Ray Bradbury
(1920– )
Ray Bradbury's novels and short stories have earned him tremendous popularity as a writer. Like many writers of fantasy and science fiction, Bradbury offers the reader more than entertainment: He presents critical, thought-provoking views of modern technology and its role in determining the future of our society.
Bradbury’s childhood was spent in the city of his birth, Waukegan, Illinois. After moving to Southern California, he went to high school in Los Angeles, where he still lives. When Bradbury was twelve, he wrote a sequel to an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. By the time he was fifteen, he was sending science fiction stories to magazines. He even began his own little magazine. He became a full-time writer at the age of twenty-three. He considers himself a disciple of Edgar Allan Poe, and Poe's influence is evident in Bradbury's works.
Bradbury has written more than thirty novels and hundreds of stories, poems, and radio, television, and movie scripts. He has been a frequent writer for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. During the 1985 season, "All Summer in a Day" was dramatized for a television series called Wonderworks. Bradbury is best known for his books The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451.
