960s, and at one point was a potential candidate for a
known Soviet agent working in the United States.
In a letter sent to the FBI's director J. Edgar Hoover in 1960, a classified
source used Asimov's claim that the world's first nuclear power plant was built
in Soviet Russia as evidence of his sympathies. Asimov's claim was correct, but
the tipster backed up his argument by referencing Asimov's birthplace:
"Petrovichi, Russia." The letter ends with the ominous "Asimov may be quite all
right. On the other hand..."
The FBI ignored the tipster, but returned to investigate the author in 1965
after he appeared on a list of potential sympathizers maintained by the
Communist Party USA. He was briefly considered as a candidate for a known
informant codenamed "ROBPROF." ROBPROF was known to work in academia — Asimov
was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University at the time — but after an
FBI check, the science fiction pioneer was cleared of suspicion.
The case was finally closed in 1967, after the author changed his address,
and a final criminal record, credit, and immigration check showed no erroneous
activity. MuckRock is currently waiting on a FOI request to discover the real
identity of ROBPROF, but although it's fitting to retroactively assign such a
codename to the creator of the three laws of robotics, Asimov's loyalties seem
to have laid with the west."
(Om något tjänar detta som varning för övervakningssamhället och att ge
myndigheter för mycket makt!)
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