Ray Bradbury (1920- )

Ray Bradbury comments:
"I am not so much a science-fiction writer as I am a magician, an illusionist. From my beginnings as a boy conjurer I grew up frightening myself so as to frighten others so as to cure the midnight in our souls. I have grown into a writer of the History of Ideas, I guess you might say. That's my broad and fascinating field, in which I will wander for a lifetime, writing past science fictions one day, future ones another. And all of it a wonder and a lark and a great love. I can't imagine writing any other way."  

His Life:

His Aunt Neva introduced him to fairy tales and to the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, whom Bradbury later said were his chief influences. Bradbury's father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, worked as a lineman for the Waukegan Bureau of Power and Light.

Numerous Bradbury stories, including several in his 1947 collection, Dark Carnival, can be traced back to specific events in his childhood. Even his earliest memories would later become raw material for his fiction: His interest in libraries, most evident in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) is related to the ten-year-old Bradbury's spending each Monday evening with his brother at the Waukegan Public Library. His fascination with circuses and carnivals may be related to the traveling shows of his youth, and in particular to a day in 1931 (He was 11)when he appeared on stage as an audience volunteer with Blackstone the Magician. The stories "Uncle Einar" (1947) and "Homecoming" (1946), also collected in Dark Carnival, feature a character based on a favorite uncle named Einar, who moved away when Bradbury was fourteen.

Bradbury became interested in science fiction and the future when he discovered the pulp magazine, Amazing Stories n 1928, and by his discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian stories in 1929, (He was 9)and Jules Verne in 1932(He was 12).

Twice during his childhood, in 1926-1927 and again in 1932-1933, Bradbury lived with his family in Arizona, where his father hoped to find work after being laid off during the Depression. In both cases the family returned to Waukegan. The Bradburys did not move west permanently until their 1934 move to Los Angeles when he was 14.

Bradbury dates his career choice from about this time: at the age of fifteen, (1935)he began submitting short stories to major national magazines. He was encouraged by sympathetic high school literature teachers. He also became active in his school's drama classes and wrote for school publications.

Bradbury's first professional sale, entitled "Pendulum," was co-authored with Henry Hasse and appeared in the November 1941 issue of Super Science Stories. Bradbury, however, had had a variety of short stories published in science fiction and fantasy fanzines as early as January 1938 when he was 18.

By the mid-1940s, Bradbury stories were regularly appearing in several "pulp" magazines. He published his first book, the story collection Dark Carnivalin 1947, but his breakthrough came in 1949, (He was 29) when he sold The Martian Chronicles . He needed the money, because by then he was married to Maggie McClure and expecting their first child. Bradbury says, "I was writing it for four or five years. An editor told me to go back to the YMCA where I was staying and write an outline making the series of stories into a novel. We had no money, Maggie was pregnant. He told me, 'Bring it to the office and if it's any good I'll give you $750.' I stayed up all night and wrote the outline of a novel that l didn't know I had written and took it to the office of Doubleday the next day. The editor looked at it and said, 'That's it, here is $750.' So I was rich, because in 1949 that paid our rent for a whole year in Venice, Calif. It paid for our first baby, too, because babies in those days only cost about $100."

Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie live in Los Angeles with their four beloved cats.They have four daughters and eight grandchildren. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve.In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me.I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you’ll come along."

His Books:

Once to be titled The Child's Garden of Terrors, this is Bradbury's first story collection. "You are only eight years old, you know little of death, fear, or dread," writes Bradbury in "The Night" as he writes in a neat eight pages about a child's first discovery of the unknown. Other fantastically acary stories include the carnival story, 'The Jar"; the Elliot family tales, "Uncle Einar," 'The Homecoming" and "The Traveler"; 'The Small Assassin," a sinister story far more frightening than Rosemary's Baby; the stunning "Jack-in-the-Box," one of the best parental abuse stories ever written; the harrowing 'The Next in Line"; and "Reunion," which uses the simple metaphor of a washing machine in its probing depiction of the grieving process.

If you want to add this to your collection, get out your cash stash. This reprint of a classic sells for $150.00.

This is a twentieth-century classic. Its power and imagination remain as fresh today as half a century ago. In connected, chronological stories, brilliant spacelight reveals our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our humanity on a strange world where humanity does not belong.

"Bradbury's Mars is a place of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars ... and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. "

That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. It is a marvelous blend of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Bradbury presents himself as a nameless narrator who meets the Illustrated Man--a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos.

The illustrations are magically alive, and each tells its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to reenter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Even though most were written in the 1940s and 1950s, these 18 classic stories will be just as chillingly effective 50 years from now.

"There is more than one way to burn a book and the world is full of people running around with lit matches."

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

Here are thirty-two of his most famous tales. From a lonely coastal lighthouse to a sixty-million-year-old safary, from the pouring rain of Venus to the ominous silence of a murder scene, Ray Bradbury is our guide.

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.

"TThe October Country is Ray Bradbury's own netherworld of the soul, inhabited by the horrors and demons that lurk within all of us. This classic collection of short stories includes:
THE EMISSARY: The faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside--and beyond. . .
THE SMALL ASSASSIN: A fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true--or her worst nightmare. . .
THE SCYTHE: Just when his luck had run out, Drew Erickson inherited a farm from a stranger! And with the bequest came deadly responsibilities. . .
THE JAR: A chilling story that combines love, death . . . and a matter of identity in a bottle of fear! THE WONDERFUL

DEATH OF DUDLEY STONE: A most remarkable case of murder--the deceased was delighted!
Plus nineteen more terrifying tales!

Renowned for his five-million copy bestseller, Fahrenheit 451, and hailed as the finest living writer of fantastic fiction, Ray Bradbury shows with each of these nineteen stories his brilliant knack for extracting the chilling essence of a world's insanities, disorders, and hang-ups. Once again he proves himself to be America's master of the short story."

World-renowned fantasist Ray Bradbury stes outside of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. An unabashed romantic, this novel is basically a love letter to his childhood.

Dandelion Wine takes us into the summer of 1928, and to all the wondrous and magical events in the life of a 12-year-old Midwestern boy named Douglas Spaulding. "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."

(For those who want to see the dark side of youth, five years later the author wrote the chilling classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.)

Here are thirty-one reasons why.Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes--for he created lasting visual images that, once observed, are impossible to forget.

Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A family's first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. A great artist drawing in the sand on the beach. A clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion. The most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw. All those images and many more are inside this book.

A masterpiece of modern Gothic literature, this is the story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, both age 13 and the evil that grips Green Town, Illinois (much like the one that Ray Bradbury grew up in). Three hours after midnight, one week before Halloween, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show rolls into town . A carnival like no other, it feeds on the dreams and weaknesses of those drawn to its eerie attractions, destroying every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. Will and Jim are about to learn the secret of its smoke, mazes and mirrors as they confront a nightmarish evil that will change their lives forever.

What would you do if your secret wishes could be granted by the mysterious ringmaster, Mr. Dark?

In many ways, this is a companion book to the joyful, nostalgia-drenched Dandelion Wine, in which Bradbury presents us with one perfect summer as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, we explore one terrifying autumn.

This collection of 22 short stories are vintage Bradbury. Bradbury is really not a science fiction writer so much as a storyteller.

To be sure, there are stories about (robots, time travel) or setting (Mars). But Bradbury seemed to be stuck with the Sci-Fi type despite stories such as those found in Long After Midnight, which are closer to literary than science fiction even when employing science fiction devices.

Some stories stand alone as revelations of the human condition and the mysteries of life.

-a hundred of his best stories, selected by the author himself-- the volume contains stories selected from the first four decades of Bradbury's career.

There are his unique stories of Mars, which later landed in The Martian Chronicles. There are nostalgic stories of Green Town, Illinois, which Bradbury later brewed into Dandelion Wine, and classic science fiction such as "The Fog Horn," and the rarely reprinted novella "Frost and Fire."

Among the half dozen previously uncollected stories are a few of his earliest--and most terrifying. These include the unforgettable "October Game" (which the author regards as perhaps his most shocking story amongst the thousand that he's written), and "Black Ferris," later to be transformed into the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.

A collection of short stories and poetry by renowned sci-fi author Ray Bradbury- who wrote the classic fifties monster flick "Twenty Million Miles to Earth".

It includes "So you want to be a dinosaur when you grow up?" and the excellent "A Sound of Thunder" that follows a time-travel safari that goes horribly wrong. The eerie "Fog Horn" calls a strange, ancient creature.

It also contains possibly the best description of a T-Rex in the whole of literature. Move over Michael Crichton.(Jurassic Park)

Dedicated to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Ross Macdonald, Bradbury's 1985 novel is a triute to the hard-boiled mystery. The plot follows a writer who joins ranks with a detective and an actress to get to the bottom of some strange doings.

This is a slightly fantastical tale of mayhem and murder set among murky canals of Venice, California, in the early 1950s. "A nameless writer steadily crafts his literary effort--until strange things begin happening around him. Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. Aided by Elmo Crumley, a savvy, street-smart detective, and a reclusive actress of yesteryear with an intense hunger for life, the wordsmith sets out to find the connection between the bizarre events, and in doing so, uncovers the truth about his own creative abilities."

From Library Journal While working as a screenwriter for a major studio, the unnamed narrator (introduced in Death Is a Lonely Business, LJ 3/15/85) becomes embroiled in a bizarre scandal surrounding the alleged death of the studio's founder 20 years earlier. Charismatic heroes and diabolical villains people a surrealistic landscape which only Bradbury could render believable. An irresistible tale which will be in demand, since it's only Bradbury's second novel since 1963.

It is Halloween Night, 1954.? A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios.? An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall.? There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery -- and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.

Bradbuy is at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with twenty-one remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games and more.

From a reader, "This collection is not science fiction, although book stores tend to insist that if Bradbury wrote it, it must be SciFi. It is fiction, and often a sort of twisted Aesop's fables. Bradbury has a unique gift for hiding important moral axioms deep within his story line. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who can appreciate a good short story. Some of the stories in this book will stick with you for weeks."

Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah.

Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey in this new edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories.

That's a car in midair in the illustration, not a shooting star.

These short stories have dark fantasy, boyhood sense of wonder, and Twilight Zone-esque twists. There are 21 stories (4 are reprints) that Bradbury says were inspired by a dream in which his muse, blindfolded, drove him to destinations unknown.

Spare word portraits will transport you to a world of scratchy phonograph records and cuckoo clocks, evil garbage disposals and Mexican border-town circuses. Bradbury fans will enjoy revisiting the worlds of his imagination and those new to the master will find themselves looking for more.

Eight boys set out on a Halloween night and are led into the depths of the past by a tall, mysterious character named Moundshroud. They ride on a black wind to autumn scenes in distant lands and times, where they witness other ways of celebrating this holiday about the dark time of year. The story whooshes along with the pell-mell rhythms of children running at night, screaming and laughing, and the reader is carried along by its sheer exuberance.

Kids in advanced middle through high school, as well as many an adult, will appreciate this reprint of a Bradbury classic which presents a haunting, unforgettable night of tricker-treating. Journey through space and time to find a missing friend in a tale which satisfyingly spooky.

A little boy likes lanterns and lamps, but he doesn't like light switches because they turn off the light. Then one day, a little girl named Dark shows up at his door. She helps the boy to see light switches as turning on the night, rather than turning off the light. And when he switches on the night, he also switches on the stars and moon and the crickets and frogs. Sure to reassure any child who has felt afraid of the unknown, Switch On the Night will also impress adult readers with its subtle message about things that are "dark" and its imaginative approach to understanding that which is different.

This is a reissue of an earlier book for children. Caldecott Medal-winning artists Leo and Diane Dillon did the artwork.

This recent novel chronicles a community of eternal beings: a mummified matriarch who speaks in dust; a sleeping daughter who lives through the eyes and ears of the creatures she visits in her dreams; an uncle with wings like sea-green sails. And there is also the mortal child Timothy, the foundling son who yearns to be like those he loves: to fly, to sleep in daytime, and to live forever. Instead, his task is to witness the family's struggle with the startling possibility of its own end.

" In the 1940s, Bradbury produced a series of popular fantasy short stories about the Elliot family, an assortment of vampires and other odd creatures living in a Victorian castle in the golden Indiana of his youth. More than half a century later, he has fashioned from these stories a novel.

The vampires and their weird kin gather for a homecoming and share memories. Among them are Timothy, a foundling, whose pet spider is named Arach (originally Spid), and Cecy, immobile in bed but able to enter the minds of others and control their actions. Once, Cecy got a young woman to treat an unwanted but worthy suitor more politely than she would have otherwise: Einar, a winged man, acts as a kite for children, writing "a great and magical exclamation mark across a cloud!" Most memorable of a remarkable cast are A Thousand Times Great Grand-Mere, who had been "a pharaoh's daughter dressed in spider linens," and her husband, Grand-Pere." From Publishers Weekly-

This is a collection of eighteen brand -- new stories and seven previously published but never before collected-proof positive that his magic is as potent as ever. Here is a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist whose hand is sure and whose eyes and ears have long taken in the shouting, weeping, carping, reveling life all around him.

Among the most noteworthy entries are "The Dragon Danced at Midnight," a sublime satire of monster movies; "In Memoriam," about a father mourning a son who died in Vietnam; "Tete a Tete," in which the love of an elderly Jewish couple finds its way across many barriers, including death; and "The Laurel and Hardy Alpha Centauri Farewell Tour." "One-Woman Show," "First Day," and "Heart Transplant" are all good examples of Bradbury's continuing gift for graceful, vivid prose and unusual, sometimes alarming insights into human foibles.

The anthology "Dinosaur Tales" (4 stories and 2 poems) has illustrations by Moebius, Jim Steranko, William Stout, Kenneth Smith, David Wiesner, Overton Lloyd and Gaham Wilson.

Pobably the most famous-- is "A Sound of Thunder" that tells the story of a safari to the future of a group of people who will hunt dinosaurs, but something goes terribly wrong

The 20 brisk, imaginative tales (18 previously unpublished, with many written in the 1940s and '50s and others as recent as 2003) in Bradbury's latest collection show the astonishingly prolific author in lights of varying favor. Bradbury aims for a moral in "Chrysalis" (1946–1947), when a young black man who's tried for years to bleach his skin and a young white boy with a deep tan get the same racist response from a hot dog vendor. Skin color is also the issue in "The Transformation" (1948–1949), a set piece in which a gang of carnival workers enact revenge on a notorious rapist with the help of a tattoo gun. Standouts among the more fantastical stories include tales of civilized giant alien spiders yearning for Earthly integration; a pair of traumatized time travelers disturbing their nervous neighbor; and a U.S. president trying to reclaim the country after 12 drunk senators gambled it away to an Indian chief (a story that, Bradbury notes in the introduction, he wrote in "a few hours").

The 22 stories in this book are about such things as the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy hauling a phantom piano up the same L.A. front steps they used in their most famous short film, a man turning off the freeway onto the old highway and taking his family to a withered town he remembers from his boyhood, and a young soldier's visit to the small-town library where he encountered the wonders of literature when he was a mischievous 12-year-old.

Still productive and in frequent demand for public appearances at 84, Ray Bradbury has achieved a status won by few other science-fiction writers. As Sam Weller's highly praised biography, The Bradbury Chronicles (2005), highlighted, Bradbury's broad influence on the genre and popular culture in general justifies his establishment as an American literary icon. Throughout a career spanning more than 65 years, he has tried his hand at fantasy, sf, poetry, mysteries, screenplays (most notably for Moby Dick), theatrical plays, and even opera libretti. Here, in his latest collection of essays, he weighs in on a medley of topics, including the allure of Paris, his enthusiasm for trains, the genesis of his most popular novels, and his reasons for remaining a die-hard optimist. In one essay, he suggests alternate, and often better, endings to famous films; in another, he pays homage to L. Frank Baum's Oz books.

The very famous Bradbury, he of Fahrenheit 451, more than 100 books, and countless stories, has also written mystery novels: Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990). His third noir mystery continues with the same setting, Venice, California; detective, an unnamed struggling screenwriter; and hard-bitten prose. The story is high camp, almost a parody of Sunset Boule vard. The screenwriter, alone at his beach bungalow, hears a knocking on his door during a violent thunderstorm. Constance Rattigan, a washed-up movie star of yesteryear appears, demanding that the screenwriter save her. Rattigan is tortured by the receipt of a Book of the Dead, a phone-book listing of long-dead Hollywood stars, with the names of those still living marked.

Awards:

President, Science-Fantasy Writers of America, 1951-53
member of the Board of Directors, Screen Writers Guild of America, 1957-61.
Awards: O. Henry prize, 1947, for short story "Homecoming," 1948, for short story "Powerhouse"
Best Author of 1949 in Science Fiction and Fantasy from the National Fantasy Fan Federation
Benjamin Franklin award for best story of 1953-54 in an American magazine, for "Sun and Shadow" in The Reporter;
American Academy award, 1954
Commonwealth Club of California gold medal, 1954, for Fahrenheit 451
National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1954, for contribution to American literature
New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year, 1955, and Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book award, 1956, both for Switch on the Night
Golden Eagle award for screenwriting, 1957
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe award, Count Dracula Society, 1965, 1971
Aviation and Space Writers award, 1968, for "An Impatient Gulliver above Our Roots," in Life, and 1979, for ABC-television documentary, "Infinite Space Beyond Apollo"
"Mars Is Heaven!" was selected for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame by the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1970
Valentine Davies award from the Writers Guild of America, West, 1974, for work in cinema
Life Achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention, 1977
Balrog award for best poet, 1979
Gandalf award, 1980
George Foster Peabody award from the University of Georgia, Emmy nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and American Film Festival Blue Ribbon award, all 1982, all for "The Electric Grandmother"
Jules Verne award, 1984
Body of Work award, PEN, 1985
Home Box Office Ace award for Writing a Dramatic Series, 1985, for Ray Bradbury Theater
Nebula Grand Master, 1988; Bram Stoker Life achievement award, 1989

Websites:

Ray Brabury.com
The official website for Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury Online
A resource for students and fans of author Ray Bradbury. Includes a biography and comprehensive bibliography.

An interview with Ray Bradbury
The Romance of Places: An Interview with Ray Bradbury by Robert Couteau.