Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury (born Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as "The Martian Chronicles" (1950) and "The Illustrated Man" (1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films.
Upon his death in 2012, "The New York Times" called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream"
- Wikipedia article: Ray Bradbury
Early life
Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois to Esther Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a power and telephone lineman. Leonard was the younger brother of twin boys (the elder died in 1918); his paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were newspaper publishers. He loved American folk music.
Ray Bradbury is related to the American Shakespeare scholar Douglas Spaulding. He is also directly descended from Mary Bradbury, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. She was married to Captain Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts.
Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth who was greatly influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Bradbury was especially impressed with Poe's ability to draw readers into his works. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, Illinois, reading such authors as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote novels such as Tarzan of the Apes and The Warlord of Mars. He loved Burroughs' The Warlord of Mars so much that at the age of twelve he wrote his own sequel. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child. He used this library as a setting for much of his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, and depicted Waukegan as "Green Town" in some of his other semi-autobiographical novels Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer as well as in many of his short stories.
He attributes to two incidents his lifelong habit of writing every day. The first of these, occurring when he was three years old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon Chaney's performance in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" The second incident occurred in 1932, when a carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico, touched the young man on the nose with an electrified sword, made his hair stand on end, and shouted, "Live forever!" It was from then that Bradbury wanted to live forever and decided on his career as an author in order to do what he was told: live forever. It was at that age that Bradbury first started to do magic. Magic was his first great love. If he had not discovered writing, he would have become a magician.
The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona in 1926-27 and 1932-33 as the father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan, but eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen.
Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry and short story writing courses that furthered his interest in writing, but he did not attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to his education, Bradbury said:
| “ | Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. | ” |
It was in UCLA's Powell Library, in a study room with typewriters for rent, that Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book-burning future, "Fahrenheit 451".
See also Bradbury Building
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root