Ray Bradbury

Ray BradburyRay Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer best known for The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 book which has been described both as a short story collection and a novel, and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois to a Swedish immigrant mother and a father who was a power and telephone lineman. His paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were newspaper publishers. Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth, spending much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan. His novels Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer depict the town of Waukegan as "Green Town" and are semi-autobiographical. The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, in 1926 – 1927 and 1932 – 1933, each time returning to Waukegan, and eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen.

Ray Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938 but chose not to attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. He continued to educate himself at the local library, and having been influenced by science fiction heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, he began to publish science fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. His first paid piece was for the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in 1941, for which he earned $15. He became a full-time writer by the end of 1942. His first book, Dark Carnival, a collection of short works, was published in 1947 by Arkham House. He married Marguerite McClure (1922 – 2003) in 1947, and they had four daughters.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Ray Bradbury was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6644 Hollywood Blvd.

An asteroid is named in his honor, "9766 Bradbury," along with a crater on the moon called "Dandelion Crater" (named after his novel, Dandelion Wine.)

On November 17, 2004, Bradbury was the recipient of the National Medal of Arts, presented by President George W. Bush and Laura Bush.

Ray Bradbury has also received the World Fantasy Award life achievement, Stoker Award life achievement, SFWA Grand Master, SF Hall of Fame Living Inductee, and First Fandom Award. He received an Emmy Award for his work on The Halloween Tree.

Selected Bibliography

Novels

  • The Martian Chronicles (1950)
  • Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  • Dandelion Wine (1957)
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
  • The Halloween Tree (1972)
  • Death Is a Lonely Business (1985)
  •  A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990)
  • Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)
  • From the Dust Returned (2001)
  • Let's All Kill Constance (2003)
  • It Came from Outer Space (2003)
  • Farewell Summer (2006)

Radio

  • World Security Workshop
    •  The Meadow (1947)
  • Suspense
    • Riabouchinska (original story) (1947)
    •  Summer Night (original story) (1948)
    •  The Screaming Woman (original story) (1948)
  •  Leviathan '99 (1968)

This list does not include adaptations by others of Bradbury's published stories.

Poetry

  •  When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (1975)
  •  Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977)
  •  The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope (1981)
  •  They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury (2002)

Plays

  •  The Meadow (1948)
  • The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics (1963)
  •  The Day It Rained Forever (1966)
  • The Pedestrian (1966)
  •  The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972)
  •  Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975)
  •  Fahrenheit 451 (1986)
  • The Martian Chronicles (1986)
  •  Dandelion Wine (1988)
  •  Falling Upward (1988)
  •  Bradbury on Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays (1988)

Children

  •  Switch on the Night (1955)
  •  With Cat for Comforter (1997)
  •  Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas (1997)

Fable

  •  Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines (1998)

Non-fiction

  • Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)
  • Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures (1991)
  •  Conversations With Ray Bradbury (2004)
  •  Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars (2005)

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