Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury has been considered one of America's greatest

science-fiction writer's. His work often satires human nature and shows

his reader's the flaws found deep within the individual. Not only is

Bradbury a novelist, but he is also a , short-story writer, essayist,

playwright, screenwriter, and poet

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920, the

third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg

Bradbury. In 1926 Ray Bradbury's family moved from Waukegan, Illinois

to Tucson, Arizona, only to return to Waukegan again in May 1927. By

1931 (the dawn of the Great Depression) he began writing his own

stories on butcher paper. In 1932, after his father was laid off his job as

a telephone lineman, the Bradbury family again moved to Tucson and

again returned to Waukegan the following year. In 1934 the Bradbury

family moved to Los Angeles, California.

Bradbury graduated from a Los Angeles High School in 1938. His

formal education ended there, but he furthered it by himself. He went to

the library by night and by day at he worked at his typewriter. He sold

newspapers on Los Angeles street corners from 1938 to 1942.

Bradbury's first story publication was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," printed

in 1938 in Imagination!, an amateur fan magazine. In 1939, Bradbury

published four issues of Futuria Fantasia, his own fan magazine,

contributing much of the published material himself. Bradbury's first

paid publication was "Pendulum" in 1941 to Super Science Stories. In

1942 Bradbury wrote "The Lake," a short story later added to a collection

of short stories called The October Country. This was the story in which

Bradbury discovered his distinctive writing style. By 1943 he had given

up his job selling newspapers and began writing full-time, contributing

numerous short stories to periodicals. In 1945 his short story "The Big

Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories. In

1947 Bradbury married Marguerite McClure, and that same year he

gathered much of his best material and published them as , his first

short story collection.

His reputation as a leading writer of science fiction was established

with the publication of in 1950 (published in England under the title

The Silver Locusts), which describes the first attempts of Earth people to

conquer and colonize Mars, the constant thwarting of their efforts by the

gentle, telepathic Martians, the eventual colonization, and finally the

effect on the Martian settlers of a massive nuclear war on Earth. As

much a work of social criticism as of science fiction, The Martian

Chronicles reflects some of the prevailing anxieties of America in the early

atomic age of the 1950's: the fear of nuclear war, the longing for a

simpler life, reactions against racism and censorship, and fear of foreign

political powers. The book was definitely a reflection of the times in

which he lived.

Another of Bradbury's best-known works, the novel , was released

in 1953 and is set in a future when the written word is forbidden. Books

are burned when found,