RAY BRADBURY

'Ray Douglas Bradbury' (born August 22 1920) is an American literary, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer best known for ''The Martian Chronicles'', a 1950 book which has been described both as a short story collection and a novel, and his 1953 dystopian novel ''Fahrenheit 451''.

Beginnings

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, to a Swedish immigrant mother and a father who was a power and telephone lineman.^[1] His paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were newspaper publishers.^[2] Ray Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth, spending much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan. His novels ''Dandelion Wine'', ''Something Wicked This Way Comes'', and ''Farewell Summer'' depict the town of Waukegan as "Green Town" and are semi-autobiographical. He attributes his lifelong daily writing habit to the day in 1932 when a carnival entertainer, Mr. Electrico, touched him with an electrified sword, made his hair stand on end, and shouted, "Live forever!"
The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, in 1926–27 and 1932–33 as his father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan, and eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen.
Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938 but chose not to attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. He continued to educate himself at the local library, and having been influenced by science fiction heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, he began to publish science fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. Ray was invited by Forrest J Ackerman to attend the now legendary Clifton’s Cafeteria Science Fiction Club. Here Ray met the writers Robert A. Heinlein, Fredric Brown, Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, and Jack Williamson. He launched his own fanzine in 1939, titled ''Futuria Fantasia'', and wrote most of its four issues, each limited to under a hundred copies. His first paid piece was for the pulp magazine ''Super Science Stories'' in 1941, for which he earned $15.^[3] He became a full-time writer by the end of 1942. His first book, ''Dark Carnival'', a collection of short works, was published in 1947 by Arkham House. He married Marguerite McClure (1922–2003) in 1947, and they had four daughters.
A chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with the British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put ''The Martian Chronicles'' into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed and was a substantial boost to Bradbury's career.

Works

Although he is often described as a science fiction writer, Bradbury does not box himself into a particular narrative categorization:
Besides his fiction work, Bradbury has written many short essays on the arts and culture, attracting the attention of critics in this field. Bradbury was a consultant for the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair and the original exhibit housed in Epcot's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World ^[4]^[5]^[6].

Novels ★ (1950) ''The Martian Chronicles'' ★ (1953) ''Fahrenheit 451'' ★ (1957) ''Dandelion Wine'' ★ (1962) ''Something Wicked This Way Comes'' ★ (1972) ''The Halloween Tree'' ★ (1985) ''Death Is a Lonely Business'' ★ (1990) ''A Graveyard for Lunatics'' ★ (1992) ''Green Shadows, White Whale'' ★ (2001) ''From the Dust Returned'' ★ (2003) ''Let's All Kill Constance'' ★ (2006) ''Farewell Summer''	Bradbury in 1976.

Short story collections In addition to these collections, many of the stories have been published in multi-author anthologies. Almost 50 additional Bradbury stories have never been collected anywhere after their initial publication in periodicals.^[7] ★ (1947) ''Dark Carnival'' ★ (1951) ''The Illustrated Man'' ★ (1953) ''The Golden Apples of the Sun'' ★ (1955) ''The October Country'' ★ (1959) ''A Medicine for Melancholy'' ★ (1962) ''R is for Rocket'' ★ (1962) ''The Small Assassin'' ★ (1964) ''The Machineries of Joy'' ★ (1965) ''The Vintage Bradbury'' ★ (1966) ''S is for Space'' ★ (1966) ''Twice 22'' ★ (1969) ''I Sing The Body Electric'' ★ (1976) ''Long After Midnight'' ★ (1980) ''The Stories of Ray Bradbury'' ★ (1984) ''A Memory of Murder'' ★ (1988) ''The Toynbee Convector'' ★ (1996) ''Quicker Than The Eye'' ★ (1997) ''Driving Blind'' ★ (2002) ''One More for the Road'' ★ (2003) '' ★ (2004) '' ★ (2005) ''A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories'' ★ (2007) ''Futuria Fantasia Plays ★ (1948) ''The Meadow'' ★ (1963) ''The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics'' ★ (1966) ''The Day It Rained Forever'' ★ (1966) ''The Pedestrian'' ★ (1972) ''The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays'' ★ (1975) ''Pillar of Fire and Other Plays'' ★ (1986) ''Fahrenheit 451'' ★ (1986) ''The Martian Chronicles'' ★ (1988) ''Dandelion Wine'' ★ (1988) ''Falling Upward'' ★ (1988) ''	Screenplays and teleplays This list does not include adaptations by others of Bradbury's published stories. ★ (1953) ''It Came from Outer Space'' (original story) ★ (1956) ''Moby Dick'' ★ ''Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre'' ★ ★ (1956) ''The Bullet Trick'' / ''The Marked Bullet'' ★ ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' ★ ★ (1956) ''Shopping for Death'' ★ ★ (1958) ''Design for Loving'' ★ ★ (1959) ''Special Delivery'' ★ ★ (1962) ''The Faith of Aaron Menefee'' (from the story by Stanley Ellin) ★ ''Steve Canyon'' ★ ★ (1959) ''The Gift'' ★ ''Trouble Shooters'' ★ ★ (1959) ''The Tunnel to Yesterday'' ★ (1961) ''King of Kings'' (narration, uncredited) ★ ''The Twilight Zone'' ★ ★ (1962) ''I Sing the Body Electric'' ★ ''Alcoa Premiere'' ★ ★ (1962) ''The Jail'' ★ (1962) ''Icarus Montgolfier Wright'' ★ (1963) ''Dial Double Zero'' (The Story of a Writer) ★ ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour'' ★ ★ (1964) ''The Life Work of Juan Diaz'' ★ (1969) ''The Picasso Summer'' ★ ''The Curiosity Shop'' ★ ★ (1971) ''The Groon'' ★ (1979) ''Gnomes'' ★ (1982) ''The Electric Grandmother'' ★ (1983) ''Something Wicked This Way Comes'' ★ (1983) ''Quest'' ★ (1985-1992) ''The Ray Bradbury Theater'' ★ ''The Twilight Zone'' ★ ★ (1986) ''The Elevator'' ★ (1992) '' ★ (1993) ''The Halloween Tree'' ★ (1998) ''The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit'' ★ (2003) ''It Came from Outer Space''

Radio This list does not include adaptations by others of Bradbury's published stories. ★ ''World Security Workshop'' ★ ★ (1947) ''The Meadow'' ★ ''Suspense'' ★ ★ (1947) ''Riabouchinska'' (story) ★ ★ (1948) ''Summer Night'' (story) ★ ★ (1948) ''The Screaming Woman'' (story) ★ (1968) ''Leviathan '99'' Poetry ★ (1975) ''When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed'' ★ (1977) ''Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns'' ★ (1980) ''The Ghosts of Forever'' ★ (1981) ''The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope'' ★ (2002) ''	Children ★ (1955) ''Switch on the Night'' ★ (1997) ''With Cat for Comforter'' ★ (1997) ''Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas'' Fable ★ (1998) ''Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines'' Anthologies ★ (1952) ''Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow'' ★ (1956) ''The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories'' Non-fiction ★ (1990) ''Zen in the Art of Writing'' ★ (1991) '' ★ (2004) ''Conversations With Ray Bradbury'' ★ (2005) ''

Adaptations of his work

Oskar Werner and Julie Christie in ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1966).

Many of Bradbury's stories and novels have been adapted to films, radio, television, theater and comic books. From 1951 to 1954, 27 of Bradbury's stories were adapted by Al Feldstein for EC Comics, and 16 of these were collected in the paperbacks, ''The Autumn People'' (1965) and ''Tomorrow Midnight'' (1966).
Also in the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury's stories were televised on a variety of shows including ''Tales of Tomorrow'', ''Lights Out'', ''Out There'', ''Suspense'', ''CBS Television Workshop'', ''Jane Wyman's Fireside Theatre'', ''Star Tonight'', ''Windows'' and ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents''. "The Merry-Go-Round," a half-hour film adaptation of Bradbury's "The Black Ferris," praised by ''Variety'', was shown on ''Starlight Summer Theater'' in 1954 and NBC's ''Sneak Preview'' in 1956.
In 1969, The Illustrated Man was brought to the big screen, starring Oscar winner Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom & Robert Drivas. Contaning the prologue, and 3 short stories from the book, the film received mediocre reviews, and was largely considered of interest, but dull.
From 1985 to 1992 Bradbury hosted a syndicated anthology television series, ''The Ray Bradbury Theater'', for which he adapted 65 of his stories. Each episode would begin with a shot of Bradbury in his office, gazing over mementoes of his life, which he states (in narrative) are used to spark ideas for stories.
''The Martian Chronicles'' became a three-part TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson which was first broadcast by NBC in 1980.
Director Jack Arnold first brought Bradbury to movie theaters in 1953 with ''It Came from Outer Space'', a Harry Essex screenplay developed from Bradbury's screen treatment, "The Meteor". Three weeks later, Eugène Lourié's ''The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms'' (1953), based on Bradbury's "The Fog Horn," about a sea monster mistaking the sound of a fog horn for the mating cry of a female, was released. Bradbury's close friend Ray Harryhausen produced the stop-motion animation of the creature. (Bradbury would later return the favor by writing a short story, "Tyrannosaurus Rex", about a stop-motion animator who strongly resembled Harryhausen.) Over the next 50 years, more than 35 features, shorts, and TV movies were based on Bradbury's stories or screenplays.
Recently, Peter Hyams' film version of Bradbury's 1953 story, ''A Sound of Thunder'' (2005), brought an almost unanimous negative reaction from film critics. Reviewing for ''The New York Times'', A.O. Scott observed that "it illustrates the dangers of turning a lean, elegant short story into a loud, noisy, incoherent B movie."
Oskar Werner and Julie Christie starred in ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1966), an adaptation of Bradbury's novel by François Truffaut. A new film version of ''Fahrenheit 451'' is being planned by director Frank Darabont. In 2002, Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company production of ''Fahrenheit 451'' at Burbank's Falcon Theatre combined live acting with projected digital animation by the Pixel Pups. In 1984 Telarium released a video game for Commodore 64 based on ''Fahrenheit 451''.[1] Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded Pandemonium in 1964, staging the New York production of ''The World of Ray Bradbury'' (1964), adaptations of "The Pedestrian," "The Veldt" and "To the Chicago Abyss."
Five episodes of the USSR science fiction TV series ''This Fantastic World'' adapted Ray Bradbury's stories ''I Sing The Body Electric'', ''Fahrenheit 451'', ''A Piece of Wood'', ''To the Chicago Abyss'' and ''Forever and the Earth''.^[8] And a Soviet adaptation of "The Veldt" was filmed in 1987. ^[9]

Honors and awards

2004 National Medal of Arts award recipient Ray Bradbury with President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush.

★ For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Ray Bradbury was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6644 Hollywood Blvd.

★ An asteroid is named in his honor, "9766 Bradbury," along with a crater on the moon called "Dandelion Crater" (named after his novel, ''Dandelion Wine''.)

★ On April 16, 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."^[10]

★ On November 17, 2004, Bradbury was the recipient of the National Medal of Arts, presented by President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. Bradbury has also received the World Fantasy Award life achievement, Stoker Award life achievement, SFWA Grand Master, SF Hall of Fame Living Inductee, and First Fandom Award. He received an Emmy Award for his work on ''The Halloween Tree''.

★ The "About the Author" sections in several of his published works claim that he has been nominated for an Academy Award. A search of the Academy's awards database proves this to be incorrect.^[11] One short film he worked on, ''Icarus Montgolfier Wright''^[9] was nominated for an Academy Award, but Bradbury himself has not been.

★ Honorary doctorate from Woodbury University in 2003. Bradbury presents the Ray Bradbury Creativity Award each year at Woodbury University. Winners include sculptor Robert Graham, actress Anjelica Huston, Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown, director Irvin Kershner, humorist Stan Freberg, and architect Jon A. Jerde.

★ Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award for 2000 from the National Book Foundation. ^[13]

Controversy over ''Fahrenheit 9/11''

In 2004 it was reported that Bradbury was extremely upset with filmmaker Michael Moore for using the title ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', which is an allusion to Bradbury's ''Fahrenheit 451'', for his documentary about the George W. Bush administration. Bradbury called Moore "a horrible human being," but stated that his resentment was not politically motivated.^[14] Bradbury asserts that he does not want any of the money made by the movie, nor does he believe that he deserves it. He pressured Moore to change the "stolen" name, but to no avail. Moore called Bradbury two weeks before the film's release in 2004 to apologize, saying that the film's marketing was set in motion a long time ago, and it was too late to change the title. ^[15]
Bradbury himself is the author of several works with appropriated titles including ''Something Wicked This Way Comes'' (a quote from ''Macbeth''), ''Beyond 1984'' (''1984''), and ''Another Tale of Two Cities'' (''Tale of Two Cities''). Bradbury, however, is always careful to give credit to those from whom he appropriates. His objection to Michael Moore was that he was not publicly given credit by Mr. Moore that he felt was his due.

Documentaries about Ray Bradbury

★ Bradbury's works and approach to writing are documented in Terry Sanders' film ''Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer'' (1963).

References

General references:

★ The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, , Donald H., Tuck, Advent, , ISBN 0-911682-20-1
Specific references:
1. Certificate of Birth, Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22, 1920, Lake County Clerk's Record #4750. Although he was named after Rae Williams, a cousin on his father's side, Ray Bradbury's birth certificate spells his first name as "Ray."
2. Their immigrant ancestor was the royally-descended Thomas Bradbury who married Mary Perkins of Ipswich, Massachusetts, who was acquitted at the Salem witch trials.
3. http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/08/23/people.bradbury.ap/index.html]
4. Ray Bradbury. "In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World." http://www.raybradbury.com/bio.html
5. Ray Bradbury. "The images at Spaceship Earth in DisneyWorld's EPCOT Center in Orlando? Well, they are all Bradbury's ideas." http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_town_talk.html
6. Ray Bradbury. "He also serves as a consultant, having collaborated, for example, in the design of a pavilion in the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World." Referring to Spaceship Earth ...http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_book_mag.html
7. Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, ''Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction'', Kent State University Press (2004). ISBN 0-87338-779-1
8. State Fund of Television and Radio Programs
9.
10. 2007 Special Awards from the Pulitzer Prize website]
11. http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/BasicSearchInput.jsp
12.
13. Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award with his acceptance speech.
14. Ray Bradbury: "Michael Moore is an asshole"
15. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, , Sam, Weller, HarperCollins, 2005, ISBN 0-06-054581-X

External links

★ Ray Bradbury - Official site

★ Bradbury Media - Extensive coverage of work in film, TV, radio plus exhaustive short story cross-reference.

★

★ Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer, film by Terry Sanders

★ Illustrated guide to Bradbury's stories (English, Polish and Russian languages)

★ Exhaustive bibliography at FantasticFiction.com

★ , with complete filmography as writer, actor and more

★ Survey of Bradbury Scholarship - Chronological analysis of Bradbury criticism

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RAY BRADBURY

Beginnings

Works

Novels

Short story collections

Plays

Screenplays and teleplays

Radio

Poetry

Children

Fable

Anthologies

Non-fiction

Adaptations of his work

Honors and awards

Controversy over ''Fahrenheit 9/11''

Further reading

Documentaries about Ray Bradbury

References

External links

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