Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

My dear thinkers, readers and lovers of good books and great literature, you of all ideas and views and opinions, I bid and ask you to join me in another voyage of intellectual discovery.

Today I have the privilege and honor of speaking and presenting the life and works of one our great American writers, Ray Bradbury, a renowned author of books of science fiction and fantasy. I am a great fan of English and American literature. When I read the works of these writers, novelists and poets such as Dickens, Kipling, Forster, Keats, and Shelley, I am lifted up and raised in every way: intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and in soul, spirit and mind by having contact with the greats of all time, despite being told by American society on a constant basis that time spent with these giants has no practical value such as producing no income. A life without great literature and thought is a life cheated and wasted of what these greatest of minds have to offer us.

Ray Bradbury is an American author in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery and fiction in general. He is mainly known for his novel Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine. He also wrote screenplays and TV scripts. 

He was born in 1920 in Illinois and lived in Tucson, Arizona from 1926 to 1927 and 1932 to 1933, each time returning to Waukegan. While living in Tucson he attended junior high school and then the family moved to Los Angeles. Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School. In his youth, Bradbury spent a great deal of time in the library in Waukegan, IL, reading such authors as Jules Verne, Wells, Poe and Burroughs. Bradbury also read Heinlein, Clarke, and Sturgeon—all science fiction writers. Bradbury began writing his science fiction stories in 1938. His first collection of stories was published in 1947. Bradbury wrote many short essays on culture and the arts. Bradbury had a lifelong habit of writing every day and claimed a wide variety of writers influenced him, including Frost, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Huxley, Wolfe and Wharton. In high school he was active in the poetry and drama club and was a frequent visitor of libraries. Bradbury was a playwright his entire life. 

Bradbury was married to Marguerite McClure from 1947 until her death in 2003. They had four daughters. Bradbury never obtained a driver’s license and relied on public transportation or his bicycle. Bradbury never dated anyone but his wife. He was a consultant for the American pavilion at the NY World’s Fair and hosted the Ray Bradbury Theater, a televised anthology based on his short stories. Bradbury was a strong supporter of public library systems, raising money to prevent their closing, and he shunned colleges and universities. Several comic book writers have adapted his stories. He suffered a stroke in 1999 and died in 2012. He had two close friends in Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and animator Ray Harryhausen. He was also a close friend of Charles Addams.

Bradbury authored over 27 novels and short story collections which included many of his 600 short stories. More than eight million copies of his works have been published in over 36 languages. Many of Bradbury’s stories have been adapted for comics (31) and sixteen were collected in paperbacks. In the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury’s stories were televised in several anthologies. In 1969 The illustrated Man was brought to the movie screen. Over the next fifty years more than 35 features, shorts and TV movies were based on 

Bradbury’s short stories. Bradbury’s short story “I Sing the Body Electric” was adapted for the 100th episode of The Twilight Zone. In 1966 Fahrenheit 451 was produced as a movie and in 1969 The Illustrated Man was brought to the movie screen. The Martian Chronicles was a three-part mini-series broadcast by NBC in 1980.

As an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, Ray Bradbury and both his short stories and novels have always been my essentials. I particularly love and cherish his works The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. The latter is truly the novel of all tomorrows and tells us of a world without books which is a world without thought. He continues to delight and enthrall and his works I am sure will outlast the sands and ravages of time. As Bradbury did and recommends to adults and children and students: go to your public library and seek the riches therein. Know that the world of Fahrenheit 451 may be coming and may be here already, a world of the new Hitlers and Stalins made possible without books.

I am indebted to the article in Wikipedia on this author.