Ray Bradbury's Biography
by Ryan Ting
Ray Bradbury is an
American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, playwright,
screenwriter, and poet.
He was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920, the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury.
In 1926 Ray Bradbury's family moved from Waukegan, Illinois to Tucson, Arizona, only to return to Waukegan again in May 1927.
In 1932 the Bradbury family again moved to
Tucson and again returned to Waukegan the following year. In 1934
the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, California.
Bradbury graduated from a Los Angeles High School in 1938.
His first story publication was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," printed in 1938.
In 1939, Bradbury published four issues of Futuria Fantasia, his own fan magazine, contributing much of the published material himself. Bradbury's first paid publication was "Pendulum" in 1941 to Super Science Stories.
By 1943 he had given up his job selling newspapers and began writing full-time, contributing numerous short stories to periodicals. In 1945 his short story "The Big Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories.
In 1947 Bradbury married Marguerite McClure, and that same year he gathered much of his best material and published them as Dark Carnival, his first short story collection.
In 1950, Bradbury wrote "The Martian Chronicles."
In 1953 he wrote "Fahrenheit 451."
Ray Bradbury's work has been
included in the Best American Short Story collections (1946,
1948, and 1952). He has been awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award,
the Benjamin Franklin Award in 1954, the Aviation-Space Writer's
Association Award for best space article in an American Magazine
in 1967, the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement, and
the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of
America.
His animated film about the history of flight, Icarus Montgolfier Wright, was nominated for an academy award, and his teleplay of The Halloween Tree won an Emmy.
Ray Bradbury was the idea consultant and wrote the basic scenario for the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. He conceived the metaphors for Spaceship Earth, EPCOT, Disney World, and he contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France.
Ray Bradbury currently lives in California and is still actively writing and lecturing.