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Ray Bradbury

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• Official Site of Ray Bradbury
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• Table Of Contents

Who is Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury is an American author known for his highly imaginative short stories and novels that blend a poetic style, nostalgia for childhood, social criticism, and an awareness of the hazards of runaway technology. Among his best known works are Fahrenheit 451 , Dandelion Wine , and The Martian Chronicles .

Which novel is considered Ray Bradbury's greatest work?

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is regarded as Ray Bradbury’s greatest work. The novel is about a future society where books are forbidden, and it has been acclaimed for its anti-censorship themes and its defense of literature against the encroachment of electronic media.

What was Ray Bradbury's last novel?

Ray Bradbury's final novel was Farewell Summer (2006), a sequel to one of his most well-known works, the autobiographical novel Dandelion Wine (1957).

Was Ray Bradbury awarded a Pulitzer Prize?

In 2007 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Ray Bradbury a Special Citation for his distinguished career.

Ray Bradbury (born August 22, 1920, Waukegan , Illinois , U.S.—died June 5, 2012, Los Angeles , California ) was an American author best known for his highly imaginative short stories and novels that blend a poetic style, nostalgia for childhood, social criticism , and an awareness of the hazards of runaway technology.

As a child, Bradbury loved horror films such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925); the books of L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs , and the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories . Bradbury often told of an encounter with a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932 as a notable influence. Wreathed in static electricity , Mr. Electrico touched the young Bradbury on the nose and said, “Live forever!” The next day, Bradbury returned to the carnival to ask Mr. Electrico’s advice on a magic trick. After Mr. Electrico introduced him to the other performers in the carnival, he told Bradbury that he was a reincarnation of his best friend who died in World War I . Bradbury later wrote, “a few days later I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day.”

Bradbury’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1934. In 1937 Bradbury joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, where he received encouragement from young writers such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Heinlein , and Leigh Brackett, who met weekly with him. Bradbury published his first short story , “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma” (1938), in the league’s “fanzine,” Imagination! He published his own fanzine, Futuria Fantasia , in 1939. That same year Bradbury traveled to the first World Science Fiction convention , in New York City , where he met many of the genre’s editors. He made his first sale to a professional science fiction magazine in 1941, when his short story “Pendulum” (written with Henry Hasse) was published in Super Science Stories . Many of Bradbury’s earliest stories, with their elements of fantasy and horror, were published in Weird Tales . Most of these stories were collected in his first book of short stories, Dark Carnival (1947). Bradbury’s style, with its rich use of metaphors and similes , stood out from the more utilitarian work that dominated pulp magazine writing.

In the mid-1940s Bradbury’s stories started to appear in major magazines such as The American Mercury , Harper’s , and McCall’s , and he was unusual in publishing both in pulp magazines such as Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories and “slicks” (so-called because of their high-quality paper) such as The New Yorker and Collier’s without leaving behind the genres he loved. The Martian Chronicles (1950), a series of short stories, depicts Earth’s colonization of Mars , which leads to the extinction of an idyllic Martian civilization. However, in the face of an oncoming nuclear war, many of the settlers return to Earth, and after Earth’s destruction, a few surviving humans return to Mars to become the new Martians. The short-story collection The Illustrated Man (1951) included one of his most famous stories, “The Veldt,” in which a mother and father are concerned about the effect their house’s simulation of lions on the African veldt is having on their children.

Bradbury’s next novel , Fahrenheit 451 (1953), is regarded as his greatest work. In a future society where books are forbidden, Guy Montag, a “fireman” whose job is the burning of books, takes a book and is seduced by reading. Fahrenheit 451 has been acclaimed for its anti- censorship themes and its defense of literature against the encroachment of electronic media. An acclaimed film adaptation was released in 1966.

The collection The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) contained “The Fog Horn” (loosely adapted for film as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [1953]), about two lighthouse keepers’ terrifying encounter with a sea monster; the title story, about a rocket’s dangerous journey to scoop up a piece of the Sun ; and “A Sound of Thunder,” about a safari back to the Mesozoic to hunt a Tyrannosaurus . In 1954 Bradbury spent six months in Ireland with director John Huston working on the screenplay for the film Moby Dick (1956), an experience Bradbury later fictionalized in his novel Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). After the release of Moby Dick , Bradbury was in demand as a screenwriter in Hollywood and wrote scripts for Playhouse 90 , Alfred Hitchcock Presents , and The Twilight Zone .

One of Bradbury’s most personal works, Dandelion Wine (1957), is an autobiographical novel about a magical but too brief summer of a 12-year-old boy in Green Town, Illinois (a fictionalized version of his childhood home of Waukegan). His next collection, A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), contained “All Summer in a Day,” a poignant story of childhood cruelty on Venus , where the Sun comes out only every seven years. The Midwest of his childhood was once again the setting of Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), in which a carnival comes to town run by the mysterious and evil Mr. Dark. The next year, he published his first collection of short plays, The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics .

In the 1970s Bradbury no longer wrote short fiction at his previous pace, turning his energy to poetry and drama . Earlier in his career he had sold several mystery short stories, and he returned to the genre with Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), an homage to the detective stories of writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett mixed with an autobiographical setting of 1949 Venice, California, where Bradbury lived at the time. Two sequels, A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002), mined his experiences in 1950s and ’60s Hollywood. His final novel, Farewell Summer (2006), was a sequel to Dandelion Wine . He adapted 59 of his short stories for the television series The Ray Bradbury Theatre (1985–92).

Bradbury was often considered a science fiction author, but he said that his only science fiction book was Fahrenheit 451 . Strictly speaking, much of his work was fantasy, horror, or mysteries. He said, “I use a scientific idea as a platform to leap into the air and never come back.” He received many honours for his work including an Emmy for his animated adaptation of The Halloween Tree (1994) and the National Medal of Arts (2004). In 2007 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Bradbury a Special Citation for his distinguished career.

Ray Bradbury

(1920-2012)

Who Was Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal. His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451 , a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes . Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century.

Author Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman for power and telephone utilities, and Ester Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant. Bradbury enjoyed a relatively idyllic childhood in Waukegan, which he later incorporated into several semi-autobiographical novels and short stories. As a child, he was a huge fan of magicians, and a voracious reader of adventure and fantasy fiction — especially L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Bradbury decided to become a writer at about age 12 or 13. He later said that he made the decision in hopes of emulating his heroes, and to "live forever" through his fiction.

Bradbury's family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1934. As a teenager, he participated in his school's drama club and occasionally befriended Hollywood celebrities. His first official pay as a writer came for contributing a joke to George Burns' Burns & Allen Show . After graduation from high school in 1938, Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college, so he went to the local library instead. "Libraries raised me," he later said. "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."

Books and Short Stories

To support himself while he wrote, Bradbury sold newspapers. He published his first short story in a fan magazine in 1938, the same year he graduated from high school. The next year, he published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia . Nearly every piece in the magazine was written by Bradbury himself; he used a variety of pseudonyms to try to hide the fact that the magazine was a virtual one-man show. "I was still years away from writing my first good short story," he later said, "but I could see my future. I knew where I wanted to go."

Bradbury sold his first professional piece, the story "Pendulum," in November 1941, just a month before the United States entered World War II, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ruled ineligible for military service by his local draft board because of his vision problems, Bradbury became a full-time writer by early 1943. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival , was published in 1947.

That same year, he married Marguerite "Maggie" McClure, whom he met while she was working as a clerk at a bookstore. McClure was the breadwinner in the early days of their marriage, supporting Bradbury as he worked on his writing for little to no pay. The couple had four daughters, Susan (1949), Ramona (1951), Bettina (1955) and Alexandra (1958).

In 1950, Bradbury published his first major work, The Martian Chronicles , which detailed the conflict between humans colonizing the red planet and the native Martians they encountered there. While taken by many to be a work of science fiction, Bradbury himself considered it to be fantasy. "I don't write science fiction," he said. "Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see?" Television and comic book adaptations of Bradbury's short stories began to appear in 1951, introducing him to a wider audience.

Bradbury's best-known work, Fahrenheit 451 , published in 1953, became an instant classic in the era of McCarthyism for its exploration of themes of censorship and conformity. In 2007 Bradbury himself disputed that censorship was the main theme of Fahrenheit 451 , instead explaining the book as a story about how television drives away interest in reading: "Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was."

Despite his apparent distaste for television, Bradbury advocated for film adaptations of his work. He wrote numerous screenplays and treatments, including a 1956 take on Moby Dick . In 1986, Bradbury developed his own HBO television series, allowing him to produce adaptations of his short stories. The series ran until 1992.

Famously prolific, Bradbury wrote for several hours every day throughout his entire life, allowing him to publish more than 30 books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, screenplays and plays.

Though Bradbury won many honors and awards throughout his life, his favorite was perhaps being named "ideas consultant" for the United States Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair. "Can you imagine how excited I was?" he later said about the honor. "'Cause I'm changing lives, and that's the thing. If you can build a good museum, if you can make a good film, if you can build a good world's fair, if you can build a good mall, you're changing the future. You're influencing people, so that they'll get up in the morning and say, 'Hey, it's worthwhile going to work.' That's my function, and it should be the function of every science fiction writer around. To offer hope. To name the problem and then offer the solution. And I do, all the time."

Adaptation of 'Fahrenheit 451'

Death and legacy.

Bradbury wrote well into his 80s, dictating for three hours at a time to one of his daughters, who would transcribe his words to the page. Though curtailing much of his traveling and public appearances, he granted several interviews in his latter years and helped raise funds for his local library.

In 2007, Bradbury received a special citation from the Pulitzer board for his "distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy." In his final years, Bradbury felt content about his place in the annals of science fiction history, having achieved his childhood ambition of living forever through his work. "I don't need to be vindicated," he said, "and I don't want attention. I never question. I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count."

Bradbury died in Los Angeles on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. He was survived by daughters Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra, as well as several grandchildren. An inspiration to writers, teachers and science-fiction enthusiasts, among countless others, Bradbury's fascinating works will be remembered for decades to come.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Ray Douglas Bradbury
• Birth Year: 1920
• Birth date: August 22, 1920
• Birth State: Illinois
• Birth City: Waukegan
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: American fantasy and horror author Ray Bradbury is best known for his novels 'Fahrenheit 451,' 'The Illustrated Man' and 'The Martian Chronicles.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 2012
• Death date: June 5, 2012
• Death State: California
• Death City: Los Angeles
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Ray Bradbury Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/ray-bradbury
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 28, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I don't need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention. I never question. I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count.
• I don't write science fiction. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.
• If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.
• I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

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Ray Bradbury 1920 — Forever

‘We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.’

Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers and viewers to dream, think, and create. His childhood was spent in the Midwestern small town of Waukegan, Illinois, and he mastered his craft in Los Angeles, where he forged a special creative bond with the city and its many cultures, raised his family, and drew as feverishly as he wrote. (The doodles throughout this website are just a mere sampling.) Yet Bradbury always maintained strong ties to his small-town upbringing. He often told the story of an encounter with a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, who reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched him with his energy-charged sword, and commanded, “Live forever!” Bradbury said, “I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.” And the literary landscape—as well as the broader American cultural landscape, from Hollywood to NASA—would never be the same again.

During a career that spanned seventy-plus years, he wrote more than 400 short stories and nearly fifty books across a variety of genres. He also penned numerous poems, essays, plays, operas, teleplays, and screenplays, making him one of the most productive and admired writers of our time, as well as one of the most widely translated in the world.

His enduring novels, novelized story cycles, and story collections include The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The October Country (1955), Dandelion Wine (1957), A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).

Bradbury’s many subsequent books include the children’s fantasy The Halloween Tree (1972); the detective novel trilogy Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let’s All Kill Constance!  (2003); an essay collection on creativity, Zen in the Art of Writing (1989); a roman-à-clef based on his work in Ireland with John Huston, entitled Green Shadows, White Whale (1992); the supernatural novel From the Dust Returned (2001); the poetry collection They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001); the nostalgic sequel to Dandelion Wine , Farewell Summer (2006); and nine short story collections written during the final five decades of his life. In addition, 200 of his short stories were published in two story collections, The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) and Bradbury Stories (2003). Further, his stories earned individual honors in two O. Henry Prize anthologies and four Best American Short Stories volumes, and continue to appear in hundreds of textbooks for new generations of readers.

When Bradbury used his gift as a master visual storyteller to venture into film and television, millions more discovered his work. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s classic 1956 film adaptation of Moby Dick, was nominated for a 1962 Academy Award, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree in 1993. The Ray Bradbury Theater , a TV series for which he adapted sixty-five of his stories, also earned several awards, and more of his stories were adapted for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. On the big screen, many feature films were based on his work, including It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Fahrenheit 451 (1966 and 2018), The Illustrated Man (1969), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998), and A Sound of Thunder (2005).

During the Space Age, Bradbury emerged as a leading futurist through his stories, books, articles, and lectures. His ideas transcended the boundaries of fiction and became the real-life dreams of astronomers, astronauts, planetary scientists, and mainstream readers of all ages. Few individuals in the world have received as many Space-Age recognitions as Bradbury. In his honor, the Apollo 15 crew named a moon crater “Dandelion,” an asteroid was designated “9766 Bradbury,” rocks on Mars were named “The Martian Chronicles” by the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover scientific teams, and the Phoenix Mars Lander carried a digital copy of The Martian Chronicles aboard when it traveled to the high northern latitudes of Mars. Valles Marineris, one of the deepest chasms of the Martian Grand Canyon, has been unofficially renamed the “Bradbury Abyss” by his fans.

Many accolades have been bestowed on Bradbury, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. Among his most distinguished honors are the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, received in 2000, followed by the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2004, and the Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in 2007, a year that also saw Bradbury receive a Pulitzer Prize citation, recognizing his “prolific and deeply influential” career.

"I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room." – R.B.

From Ray Bradbury’s Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, 2007

‘Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works—short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse—exemplify the American imagination at its most creative. Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, are masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime. His timeless, constant appeal to audiences young and old has proven him to be one of the truly classic authors of the 20th century—and the 21st.’

Biography of Ray Bradbury, American Author

Author of 'Fahrenheit 451' and More

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Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920–June 5, 2012) was an American writer who specialized in genre fiction. His best known works are in fantasy and science fiction, and he was noted for his ability to bring genre elements into the literary mainstream.

Fast Facts: Ray Bradbury

• Full Name:  Ray Douglas Bradbury
• Known For:  American science fiction author
• Born:  August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois
• Parents:  Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Bradbury (née Moberg)
• Died:  June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles, California
• Education:  Los Angeles High School
• Selected Works:   The Martian Chronicles (1950), Fahrenheit 451 (1953) , Dandelion Wine (1957), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), I Sing the Body Electric (1969)
• Selected Awards and Honors:  Prometheus Award (1984), Emmy Award (1994), Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation (2000), National Medal of Arts (2004), Special Citation by the Pulitzer Prize jury (2007)
• Spouse:  Marguerite "Maggie" McClure (m. 1947-2003)
• Children:  Susan Bradbury, Ramona Bradbury, Bettina Bradbury, Alexandra Bradbury
• Notable Quote:  “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of telephone and power lineman Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Bradbury (née Moberg), an immigrant from Sweden. He was a descendant of Mary Bradbury, one of the women who had been convicted at the Salem witch trials but managed to escape her sentence until the hysteria had passed and she had been officially exonerated. Ray Bradbury was not her only literary descendant; the transcendentalist writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson also could trace his heritage to Mary Bradbury.

For a time during the 1920s and early 1930s, the Bradburys moved back and forth between Waukegan and Tucson, Arizona, following Leonard as he sought employment. Eventually, they settled in Los Angeles in 1934, where Leonard was able to find steady work making wire for a cable company. Bradbury was reading and writing from a young age, and once he was in Hollywood as a teenager, he befriended and tried to spend time around the professional writers he admired. Science fiction writer Bob Olsen became a particular mentor, and by the time Bradbury was 16, he had joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.

Bradbury often spent time as a teenager roller skating through the streets of Hollywood in hopes of catching glimpses of his favorite stars. Unusually, he never bothered to get a driver’s license, instead using public transportation or a bike for most of his life. He remained living at home with his parents until he married at the age of 27 to Marguerite “Maggie” McClure. McClure was his first and only romantic partner, and they married in 1947. The couple had four daughters: Susan, Ramona, Bettina, and Alexandra; Bettina went on to a career in screenwriting, which her father had also done.

Science Fiction Short Stories (1938-1947)

• "Hollerbochen's Dilemma" (1938)
• Future Fantasia (1938-1940)
• "Pendulum" (1941)
• "The Lake" (1944)
• "Homecoming" (1947)
• Dark Carnival (1947)

Bradbury’s youthful love of science fiction and the fan community led him to publish his very first story in 1938. His short story "Hollerbochen's Dilemma,” about a character who can see the future and stop time, was published in Imagination! , a fanzine owned by Forrest J. Ackerman, in 1938. The story was widely panned, and even Bradbury himself admitted that he knew the story wasn’t very good. Ackerman, however, saw promise in Bradbury. He and his then-girlfriend, fellow fanzine publisher Morojo, funded Bradbury’s interest, sending him to the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City in 1939, then funding his own fanzine, Future Fantasia .

Future Fantasia published four issues, each of which were almost entirely written by Bradbury and sold under 100 copies. In 1939, he joined the Laraine Day's Wilshire Players Guild, where he spent two years writing and acting in plays; once again, he found the quality of his own work lacking and gave up playwriting for a long time. Instead, he returned to science fiction and short story circles and began honing his writing there.

In 1941, Bradbury published his first paid piece: the short story “Pendulum,” co-written with Henry Hasse and published in the zine Super Science Stories . The following year, he sold his first original story, “The Lake,” and was on the path to becoming a full-time writer. Because he was medically rejected from the military during World War II, he had more time and energy to devote to writing. He published his short story collection, Dark Carnival , in 1947. That same year, he submitted his short story “Homecoming” to Mademoiselle magazine. Truman Capote was working there at the time as a young assistant, and he pulled the story out of the slush pile. It was published, and later in the year, it won a place in the O. Henry Award Stories of 1947.

Bradbury’s Most Famous Novels (1948-1972)

• The Martian Chronicles  (1950)
• The Illustrated Man (1951)
• The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
• The October Country (1955)
• Dandelion Wine  (1957)
• A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
• The Day It Rained Forever (1959)
• The Small Assassin (1962)
• R is for Rocket (1962)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
• The Twilight Zone "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962)
• The Machineries of Joy (1964)
• The Autumn People (1965)
• The Vintage Bradbury (1965)
• Tomorrow Midnight (1966)
• S is for Space (1966)
• Twice 22 (1966)
• I Sing the Body Electric (1969)
• The Illustrated Man (film, 1969)
• The Halloween Tree (1972)

In 1949, when his wife was pregnant with their first child, Bradbury headed to New York in hopes of selling more of his work. He was largely unsuccessful, but during a meeting, one editor suggested he could connect several of his stories and call it The Martian Chronicles . Bradbury took to the idea and, in 1950, the novel was published, largely by piecing together his previous short stories and creating an overarching narrative.

It was in 1953, though, that Bradbury’s most famous and enduring work was published. Fahrenheit 451 is a work of dystopian fiction that takes place in a future of extreme authoritarianism and censorship, most famously in the form of book burning. The novel deals with themes ranging from the rise of mass media to McCarthy-era censorship and political hysteria and more. Prior to this book, Bradbury had written a couple of short stories with similar themes: 1948’s “Bright Phoenix” features conflict between a librarian and a “Chief Censor” who burns books, and 1951’s “The Pedestrian” tells the story of a man hounded by police for his “unusual” habit of going out for a walk in a TV-obsessed society. Initially, the book was a novella called “The Fireman,” but he doubled the length at the behest of his publisher.

Dandelion Wine, published in 1957, returned to the form of The Martian Chronicles , functioning as a “fix-up” that reassembled and reworked existing short stories to create a single unified work. Originally, Bradbury intended to write a novel about Green Town, a fictionalized version of his hometown of Waukegan. Instead, after discussions with his editors, he pulled out several of the stories to create what became Dandelion Wine . In 2006, he finally published the “remainder” of the original manuscript, now a new book called Farewell Summer .

In 1962, Bradbury published Something Wicked This Way Comes , a fantasy horror novel that was a wholly original narrative like Fahrenheit 451, rather than a reworked compilation. He spent most of the 1960s working on short stories, publishing a total of nine collections during the decade. He published his next novel in 1972, The Halloween Tree , which sends its young characters on a journey across time tracing the history of Halloween itself.

Stage, Screen, and Other Works (1973-1992)

• Ray Bradbury (1975)
• Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975)
• Kaleidoscope (1975)
• Long After Midnight (1976)
• The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978)
• The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979)
• One Timeless Spring (1980)
• The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980)
• The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980)
• The Martian Chronicles (film, 1980)
• The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1981)
• Dinosaur Tales (1983)
• A Memory of Murder (1984)
• The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1985)
• Death Is a Lonely Business (1985)
• The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985-1992)
• The Twilight Zone "The Elevator" (1986)
• The Toynbee Convector (1988)
• A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990)
• The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991)
• Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his upbringing and his love of all things Hollywood, Bradbury spent some time working as a screenwriter on and off, beginning in the 1950s and continuing to nearly the end of his life. He wrote two episodes of the seminal sci-fi anthology The Twilight Zone , nearly 30 years apart. First, in 1959, he wrote “I Sing the Body Electric” for the original series; the story later inspired one of his prose short stories. Then, in 1986, during the first revival of The Twilight Zone , he returned with the episode “The Elevator.” Bradbury was also famous for a TV show he did not write for. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek , famously asked Bradbury to write for the show, but Bradbury declined, insisting that he was not very good at creating stories from other people’s ideas.

Beginning in the 1970s, Bradbury began working significantly on adapting his successful short stories into other media—specifically, into film, television, and theatre. In 1972, he released The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays , a collection of three short plays: The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit ,  The Veldt , and  To the Chicago Abyss , all of which were adapted from his short stories of the same names. Similarly, Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975) collected three more plays based on his sci-fi short stories: Pillar of Fire , Kaleidoscope , and The Foghorn . He also adapted several of his most famous works into stage plays, including The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, both finished in 1986, and Dandelion Wine in 1988.

Bradbury’s most famous works also were adapted for the big screen, often with Bradbury’s own involvement. Both The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes (the former in 1980, the latter in 1983) were adapted for the screen, with Martian Chronicles taking the form of a TV miniseries and Something Wicked becoming a full-length film. Intriguingly, the only one of his “major” titles that he did not personally adapt was Fahrenheit 451 . It was turned into two different films: one for theatrical release in 1966, and one for premium cable network HBO in 2018.

Later Publications (1992-2012)

• Green Shadows, White Whale  (1992)
• Quicker Than The Eye (1996)
• Driving Blind (1997)
• From the Dust Returned  (2001)
• Let's All Kill Constance (2002)
• One More for the Road (2002)
• Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003)
• Is That You, Herb? (2003)
• The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004)
• A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005)
• Farewell Summer (2006)
• The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007)
• Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band is Playing & Leviathan '99 (2007)
• Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007)
• We'll Always Have Paris: Stories (2009)
• A Pleasure to Burn (2010)

Bradbury continued writing even in his later years. He wrote a trio of mystery novels, scattered from 1985 to 2002: Death Is a Lonely Business in 1985, A Graveyard for Lunatics in 1990, and Let’s All Kill Constance in 2002. His short story collections continued to be published throughout his later years as well, with a combination of previously published stories and new pieces.

During this time, he also served on the advisory board for the Los Angeles Student Film Institute. In the 1990s, he adapted more of his books into screenplays, including an animated version of The Halloween Tree . His 2005 film A Sound of Thunder , based on a short story of his by the same name, was an abject failure, losing most of its budget and receiving critical pans. For the most part, his screenplays failed to reach the same acclaim that his prose work did.

Literary Themes and Styles

Bradbury frequently insisted that his works were not science fiction, but fantasy. He argued that science fiction is just ideas about what is or could be real, while fantasy is about what never could be real. Either way, his most notable works tend to be genre fiction with hints of dystopia, horror, science, and cultural commentary. After his death in 2012, the New York Times obituary called him “the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream.”

In many cases, the themes of his stories have been up for debate or have been interpreted in several differing ways over the years. The epitome of this, of course, is Fahrenheit 451 , which has been interpreted as anti-censorship, as commentary on the alienation caused by the media, as anti-political correctness, and more. It is probably most famous for its commentary on the role of literature in society and as a depiction of a dystopia that uses alienation and censorship to maintain an authoritarian grip. It does, however, have a vaguely hopeful ending, suggesting that Bradbury’s view was not that “all is lost.”

Aside from his more outrageous creations, Bradbury also has a running theme of safety and home through many of his works, often represented by “Green Town,” his fictionalization of Waukegan. In many of the stories, Green Town is a backdrop to stories of whimsy, fantasy, or even terror, as well as a commentary on what Bradbury saw as the disappearing of small-town rural America.

In the final years of his life, Bradbury suffered from ongoing illnesses and health problems. In 1999, he suffered a stroke that caused him to need to use a wheelchair some of the time. He still continued writing and even appearing at science fiction conventions for a decade after his stroke. In 2012, he fell ill again, and he died on June 5 after a prolonged illness. His personal library was bequeathed to the Waukegan Public Library, and he is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, with a headstone inscribed with his name, dates, and “Author of Fahrenheit 451.” His death inspired an outpouring of support and commemorations, including an official statement from the Obama White House and inclusion at the Oscars' "In Memoriam."

Bradbury’s legacy largely lives in the way that he bridged the gap between literary fiction and “genre” (that is, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and even mystery) fiction. He inspired later luminaries such as Stephen King , Neil Gaiman , and Steven Spielberg, as well as countless other writers and creative artists. Fahrenheit 451 remains a standard for American literature studies, and many of his other works remain popular. Bradbury’s commentaries on media and alienation have continued to be relevant in an increasingly tech-reliant society, but he also inspired many great creative minds to imagine what could be possible.

• Eller, Jonathan R.; Touponce, William F. Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction . Kent State University Press, 2004.
• Eller, Jonathan R.  Becoming Ray Bradbury . Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
• Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury . HarperCollins, 2005.
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Ray Bradbury Biography

Born: August 22, 1920 Waukegan, Illinois American writer, editor, poet, screenwriter, and dramatist

Ray Bradbury was among the first authors to combine the ideas of science fiction with a more developed writing style. In much of Bradbury's fiction, everyday events are transformed into unusual and sometimes dangerous situations.

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie (Moberg) Bradbury. His father was a lineman for the electric company. He was greatly influenced by his Aunt Neva, a costume designer and dressmaker, who took him to plays and encouraged him to use his imagination. At the age of twelve, after seeing the performance of a magician named Mr. Electrico at a carnival, Bradbury began to spend hours every day writing stories. Bradbury's family moved to Arizona briefly before settling in Los Angeles, California, in 1934. Bradbury continued to write and also spent a great deal of time reading in libraries and going to the movies.

Early career

After graduating from high school in 1938, Bradbury was turned down for military service because of bad eyesight. He earned a living selling newspapers while working on his writing. He sold his first story in 1943, and others were published in such magazines as Black Mask, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales. Dark Carnival (1947) is a collection of Bradbury's early stories of fantasy (fiction with unusual plots and characters). Themes such as the need to retain human values and the importance of the imagination are found in these stories. Many of these pieces were republished with new material in The October Country (1955).

The publication of The Martian Chronicles (1950), an account of man's colonization of Mars, established Bradbury's reputation as an author of quality science fiction. The Martian Chronicles contain tales of space travel and adapting to an environment, and combines many of Bradbury's major themes, including the conflict between individual and social expectations (that is, freedom versus confinement and going along with the crowd) and the idea of space as a frontier wilderness. The Martian Chronicles also reflects many issues of the post-World War II era, such as racism (unequal treatment based on race), censorship (preventing the viewing of materials such as books or films that are considered harmful), and the threat of nuclear war. In another collection of short stories, The Illustrated Man (1951), the stories are based on the tattoos of the title character.

Other works

Bradbury's later short story collections were not as well received as his earlier work. Although Bradbury used many of the same methods in writing these stories as in his science fiction works, he shifted his focus from outer space to more familiar earthbound settings. Dandelion Wine (1957), for example, has as its main subject the midwestern youth of Bradbury's main character, Douglas Spaulding. Other collections include A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), The Machineries of Joy (1964), I Sing the Body Electric! (1969), and Long after Midnight (1976). Many of Bradbury's stories have been filmed for science fiction television programs such as The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Still active

Over the past five decades Bradbury has managed to produce a tremendous amount of different kinds of work, including short stories, plays, novels, film scripts, poems, children's books, and nonfiction. He gives the credit to the steady writing routine that he has followed every day for fifty years. He also claims to remember everything about every book he has read and every film he has seen.

Bradbury also uses an unusual method of writing. In Extrapolation William F. Touponce quotes Bradbury saying: "In my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head." Bradbury suffered a stroke in November 1999 but recovered. In November 2000 he received a National Book Award for lifetime achievement. Bradbury published a new novel, From the Dust Returned, in 2001.

For More Information

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001.

Weist, Jerry. Bradbury, an Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor. New York: Morrow, 2002.

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Ray Bradbury Biography

Birthday: August 22 , 1920 ( Leo )

Born In: Waukegan, Illinois, United States

Raymond Douglas Bradbury was one of the most distinguished and celebrated American authors of the 20th and 21st century. He was an essayist, poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and screenwriter, renowned for his writings in genres like horror, fantasy, mystery fiction and science fiction. Though he received recognition as a bold writer with a vision for his science fiction, ‘The Martian Chronicles’, he shot to fame with his masterpiece, ‘Fahrenheit 451’, a dystopian novel considered to be his best work. His other notable works include ‘The Illustrated Man’, ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’, ‘The October Country’ and ‘Quicker Than the Eye’. His body of works include around six hundred short stories, thirty books, several plays, poems and essays. Four ‘Best American Short Story’ anthologies include his works. His creative visions were not only limited to his writings. He hosted the ‘Ray Bradbury Theater’, created the interior metaphors at ‘Epcot's’ ‘Spaceship Earth’ in the ‘Disney World’ and served ‘United States Pavilion’ as creative consultant during ‘New York World's Fair’. His animated film ‘Icarus Montgolfier Wright’ earned him a nomination for the ‘Academy Awards’ while his 1993 teleplay ‘The Halloween Tree’ (adapted from his 1972 novel) earned him an ‘Emmy Award’ in 1994.

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Also Known As: Ray Douglas Bradbury

Died At Age: 91

Spouse/Ex-: Marguerite McClure (m. 1947–2003)

father: Leonard Spaulding Bradbury

mother: Esther Bradbury

siblings: Elizabeth Bradbury, Leonard Bradbury, Samuel Bradbury

children: Alexandra Bradbury, Bettina F. Bradbury, Ramona Bradbury, Susan Bradbury

Born Country: United States

Novelists Short Story Writers

Height: 5'8" (173 cm ), 5'8" Males

Died on: June 5 , 2012

place of death: Los Angeles, California, United States

Notable Alumni: Los Angeles High School

Cause of Death: Long Illness

Ancestry: British American, Swedish American

U.S. State: Illinois

Founder/Co-Founder: Pandemonium

education: Los Angeles High School

awards: 1984 - Prometheus Award for Fahrenheit 1994 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award 1994 - Emmy Award for the screenplay

1977 - World Fantasy Award for life achievement 1989 - Bram Stoker Award 1996 - First Fandom Hall of Fame Award 2007 - Sir Arthur Clarke Award 2007 - Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal 2010 - Spike TV Scream Awards Comic-Con Icon Award

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Bradbury, Ray (1920-2012)

The below biographical sketch is abridged from the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal Award Presentation.

Each year the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation confers a special award upon an individual who has enriched our literary culture through a life of service or a corpus of work. The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters will be presented tonight to Ray Bradbury.

Novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and poet, Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois 80 years ago. He grew up in Illinois and Arizona and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1934, where Mr. Bradbury has lived ever since.

He married Marguerite McClure in 1947. They have four daughters: Tina, Ramona, Susan, and Alexandra. Ray Bradbury’s first published story was called “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” and it appeared in Imagination! magazine. The author was 18 years old.

Since that time, how can we even begin to count all of the ways in which Ray Bradbury has etched his indelible impressions upon the American literary landscape? There are few modern authors who can claim such a wide and varied province for their work, spanning from the secret inner-worlds of childhood dreams, to the magic realism of everyday life, to the infinite expanses of outer space.

Half a century ago, The Martian Chronicles was published and soon thereafter Fahrenheit 451 (by the way, in Europe that would be “Centigrade 283”), the quintessential book lovers’ book written in nine days; and then Dandelion Wine , I Sing the Body Electric, The Illustrated Man, The October Country, Something Wicked This Way Comes . (By the way, the original title was Look Out, Here Comes Something Wicked .) Ray Bradbury’s prodigious and seemingly never-sleeping imagination continues to delight us.

Response by Ray Bradbury

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, here I am. I have one good eye, one good ear, one good leg, and there are other things missing but I’m afraid to look.

The library’s been the center of my life. I never made it to college. I started going to the library when I graduated from high school. I went to the library every day for three or four days a week for 10 years and I graduated from the library when I was 28.

When it comes to a novel like Fahrenheit 451 , I don’t know how many of you know, but I wrote it in the library, the basement at UCLA. This is 50 years  ago. I had no money to rent a proper office. I had a large family at home and I needed to have a place where I could go for a few hours. I was wandering around the UCLA campus and I looked down below and I listened, and down in the basement I heard this typing. So I went down in the basement of the UCLA library and by God there was a room with 12 typewriters in it that you could rent for 10 cents a half-hour. And there were eight or nine students in there working away like crazy, so I moved in there one day with a bag of dimes and I began inserting dimes into the machine and the machine released the typewriter, and you’d have half an hour of fast typing.

Can you imagine what it was like to write Fahrenheit 451 in the library where you could run upstairs and feel the ambience of your beloved writers; and you could take books off the shelf and discover things that you might want to put in your book as a quote and then run back down and finish writing another page. So over a period of nine days I spent $9.80 and I wrote Fahrenheit 451 .

A young editor came along who was starting a new magazine and needed material. He said, “I have very little money. I’ve got $400. Is there something you could sell me for $400?” I said,”Yes, I have this novel, and I’d like to have it published in the magazine before it comes out in book form,” and he said, “I will take it.” So I sold Fahrenheit 451 , and it appeared in the second, third, and fourth issues of Playboy .

But a wonderful thing happened concerning one of my first books. Back in 1949 my wife was pregnant and we had absolutely no money in the bank. Our friend Norman Corwin, the great radio writer, producer, director, a dear friend, said to me, “Ray, why don’t you come to New York and let the editors see your face and maybe you’ll sell something there.”

So I got on the Greyhound bus, four days, four nights to New York. Have you ever done that on the Greyhound bus? Don’t. Don’t. Those were the days before air conditioning and toilets.

I arrived at the YMCA, the Sloan House, moved in there for $5 a week and proceeded to show my short stories to editors all around New York City, but nobody wanted my short stories. They said, “Don’t you have a novel?” I said, “No I’m a sprinter.”

But finally I had dinner my last night in New York with Don Congdon and Walter Bradbury, no relation of mine. Walter Bradbury at Doubleday. And sitting at dinner that night he said to me, “Ray, what about all those Martian stories you’ve been writing in the pulp magazines during the last 10 years? Don’t you think they would make a novel if you wove them together in some sort of tapestry and called it The Martian Chronicles ?” I said, “Oh my God.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson when I was 24 and I said to myself, ‘Oh God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday I could write a book as good as this but put it on the planet Mars.'”

I made an outline, I named some characters, but I forgot all about it and suddenly here was Walter Bradbury suggesting to me a possible novel I’d written without knowing it. So he said, “Do an outline. Come tomorrow to the Doubleday offices and if I read your outline and like it I’ll give you $750.”

I stayed up all night at the Y. I wrote the outline. I took it to him the next day and he said, “Yes, this is it. Here’s $750.” He said, “Now do you have any other material that you could give me that we could kid people into thinking it was a novel?” And I said, “Yes, I have a short story about a man with tattoos all over his body and at night when he dreams he perspires and the tattoos on his body come to life and tell their stories.” And he said, “Here’s another $750.”

So in one day I sold The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man for $1,500. I was rich. And that’s, you know, 53 years ago and money went a long way then. It paid for our rent for the next two years. Our rent was only $30 a month. It paid for our baby. Babies were cheap back then. It cost $100 for our baby. And it was a down payment on a little tract house when we moved inland further. The book came out and there were very, very few reviews. In fact, only one. I was in a bookstore. I bumped into Christopher Isherwood. I did not know him. I grabbed a copy of my book; I signed it and gave it to him. I thought, Oh Christ, you know, I know he’s thinking, One more book to read. Oh God.

But three days later Christopher Isherwood called me and said, “Do you know what you’ve done?” I said, “No, what have I done?” He said, “You’ve written a remarkable book, and I’m going to be the book editor and writer for Tomorrow Magazine next October and this will be my first review.” So he did a three-page review of The Martian Chronicles which introduced me to the intellectual world and saved my soul.

So that was the only review. But he introduced me to Gerald Heard and finally my hero, Aldous Huxley, at tea one day. I hate tea. My God, I hate tea. And you have to pretend to like tea when you’re sitting with Aldous Huxley. And Mr. Huxley leaned forward during tea and he said, “Do you know what you are?” And I said, “No, what am I, Mr. Huxley?” He said, “You’re published. You’re a poet.” I said, “Is that what I am? Is that what I am.” Aldous Huxley was telling me that I was a poet and I had yet to write one decent poem. I was working at it but it didn’t come right, so I put all my poetry into my books.

So through Isherwood, I met a lot of wonderful people and over the years slowly, slowly, slowly, The Martian Chronicles came into being. I wrote a whole series of essays and short stories and one day woke up and saw that I’d written a novel, and that’s still around.

Along the way people said to me, “Ray, when are you going to do a screenplay?” Because I love motion pictures. I’ve seen just about every one ever made. A lot of the bad ones and a lot of the wonderful ones over and over again. I said, “Yes, there’s one man I’d love to work for, that’s John Huston,” and I knew that I wanted to work for him. Well, I gave John all of my books of short stories one day in 1951, and he wrote back from Africa where he was making The African Queen and he said, “Yes, I agree with you, someday we’ll work together. I don’t know on what.”

The day finally came. I came home from a bookstore one day and my wife said, “John Huston just called. He wants you to come to his hotel.” I went to John Huston’s hotel. I walked into his room. He put a drink in my hand. He sat me down and he leaned over and he said, “Ray, what are you doing during the next year?”

I said, “Not much, Mr. Huston. Not much.” And he said, “Well, Ray, how would you like to come live in Ireland and write this screenplay of Moby Dick ?” And I said, “Gee, Mr. Huston, I’ve never been able to read the damn thing.”

He’d never heard that before and he thought for a moment and then he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what Ray. Why don’t you go tonight, read as much as you can, and come back tomorrow and then tell me if you’ll help me kill a white whale.”

So I went home that night and I said to my wife, “Pray for me.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because I’ve got to read a book tonight and do a book report tomorrow.”

Luckily I was at the right age to read the book. I was 33 years old. I’d tried when I was younger. It just didn’t work. But what I saw there is a part of myself, the gift of metaphor.

All the early writers in America, Melville and Poe and many of the others wrote in metaphorical style. You could remember their stories. I raced through the book. I didn’t read it. I looked at all the metaphors and I came back the next day and I said, “Yes, I’ll do it.”

I went to live in Ireland for the better part of a year and it was hellish work. Terrible work because I read some sections of the novel over 100 times. Some sections 200 times. Some sections 300 times. Other sections not at all because you’re looking for the metaphor. You’re finding a way to combine things and put them together.

And finally, after seven months of hard work, a day of great passionate relaxation came to me. I got out of bed one morning in London and I looked in the mirror and I said, “I am Herman Melville.” I sat down at the typewriter and in eight blazing hours I wrote the last 40 pages of the screenplay and it all came out right; for that one day, for a few hours, the ghost of Melville was really in me. Was really in me.

I ran across London and I threw the screenplay into John Huston’s lap and I said, “There, I think it’s finished.” And he read it and he said, “By God, start the cameras.”

Now it’s time to wind this up and to show my appreciation for this magnificent Medal. My moment with Herman Melville in many ways is equal to what has occurred to me in my lifetime. I’ve researched my life. I’ve looked into myself. I’ve tried to find me. Along the way I’ve located myself.

Resources Recommended by Harvard Square Library

“Cosmic Ray,” from Book Magazine , January 1999.

“Martian Tourist: Questions for Ray Bradbury,” from The New York Times Magazine , November 2000.

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Indiana University Indianapolis

Ray bradbury center.

Biographies

Becoming ray bradbury, ray bradbury unbound, and bradbury beyond apollo.

A comprehensive account of Bradbury’s life in three volumes

Volume 1: Becoming Ray Bradbury

“ Becoming Ray Bradbury chronicles the making of an iconic American writer by exploring Ray Bradbury’s childhood and early years of his long life in fiction, film, television, radio, and theater. Jonathan R. Eller measures the impact of the authors, artists, illustrators, and filmmakers who stimulated Bradbury’s imagination throughout his first three decades. Unprecedented access to Bradbury’s personal papers and other private collections provides insight into his emerging talent through his unpublished correspondence, his rare but often insightful notes on writing, and his interactions with those who mentored him during those early years.

Beginning with his childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, this biography follows Bradbury’s development from avid reader to maturing author, making a living writing for the genre pulps and mainstream magazines. Eller illuminates the sources of Bradbury’s growing interest in the human mind, the human condition, and the ambiguities of life and death–themes that became increasingly apparent in his early fiction. Bradbury’s correspondence documents his frustrating encounters with the major trade publishing houses and his earliest unpublished reflections on the nature of authorship. Eller traces the sources of Bradbury’s very conscious decisions, following the sudden success of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, to voice controversial political statements in his fiction. Eller also elucidates the complex creative motivations that yielded Fahrenheit 451.

Becoming Ray Bradbury reveals Bradbury’s emotional world as it matured through his explorations of cinema and art, his interactions with agents and editors, his reading discoveries, and the invaluable reading suggestions of older writers. These largely unexplored elements of his life pave the way to a deeper understanding of his more public achievements, providing a biography of the mind, the story of Bradbury’s self-education and the emerging sense of authorship at the heart of his boundless creativity.”

Becoming Ray Bradbury at the University of Illinois Press

Volume 2: Bradbury Unbound

“Fully established in the slick magazines, award-winning, and on the brink of placing Fahrenheit 451 in the American canon, Ray Bradbury entered the autumn of 1953 as a literary figure transcending fantasy and science fiction. In Ray Bradbury Unbound, Jonathan R. Eller continues the story begun in his acclaimed Becoming Ray Bradbury , following the beloved writer’s evolution from a short story master to a multi-media creative force and outspoken visionary.

Drawn into screenwriting by the chance to adapt Moby Dick for film, Bradbury soon established himself in Hollywood’s vast and overlapping film and television empires. The work swallowed up creative energy once devoted to literary pursuits and often left Bradbury frustrated with studio executives.

Yet his successes endowed him with the gravitas to emerge as a much sought after cultural commentator. His passionate advocacy in Life and other media outlets validated the U.S. space program’s mission–a favor repaid when NASA’s astronauts gathered to meet Bradbury during his 1967 visit to Houston. Over time, his public addresses and interviews allowed him to assume the role of a dreamer of futures voicing opinions on technology, the moon landing, and humanity’s ultimate destiny.

Eller draws on many years of interviews with Bradbury as well as an unprecedented access to personal papers and private collections to portray the origins and outcomes of Bradbury’s countless creative endeavors. The result is the definitive story of how a great American author helped shape his times.”

Bradbury Unbound at the University of Illinois Press

Volume 3: Bradbury Beyond Apollo

Celebrated storyteller, cultural commentator, friend of astronauts, prophet of the Space Age—by the end of the 1960s, Ray Bradbury had attained a level of fame and success rarely achieved by authors, let alone authors of science fiction and fantasy. He had also embarked on a phase of his career that found him exploring new creative outlets while reinterpreting his classic tales for generations of new fans.

Drawing on numerous interviews with Bradbury and privileged access to personal papers and private collections, Jonathan R. Eller examines the often-overlooked second half of Bradbury’s working life. As Bradbury’s dreams took him into a wider range of nonfiction writing and public lectures, the diminishing time that remained for creative pursuits went toward Hollywood productions like the award-winning series Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury developed the Spaceship Earth narration at Disney’s EPCOT Center; appeared everywhere from public television to NASA events to comic conventions; published poetry; and mined past triumphs for stage productions that enjoyed mixed success. Distracted from storytelling as he became more famous, Bradbury nonetheless published innovative experiments in autobiography masked as detective novels, the well-received fantasy The Halloween Tree , and the masterful time travel story “The Toynbee Convector.” Yet his embrace of celebrity was often at odds with his passion for writing, and the resulting tension continuously pulled at his sense of self.

The revelatory conclusion to the acclaimed three-part biography, Bradbury Beyond Apollo tells the story of an inexhaustible creative force seeking new frontiers.

Bradbury Beyond Apollo at the University of Illinois Press

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Ray Bradbury: Biography and Writing Style

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

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About the Author of Fahrenheit 451

“I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before, but it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.” -Ray Bradbury

Growing up, Ray Bradbury might not have ever expected that he would become a cultural icon, but he always knew what he loved – writing. Bradbury spent a lifetime doing what he loved, writing every single day, in pursuit of his dream to live forever in the pages of the stories he wrote. Ray Bradbury is widely considered one of America’s greatest writers, and his contributions to literary culture are celebrated worldwide.

Ray Bradbury’s Childhood and Adulthood

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. Bradbury had an enjoyable childhood where he spent much of his time with family, going to the local library, and reading. His hometown, Waukegan, left an impression on Bradbury, and he often used this location as a setting in his short stories under the name Green Town, Illinois. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, Bradbury’s family struggled financially, moving back and forth between Tucson, Arizona and Waukegan as his father found various employment opportunities. His family settled in Los Angeles, California, when Bradbury was 14.

Bradbury always knew he wanted to be a writer, penning his first short stories by the age of 11. He published his first short story in 1938, the same year he graduated high school. Having never attended college, Bradbury would say he was a “student of life,” reading by day and writing by night. He became a full-time writer in 1943 after it was determined he was ineligible for military service in World War II due to poor eyesight. Though he published several short stories in his early writing career, it was the publication of his first major novel,  The Martian Chronicles , in 1950 that established his reputation in the writing community. Published the following year,  The Illustrated Man  remains one of Bradbury’s most popular collections of short stories.

In 1953, Bradbury published  Fahrenheit 451 , which would become his most significant work. The novel was immensely popular and an instant classic at the time of publication. The story’s themes about government censorship and control tapped into society’s fears during the peak of McCarthyism in the United States. Bradbury himself was investigated for Communist ties throughout the 1950s. Bradbury shared that his short story, “The Pedestrian,” published in 1951, is a direct prequel to  Fahrenheit 451 . The story was inspired by an experience where he was walking down the road with a friend one evening, and the police stopped them for appearing suspicious. They were told to go home and not walk anymore. In  Fahrenheit 451 , Clarisse shares a story with Montag about a time her uncle was arrested for being a pedestrian, which is widely believed to be a reference to the main character in “The Pedestrian,” Leonard Mead.

Ironically,  Fahrenheit 451  has been banned or censored several times since its publication. Though it is considered a mainstay in school curriculum, it has been challenged on numerous occasions for what some consider to be vulgar language, references to drug use and suicide, violence, and the story’s treatment of the Bible. These challenges often don’t recognize the fact that the aspects of the text that are being scrutinized are part of Bradbury’s underlying warning of the devastating outcomes of restricting reading and censoring information. In 1979, Bradbury added a Coda to future publications of  Fahrenheit 451 , where he shares his thoughts on the numerous requests he has received for modifications to a number of his works. In short, Bradbury’s message is clear: do not mess with his work!

Bradbury continued writing well into his 80s. He had a number of successful novels, including Dandelion Wine in 1957, a semi-autobiographical novel focused on a 12-year-old boy’s summer in a small town, and Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1962, a dark fantasy centered around two 13-year-old boys and a sinister carnival. Both novels are set in Green Town, Illinois, Bradbury’s fictional version of his hometown Waukegan, Illinois.

Bradbury was married to his wife Maggie for nearly 60 years, and they had four daughters. He won countless awards for his work, which was often adapted for TV, film, and stage despite his aversion toward television. Bradbury maintained his stance against technology throughout his life. He used a typewriter for all of his writing, never drove a car, and refused to give digital publication rights for his work for years. He finally agreed to digital publication in 2011, less than a year before his death.

Bradbury passed away on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. His personal library was willed to the Waukegan Public Library, where he spent much of his childhood. He is buried in Los Angeles, and his tombstone carries the simple epitaph: “Author of Fahrenheit 451.”

Ray Bradbury’s Greatest Influences

As a child, Bradbury loved fantasy fiction, particularly the works of Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and L. Frank Baum. The science fiction adventurers Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Tarzan, the boy raised by apes, were some of his favorite characters growing up. Bradbury was also a fan of horror and the writings of Edgar Allen Poe in particular. His family encouraged his love of fantasy, and their enthusiasm in setting up elaborate displays every Halloween created memories that Bradbury would later incorporate into his writing. He enjoyed attending carnivals to see the magicians, often reflecting on an experience with a magician named Mr. Electrico as a source of inspiration. Real-world events such as the Great Depression and World War II also impacted his writing.

Bradbury strongly believed that writing should be developed through one’s own life experiences. His childhood experiences growing up in Waukegan played an essential role in shaping his writing philosophy. Many of his stories are centered around everyday people and families impacted by the changing world around them. He saw the way humanity was affected by political conflicts and the rapid evolution of technology, and his fears of society growing overly dependent on mass media and technology are a prevalent theme throughout many of his works. Bradbury saw the aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, and the threat that came from the race for bigger and stronger weapons unfolding around the world is often present in his writing. His use of the fictional version of Waukegan, Green Town, was often intended to show how the small-town life of his childhood was disappearing during a time of globalization.

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Style in Fahrenheit 451

While known as one of America’s most prolific science fiction writers, Bradbury described his writing as  fantasy , stating that  Fahrenheit 451  was the only science fiction piece he had ever written. The science fiction genre is typically characterized as stories that take place in an imagined future impacted by advanced forms of science and technology. Science fiction considers real possibilities that the future could hold, whereas fantasy is based on imagined ideas that are impossible or highly improbable. The use of magic or impossible powers makes fantasy something that could never happen. In a 1999 interview with the New Mexico publication,  The Weekly Alibi , Bradbury stated:

“First of all, I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time — because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.”

This distinction is important to note when reading Fahrenheit 451 . Bradbury believed this was the only piece of science fiction he ever wrote, indicating that of all of his work, the world he created for Fahrenheit 451 is the only one he believed could be a possible reality in the future.

Figurative Language and Imagery

Bradbury uses a heavily descriptive style with vivid imagery in Fahrenheit 451 . His language appeals to the senses in such a way that it creates a contrast between the reader and the people in the story’s society.

The novel opens with a vivid depiction of the destructive force of burning and the heightened sensations that destruction creates:

“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed . With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.” (Bradbury 3)

Bradbury speaks in symbols, similes, and metaphors, creating details that sound more like poetry than prose. His use of symbols shifts throughout the story to fit the various images he creates. The negative connotations of a python spitting its venom to represent how the burning of books has poisoned society creates a parallel to the details used only a few pages later when describing the machine that sucks out the poison of Mildred’s overdose:

“They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there. It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil. Did it drink of the darkness? Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching.” (Bradbury 14)

Where dark imagery fills the pages with all that has gone wrong in society, Bradbury creates a contrast with lighter imagery to represent what is right, what is good, and what is hopeful. Montag’s first encounter with Clarisse illustrates this shift in imagery:

“The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered.” (Bradbury 5)

The use of nature imagery when Clarisse is present is purposefully designed to contrast the technology-obsessed society. In Clarisse, and in nature, there is a purity and innocence that has not been damaged by the destructive force of technology and the ignorance of society. It’s no surprise that Montag is immersed in the natural world after he escapes from the city, as his life is transformed.

Sentence Structure

Bradbury is very thoughtful of his syntax and diction throughout the novel. He often moves back and forth from short, fragmented sentences to long, run-on sentences. His use of fragments is typically associated with moments where Montag is feeling troubled or anxious, for example, the moments after Mildred has been saved from her overdose attempt:

“One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One, Clarisse. Two, Mildred. Three, uncle. Four, fire. One, Mildred, two, Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, sleeping tablets, men disposable tissue, coattails, blow, was, flush, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, tables, tissues, blow, wad, flush. One, two, three, one, two, three! Rain. The storm. The uncle laughing. Thunder falling downstairs. The whole world pouring down. The fire gushing up in a volcano. All rushing on down around in a spouting roar and riveting stream toward morning.” (Bradbury 17-18)

The rapid thoughts running through Montag’s mind help to emphasize his uncertainty in this moment. He expresses how he doesn’t know anything anymore. Having had his eyes slightly opened after his conversation with Clarisse, only to face the reality of the life he is living by coming home to his wife after she has attempted to take her own life.

The long, run-on sentences are designed to pull the reader into the text, often as the narration shows the build-up of thoughts in Montag’s mind. As he is opening his eyes to the world around him, he struggles to process the details that are often bombarding him at the same time. A good example of this occurs when Montag rides in the Salamander as it races, unbeknownst to him, towards his home. This is shortly after the event at his home where he created a scene in front of Mildred’s friends, forcing them to listen to a poem from one of the books he had been hiding:

“They rounded a corner in thunder and siren, with concussion of tires, with scream of rubber, with a shift of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank, like the food in the stomach of a giant, with Montag’s fingers jolting off the silver rail, swinging into the cold space, with the wind tearing his hair back from his head, with the wind whistling in his teeth, and him all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women in his parlor tonight, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his silly damned reading of a book to them.” (Bradbury 109)

Sentences like this help the reader feel a sense of the whirlwind going on in Montag’s mind as he tries to sort through the sensory overload he is experiencing while still feeling the frustration of his actions.

Conclusion 

Through his writing, Bradbury achieved his life-long dream to “live forever.” His observations of the world around him, transformed into stories of caution, adventure, and excitement, have left an eternal mark on the literary world. Though Bradbury’s catalog as an author is vast, it is notable that his most successful achievement in writing is the only piece he would personally classify as science fiction.  Fahrenheit 451  is the only story that Bradbury felt could one day be a reality. It was this fear that drove him to write the story, and the increasingly prophetic nature of the story continues to be the reason  Fahrenheit 451  remains as relevant today as it was in 1953.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451 . Simon and Schuster, 1950.

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Ray Bradbury

He was born Ray Douglas Bradbury, but many know him as one of America's greatest science fiction writers. Regarded as a space-age visionary for the tales he spun, Bradbury used a poetic style to explore science, space, horror and the supernatural.

Bradbury was born Aug. 22, 1920 , in Waukegan, Illinois. As a child, Bradbury loved horror films like “The Phantom of the Opera.” He was fascinated with science fiction and took every chance he could to read sci-fi stories from the first science fiction magazine, “Amazing Stories.” 

According to Bradbury, his fire for writing wasn't sparked until after he encountered a carnival magician when he was 12. The magician, Mr. Electrico, used an electric chair and a Tesla coil to make electricity flash out of his body. The performer touched the young Bradbury on each shoulder and then his nose and said “Live, forever.”  That moment inspired Bradbury to chase after his passions and realize his life's calling. 

“A few days later I began to write, full-time,” said Bradbury. “I have written every single day of my life since that day.”

Bradbury published his first work, “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” in 1938 at the age of 18. In 1941, Bradbury got his first major magazine publication of his short story “Pendulum”— published in Super Science Stories . 

Bradbury’s early works played on the themes of fantasy and horror. His short stories, like the ones published in his book “Dark Carnival” from 1947 , incorporate the supernatural and laid the groundwork for many storytellers of the future. Bradbury’s collection of short stories “The Martian Chronicles,” published in 1950, was about Earth colonizing Mars and the extinction of the Martian civilization as the Earthlings become the new Martians. 

In 1953, Bradbury published what is regarded as his most famous work , "Fahrenheit 451." This novel, acclaimed for its themes of anti-censorship, was about a futurist society where books are forbidden. The book's protagonist, Guy Montag, is a firefighter tasked with burning illegal books and the homes of those who read. He doesn't question the destruction and ruin of his actions until his young, eccentric neighbor introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and a present where people can see the world through the ideas in books rather than mindless television. It is then Montag begins to question everything. 

In 1972, Bradbury published a short story called “Rocketman.” His close friend, a songwriter who worked with Elton John, was so enamored by the story he wrote a song about the life of an astronaut that he shared with John. Elton John loved the lyrics and wrote a tune to pair with the lyrics, creating the song by the same title “Rocketman.”

Bradbury's 1962 dark fantasy "Something Wicked This Way Comes," was another hit for the writer.

Later in life, Bradbury wrote a fictionalized memoir published in 1992 called "Green Shadows, White Whale." This was a fictional story about Bradbury taking a trip to Ireland and writing a screenplay adaptation of Moby Dick. Bradbury considered this book the culmination of his 35-year writing career.

In 2002, Bradbury got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2004 President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush presented him with the National Medal of Arts.

Bradbury passed away on June 5, 2012, in Los Angeles.  

The October Country by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss. This edition features a new introduction by Bradbury, an invaluable essay on writing, wherein the author tells of his "Theater of Morning Voices," and, by inference, encourages you to listen to the same murmurings in yourself. And has any writer anywhere ever made such good use of exclamation marks!?  

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.  

Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury's Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland by Ray Bradbury

In 1953, the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema John Huston summons the young writer Ray Bradbury to Ireland. The apprehensive scribe's quest is to capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts—Moby Dick—in the form of a workable screenplay so the great director can begin filming. But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey. Meet congenial IRA terrorists, tippling men of the cloth impish playwrights, and the boyos at Heeber Finn's pub. In a land where myth is reality, poetry is plentiful, and life's misfortunes are always cause for celebration, Green Shadows, White Whale is the grandest tour of Ireland you'll ever experience—with the irrepressible Ray Bradbury as your enthusiastic guide.  

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury. Woven into the novel are the following short stories: Illumination, Dandelion Wine, Summer in the Air, Season of Sitting, The Happiness Machine, The Night, The Lawns of Summer, Season of Disbelief, The Last--the Very Last, The Green Machine, The Trolley, Statues, The Window, The Swan, The Whole Town's Sleeping, Goodbye Grandma, The Tarot Witch, Hotter Than Summer, Dinner at Dawn, The Magical Kitchen, Green Wine for Dreaming.  

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.  

A Little Journey by Ray Bradbury 

Equal parts charming and thought-provoking, this short story from American master of science fiction Ray Bradbury follows the misadventures of a group of elderly women who have poured their life savings into a final trip to an outer-space paradise, only to find out that the promised journey doesn't pan out quite the way they expected it to.  

The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury 

Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here, presented in a new trade edition, are thirty-two of his most famous tales—prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits of "outrE" fascination that spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safari, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising and outrageous manifestations of the future but also to the wonders of the present that we could never have imagined on our own.

Ray Bradbury is a modern cultural treasure. His disarming simplicity of style underlies a towering body of work unmatched in metaphorical power by any other American storyteller. And here, presented in a new trade edition, are thirty-two of his most famous tales—prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry that Bradbury uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul, the otherwordly portraits of outre fascination which spring from the canvas of one of the century's great men of imagination. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safari, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our sure-handed guide not only to surprising and outrageous manifestations of the future but also to the wonders of the present that we could never have imagined on our own.

The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller

Accomplished journalist Sam Weller met the author Ray Bradbury while writing a cover story for the Chicago Tribune Magazine and spent hundreds of hours interviewing Bradbury, his editors, family members, and longtime friends. With unprecedented access to private archives, he uncovered never–before–published letters, documents, and photographs that help tell the story of this literary genius and his remarkable creative journey. The result is a richly textured, detailed biography that illuminates the origins and accomplishments of Bradbury's fascinating mind.  

Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller

"What do you imagine when you hear the name"... Bradbury? You might see rockets to Mars. Or bizarre circuses where otherworldly acts whirl in the center ring. Perhaps you travel to a dystopian future, where books are set ablaze... or to an out-of-the-way sideshow, where animated illustrations crawl across human skin. Or maybe, suddenly, you're returned to a simpler time in small-town America, where summer perfumes the air and life is almost perfect... "almost." Ray Bradbury—peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors—is a literary giant whose remarkable career has spanned seven decades. Now twenty-six of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.

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Ray Bradbury

About the author.

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors. Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

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