Ray Bradbury

American fantasy and science-fiction writer

• Born: August 22, 1920
• Birthplace: Waukegan, Illinois
• Died: June 5, 2012
• Place of death:Los Angeles, California

Biography

Ray Douglas Bradbury used his elegiac short stories, often in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, to comment on the beguiling power of the imagination and the dehumanizing pressures of technocracies. Bradbury was born to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman with the Waukegan Bureau of Power and Light, and Esther Marie (Moberg) Bradbury, who had emigrated as a child from Sweden. Bradbury’s older brother later appeared in fictionalized form in his stories.

The most important event of Bradbury’s childhood occurred when he was twelve years old and a carnival came to town for the Labor Day weekend. After attending the performance of a magician, Mr. Electrico, who sat in an electric chair, causing sparks to jump between his teeth and every white hair on his head to stand erect, Bradbury and the magician became friends. Their walks and talks along the Lake Michigan shore behind the carnival so energized the boy’s imagination that, a few weeks after this encounter, he began to write stories for at least four hours a day, a practice that soon became a habit.

In 1932 his family moved to Arizona, where they had lived in the mid-1920’s, largely because of his father’s need to find work. In 1934 the family settled in Los Angeles, which became Ray Bradbury’s permanent home. He attended Los Angeles High School, where he became involved with theatricals and journalism, and he went to film theaters several times a week. He also wrote a thousand words a day and joined the Science Fiction League, where he met such professional writers as Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett, with whom he later collaborated. After graduating from high school in 1938 Bradbury worked for several months in a theater group sponsored by the actress Laraine Day and for several years as a newsboy in downtown Los Angeles. He took these jobs for subsistence while he dedicated most of his energy to writing. His early efforts owed much to William S. Burroughs, but as he grew older he began studying such writers as Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway. His own style reflected these influences, blending the clean colloquial rhythms of Hemingway and the rich poetic metaphors of Wolfe.

Bradbury’s poor eyesight prevented him from serving in the military during World War II, which left him free to launch his writing career. In the early 1940’s he submitted stories to such pulp magazines as Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. His first published story, “Pendulum,” a collaborative effort, appeared in 1941. His first independent sale, “The Piper,” appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in February, 1943, but was preceded into print by “The Candle,” which was published in the November, 1942, issue of Weird Tales. As a young writer he received stimulus by going to Los Angeles libraries and reading randomly until story ideas came tumbling into his mind. In 1945 he sold “The Big Black and White Game” to the prestigious American Mercury, and it was later republished in The Best American Short Stories of 1946. His stories soon began to appear regularly in such magazines as Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and Mademoiselle. These magazines paid well and allowed him to marry Marguerite "Maggie" Susan McClure, who at one time taught English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and with whom he had four daughters.

Dark Carnival, Bradbury’s first book, resulted from the encouragement of August Derleth, a publisher of fantasy literature. This compilation of early horror stories also includes poetic portrayals of the lonely and the anguished. In his second book, he abandoned the grotesque for Mars. Until then he had been writing what seemed to be science-fiction stories but were in reality explorations of humanity in challenging settings. Because publishers wanted a Mars novel rather than a collection of Mars stories, Bradbury added narrative transitions to twenty-six of his stories and produced The Martian Chronicles, which established his reputation as a sophisticated stylist with a distinctive imagination. The Martian Chronicles, which many consider Bradbury’s best book, is a lyrical account of Earth’s colonization of Mars from 1999 to 2026. During the first two decades after publication, it sold more than three million copies, even though space science was revealing that Bradbury’s Mars, with its canals, water, and a breathable atmosphere, was possible only in fiction.

Bradbury’s best-known collection, The Illustrated Man, also dates from this period; several of the stories in that volume explore the threats posed by technology to human values. During the time that Bradbury worked on The Illustrated Man he published a story, “The Fireman,” in Galaxy Science Fiction, that he thought he could expand into a novel. A fire chief informed him that book paper first burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, which gave him the title. He wrote the novel in twenty days on a rental typewriter in the basement of the library at UCLA. Fahrenheit 451, which deals with a book-burning fireman in a future society, is only secondarily concerned with totalitarianism, technology, and censorship. At its core this novel is rooted in Bradbury’s deep love for libraries and books. Like The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 is basically optimistic, for Montag, the book burner, ends up with other nonconformists memorizing the classic books that helped to create and nurture human civilization. Not long after the book came out, Bradbury received the 1954 National Institute of Arts and Letters Award in literature.

In the mid-1950’s Bradbury traveled to Europe in connection with a screenplay of Moby Dick that he wrote with renowned director and screenwriter John Huston. When Moby Dick appeared, several film critics lauded Bradbury’s work above Huston’s. Upon his return to the United States Bradbury began writing television scripts for such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Suspense, and The Twilight Zone.

During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Bradbury’s stories and novels centered more openly on his midwestern childhood, no longer camouflaged by a science-fiction or fantasy setting. Dandelion Wine is a nostalgic account of small-town life in the 1920’s, told through a delicate mixture of pleasant childhood memories and the unpleasant fears of loneliness and death. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury’s favorite book, a father tries to save his son from the evil forces of a mysterious traveling carnival. These two novels can be read as the childhood and early-adolescent chapters of Bradbury’s ongoing fictional autobiography, a series of novels in which characters loosely based on the author himself at different ages serve as vehicles for reflections on the relationship of the imagination to life. Bradbury’s next three novels extended this series. In Death Is a Lonely Business a young writer of pulp fantasy and horror stories confronts the reality of death. A Graveyard for Lunatics is about a neophyte Hollywood screenwriter who must solve a gothic mystery played out in the studio back lots to arrive at an understanding of conflicts in his own life. Green Shadows, White Whale is loosely based on the contentious creative relationship that developed between Bradbury and Huston during the filming of Moby Dick.

After Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury’s output of fiction decreased, and he turned to such forms as plays, poems, and essays. He had been fascinated by the theater since childhood, and in the 1960’s and 1970’s he devoted much of his time to adapting several of his stories into plays for his Pandemonium Theatre Company. Although most of his work was being produced in California, a few of his plays appeared Off-Broadway, including The World of Ray Bradbury Three: Fables of the Future. In the 1970’s he also began to write humorous poetry. Generally critics were not enthusiastic about Bradbury’s plays and poems, and in the 1980’s he continued to diversify his activities. He helped adapt Fahrenheit 451 into an opera and Dandelion Wine into a musical; he collaborated on the plans for Spaceship Earth for Walt Disney World in Florida; and he participated in designing a twenty-first-century city near Tokyo. In the early 1990s, the Ray Bradbury Theater television series (1985–92), which adapted more than sixty of his short stories for the small screen, was nominated for two Emmy Awards.

Critics have found that Bradbury’s later output did not achieve the stature of his early work. His first story collections are recognized as having been immensely important for popularizing science fiction and lowering the barriers that isolated it from traditional literary forms. Unlike many pulp magazine writers, Bradbury was a careful craftsman sensitively attuned to the subtleties of language. He has been called America’s official science-fiction writer, the world’s greatest living science-fiction writer, the Norman Rockwell of science fiction, and the Walt Disney of science fiction, although a strong case can be made that Bradbury is not really a science-fiction writer at all: Isaac Asimov has shown that Bradbury’s stories about Mars are saturated with scientific incongruities and that they depict not possible futures but moral lessons for the present.

In fact, Bradbury is essentially a short-story writer and a romantic. Most of his books are short-story compilations, his novels are stitched-together short stories, and his plays are adapted short stories. His romanticism surfaces in the themes he often explores: the conflict between human vitality and machine control, between the creative individual and the conforming group, between the innocence of childhood and the corruption of adulthood, between the shadow and the light in every human soul.

Although his volume of writing may have decreased in later years, recognition for Bradbury's work spread. He was given lifetime achievement awards by the World Fantasy Convention (1977) and PEN Center USA (1999), was named Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America (1989) and was inducted into Hollywood Walk of Fame (2002). Bradbury also received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000), the National Medal of Arts (2004), and a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation (2007).

Despite experiencing a stroke in 1999, Bradbury continued to write and publish stories. He died on June 5, 2012, in Los Angeles, California.

Author Works

Short Fiction:

Dark Carnival, 1947

The Martian Chronicles, 1950

The Illustrated Man, 1951

The Golden Apples of the Sun, 1953

The October Country, 1955

A Medicine for Melancholy, 1959

Twice Twenty-two, 1959

The Machineries of Joy, 1964

I Sing the Body Electric!, 1969

Long After Midnight, 1976

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, 1980

Dinosaur Tales, 1983

A Memory of Murder, 1984

The Toynbee Convector, 1988

Quicker than the Eye, 1996

Driving Blind, 1997

One More for the Road: A New Short Story Collection, 2002

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, 2003

The Cat's Pajamas:, 2004

Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451, 2006 (Donn Albright, editor)

Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99 , 2007

We'll Always Have Paris, 2009

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, 2010

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, 2010 (William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller, editors)

Long Fiction:

Fahrenheit 451, 1953

Dandelion Wine, 1957

Something Wicked This Way Comes, 1962

Death Is a Lonely Business, 1985

A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities, 1990

Green Shadows, White Whale, 1992

From the Dust Returned: A Family Remembrance, 2001

Let’s All Kill Constance, 2003

Farewell Summer, 2006

Drama:

The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics, pb. 1963

The World of Ray Bradbury: Three Fables of the Future, pr. 1964

The Day It Rained Forever, pb. 1966

The Pedestrian, pb. 1966

Dandelion Wine, pr. 1967 (adaptation of his novel)

Madrigals for the Space Age, pb. 1972

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, and Other Plays, pb. 1972

Pillar of Fire, and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow, pb. 1975

That Ghost, That Bride of Time: Excerpts from a Play-in-Progress, pb. 1976

The Martian Chronicles, pr. 1977

Fahrenheit 451, pr. 1979 (musical)

A Device Out of Time, pb. 1986

On Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays, pb. 1991

The Illustrated Bradbury, 2014 (with Tobias Andersen)

Screenplays:

It Came from Outer Space, 1952 (with David Schwartz)

Moby Dick, 1956 (with John Huston)

Icarus Montgolfier Wright, 1961 (with George C. Johnson)

The Picasso Summer, 1969 (with Ed Weinberger)

Teleplays:

Bullet Trick, 2009 (Donn Albright, editor)

Poetry:

Old Ahab’s Friend, and Friend to Noah, Speaks His Piece: A Celebration, 1971

When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year, 1973

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns: New Poems, Both Light and Dark, 1977

Twin Hieroglyphs That Swim the River Dust, 1978

The Bike Repairman, 1978

The Aqueduct, 1979

The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope, 1981

The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury, 1982

Forever and the Earth, 1984

Death Has Lost Its Charm for Me, 1987

With Cat for Comforter, 1997 (with Loise Max)

Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas, 1997

I Live by the Invisible: New and Selected Poems, 2002

Nonfiction:

Teacher’s Guide to Science Fiction, 1968 (with Lewy Olfson)

Mars and the Mind of Man, 1973

“Zen and the Art of Writing” and “The Joy of Writing”: Two Essays, 1973

The Mummies of Guanajuato, 1978

The Art of the Playboy, 1985

Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity, 1989

Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures, 1991

Conversations with Ray Bradbury, 2004 (Steven L. Aggelis, editor)

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, 2005

Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, 2010 (Sam Weller, editor)

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, 2014 (Sam Weller, editor)

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Switch on the Night, 1955

R Is for Rocket, 1962

S Is for Space, 1966

The Halloween Tree, 1972

Fever Dream, 1987

Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable, 1998

Edited Texts:

Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, 1952

The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Other Improbable Stories, 1956

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury. New York: Chelsea House, 2001. Critical essays cover the major themes in Bradbury’s works, looking at, among other topics, his Martian stories, his participation in the gothic tradition, the role of children in his work, and his use of myth.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Chelsea House, 2001. Eight essays address various aspects of one of Bradbury’s most important novels. Includes an informative editor’s introduction, a chronology, and a bibliography.

Bolhafner, J. Stephen. “The Ray Bradbury Chronicles.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 1, 1996. An interview with Bradbury on the occasion of the publication of his collection of short stories Quicker than the Eye. Bradbury reminisces about the beginnings of his career, talks about getting over his fear of flying, and discusses The Martian Chronicles as fantasy, mythology, and magical realism.

Bradbury, Ray. “Sci-Fi for Your D: Drive.” Newsweek 126 (November 13, 1995): 89. In this interview-story, Bradbury discusses why he is putting his most widely acclaimed short-story collection, The Martian Chronicles, on CD-ROM. Bradbury also discusses the role of imagination in technology, the space program, and his favorite literary figures.

Eller, Jonathan R., and William F. Touponce. Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004. Described as “the first comprehensive textual, bibliographical, and cultural study of sixty years of Bradbury’s fiction,” this book makes use of manuscripts, correspondence, charts, and graphs to bring out the interconnections among the many versions that led to Bradbury’s published works and the events in his life. Includes index.

Greenberg, Martin Henry, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Ray Bradbury. New York: Taplinger, 1980. Anthology of Bradbury criticism includes essays that defend Bradbury against the charge that he is not really a science-fiction writer but an opponent of science and technology; others defend him against the charge that his work is mawkish. Includes extensive bibliography and index.

Johnson, Wayne L. Ray Bradbury. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. Although this volume is the work of a fan rather than a critic, it provides a good general introduction to Bradbury’s stories of fantasy and science fiction. Johnson’s approach is thematic rather than chronological (he uses the categories of magic, monsters, and machines to facilitate his discussion of Bradbury’s principal approaches, ideas, and themes). Index.

Mogen, David. Ray Bradbury. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Provides a brief introduction to Bradbury’s career, focusing on analyses of the literary influences that shaped the development of his style and the themes that shaped his reputation. Includes detailed notes, bibliography, and index.

Nolan, William F. The Ray Bradbury Companion: A Life and Career History, Photolog, and Comprehensive Checklist of Writings with Facsimiles from Ray Bradbury’s Unpublished and Uncollected Work in All Media. Detroit: Gale Research, 1975. The ample subtitle gives a good idea of this book’s contents. After its publication, its information on Bradbury has been updated by Donn Albright, in “The Ray Bradbury Index,” in several issues of Xenophile (May, 1975; September, 1976; and November, 1977).

Reid, Robin Ann. Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Offers biographical information as well as critical discussion of Bradbury’s major works and their critical reception. Includes bibliography and index.

Slusser, George Edgar. The Bradbury Chronicles. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1977. This booklet is part of a series, Popular Writers of Today. Intended for young students and general audiences, this brief work discusses summarily some of Bradbury’s most important writings. Bibliography.

Touponce, William F. Naming the Unnameable: Ray Bradbury and the Fantastic After Freud. Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1997. Argues that the psychoanalytic ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are helpful in plumbing the effectiveness of much of Bradbury’s work (though in a letter to the author, Bradbury himself denies any direct influence, saying he has “read little Freud or Jung”). Asserts that Bradbury has produced stories of a modern consciousness that often forgets its debt to the unconscious.

Weist, Jerry. Bradbury: An Illustrated Life—A Journey to Far Metaphor. New York: William Morrow, 2002. Celebratory book, with an introduction by Bradbury, has, as its principal attraction, its numerous illustrations, carefully chosen and presented by an auction-house expert in science-fiction and fantasy collectibles. Includes index.

Weller, Sam. "Ray Bradbury: The Art of Fiction No. 203." The Paris Review, no. 192, Spring 2010, pp. 181–210. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=50452909&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 10 Apr. 2017. An interview with Bradbury in which he discusses subjects such as his reasons for writing science fiction, his literary and pop-cultural influences, the origin of The Martian Chronicles, education, and the filming of Moby Dick.

Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury. New York: William Morrow, 2005. Authorized biography, based on extensive research in Bradbury’s personal archives and on many interviews, presents an inspirational account of the highly imaginative writer. Includes detailed bibliographic notes, selected bibliography, and index.