Ray Bradbury (1920- )

Though he considers himself a creator of fantasy rather than of “realistic” science fiction worlds, Ray Bradbury remains one of the most famous science fiction writers of the last 100 years. A novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer, playwright, scriptwriter, and novelist, Bradbury has written over 500 works, though he is best known for two novels published early in his career: The Martian Chronicles (1950) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Born in the small town of Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920, to Leonard Spaulding and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury, Ray Douglas Bradbury first fed his imagination with the fantastic stories he found in books, comics, magic shows, and movies.

In 1923 he and his mother saw the him The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had a huge impact on his young mind, an event he has recounted in several interviews. He also cites a book of fairy tales his aunt gave him at the age of five, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books at six, Amazing Stories (the first science fiction magazine), Edgar Allen Poe, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan as the foundation of his long career as a reader.

In a genre that celebrates technology and futuristic possibilities, Ray Bradbury often sets his stories in his midwestern upbringing; his story lines spring from the ordinary aspects of everyday life. He juxtaposes his childhood and his imagination, planting the fantastical elements he creates in the middle of small town America. Additionally, Bradbury writes literature not set in strange worlds or alternative realities, such as Dandelion Wine, an autobiographical novel about a young boy’s summer in Green Town, Illinois. These works infuse magic into Bradbury’s memories, recreating the nostalgic days of the author’s childhood.

Bradbury sees writing as an act of the imagination with which he amuses, purges, and entertains himself. As he states in the introduction of The Stories of Bradbury, “For I am that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all. I remember the day and the hour I was born. I remember being circumcised on the second day after my birth. I remember suckling at my mother’s breast” (Bradbury xiv).

He has verified these early details with his mother; this experience later became the impetus for the short story “The Small Assassin,” published in his first collection, Dark Carnival (1947), in which an infant possessing preternatural consciousness murders his mother and then his father. This past provides the setting for his stories, both commonplace and fantastic. Bradbury insists that his ability to see the world as a writer stems from his ability to see through the eyes of a child; he continually calls upon his childhood for inspiration.

The Bradbury family did not escape the hardships of the depression. In 1932 Leonard Bradbury moved his family to Tucson for a second time (the first was a year-long trip in 1926 that ended with the death of Bradbury’s infant sister), back to Waukegan, and then finally to Los Angeles in 1934 in order to find work. Before moving, Bradbury became enamored with magic, meeting Blackstone the Magician, participating in Blackstone’s act, and later becoming friends with a man called Mr. Electrico:

Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightning jumped into me. Mr. Electrico cried: “Live forever.” . . . A few weeks later I started writing my first short stories about the planet Mars. From that time to this, I have never stopped. God bless Mr. Electrico, the catalyst, wherever he is. (Bradbury xiv-xv)

Mr. Electrico’s life-affirming philosophy surfaces in Dandelion Wine (1957), where the young hero, Douglas Spaulding, thrashing about in the childish fight of brothers and tasting his own “rusty warm blood,” experiences a rush of emotions. As every detail of his life becomes clear, he realizes, “I'm alive.” Mr. Electrico shows up a few years later in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), as a townsperson turned sideshow in Mr. Black’s evil carnival.

By the time Bradbury reached Los Angeles in 1934 as a teenager, he had developed the habit of writing four hours a day, a habit that evolved into a one-story-a-day goal that structured his career. Bradbury knew 1930’s Hollywood, filling his afternoons by searching out homes of movie stars, a habit that became quite fortuitous; after introducing himself to George Burns and Gracie Allen, he not only secured himself a seat in their first live audience, he also began writing comic skits for the show. This resulted in his first paid job as a writer: the ending scene of a Burns and Allen episode.

In 1937 he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League and developed friendships with leading science fiction writers including Robert Heinlein, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, and Forrest J. Ackerman. Kuttner in particular was an important influence on him, telling the young writer to “shut-up” and keep his ideas and energy for himself, and he did. At 20, Bradbury was still selling newspapers on the street; however, one year after his first paid publication for Super Science Stories, a short story titled “Pendulum,” the young writer devoted himself to writing full-time. During this period, he developed a friendship with Leigh Brackett, whose writing he admired and imitated.

Her technique aided Bradbury in developing his own writing style. After learning craft under her tutelage, he collaborated with her in writing “Lorelei of the Red Mist” (1946). From this period of apprenticeship, he emerged with his own distinctive style and began writing short stories for multiple science fiction publications.

Living in Arizona as a child, Bradbury loved Mexico. While visiting Mexico with his family, he, unlike the rest of his family, instinctively sought to blend in and observe. He remembers feeling embarrassed by his family’s behavior and reactions to Mexican culture: His mother was offended by the images of death, his father was large and loud, and his brother simply hated it. Bradbury, however, was impressed by this first exposure to an alien culture. In 1945 he traveled with an artist friend on a two-monthlong road trip to collect masks for the Los Angeles County Museum. During this time, the Mexican population was growing rapidly in Southern California and conflicts were common.

The young author became interested in the prominent role death played in the culture as well as the culture’s seamless union of religion, death, and sensuality and Mexico’s veneration of the past. Increasingly aware of the intersections and differences between the two cultures, Bradbury wove Mexican elements and themes into his writing, first in his short story collection Dark Carnival (1947). The short story “Next in Line” explores the differing values of Americans and Mexicans. A later story, “The Highway” (1951; in The Illustrated Man), depicts a Mexican protagonist, Hernando, who lives a quiet life, occasionally interrupted by tourists who want to take his picture. In it, Bradbury contrasts the two cultures’ reactions to nuclear war.

In 1947, after gaining critical attention and drawing an audience for his pulp sci-fi in Super Science Stories and bizarre fantasy stories in Weird Tales, he published Dark Carnival, a collection of dark fantasy that transcended the science fiction genre. He also received the O. Henry Memorial Award for “The Homecoming” and radio renditions of “The Meadow” and “Riabouchnska,” which aired on ABC and CBS. On September 27, 1947, Ray Bradbury married Marguerite Susan McClure, with whom he would share a 56-year marriage and four daughters.

A lover of literature, Marguerite was instrumental in Bradbury’s success. In the early years of their marriage, she maintained a day job so that her husband could stay at home and continue his rigorous schedule of producing at least one short story a day. When she became pregnant in 1949, Maggie provided the impetus for Bradbury to write The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), establishing his professional reputation.

In 1953 he published The Golden Apples of the Sun, a collection of short stories, and the novel Fahrenheit 451. Science fiction traditionalists derided these two books and The Illustrated Man because Bradbury did not use scientific theory as a basis for the creation of believable new worlds. However, this negative criticism did not hinder the young author, who focused on the constantly changing world around him. Unlike most of his science fiction contemporaries, Bradbury wrote metaphorically of the past while commenting on the present, depicting a bleak future consumed by a vaguely represented technologically based society. As his writing developed, he continued to move outside the science fiction genre. In 1956 he wrote a screenplay for the John Huston adaptation of Moby-Dick; the following year he published Dandelion Wine. Following that, he published Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), a fantasy set in Green Town, and in many ways a further exploration of Dandelion Wine.

In the following years, Bradbury continued to produce fiction but also turned his eye to drama. He published a collection of plays, The Anthem Sprinters (1963), and received an Academy Award nomination for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright. Next he produced The World of Bradbury (1964) in the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles, following it with The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. In 1966 the film version of Fahrenheit 451 hit movie theaters, and Dandelion Wine the musical debuted at Lincoln Center in New York in 1967. Two years later, The Illustrated Man was also adapted for the big screen.

In the next few decades, Bradbury produced an impressive body of work, beginning with the short story collection I Sing the Body Electric (1969). He followed the collection with several volumes of poetry, plays, countless short stories and short story collections, essays on writing (Zen and the Art of Writing, 1989), and several novels. The last of these, Let’s All Kill Constance, was published in 2002. At present, the author’s works have been translated into 13 languages. He has been interviewed over 350 times, received awards too numerous to count, and been included in over 1,200 anthologies. Bradbury writes what he is—an American farm boy, raised in the quiet pre-depression era Midwest, with an imagination voraciously fueled by pulp science fiction, fantasy, scary movies, and adventure stories.