Bradbury, Ray 1920–

(D.R. Banat, Ray Douglas Bradbury, Leonard Douglas, William Elliott, Douglas Spaulding, Leonard Spaulding, Brett Sterling)

PERSONAL: Born August 22, 1920, in Waukegan IL; son of Leonard Spaulding and Esther (Moberg) Bradbury; married Marguerite Susan McClure, September 27, 1947 (died, 2003); children: Susan Marguerite, Ra-mona, Bettina, Alexandra. Education: Attended schools in Waukegan, IL, and Los Angeles, CA. Politics: Independent. Religion: Unitarian Universalist. Hobbies and other interests: Painting in oil and water colors, collecting Mexican artifacts.

ADDRESSES: Home—10265 Cheviot Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90064. Agent—Don Congdon, 156 Fifth Ave., No. 625, New York, NY 10010. E-mail—Ray Bradbury@harpercollins.com.

CAREER: Newsboy in Los Angeles, CA, 1940–43; fulltime writer, 1943–.

MEMBER: Writers Guild of America, Screen Writers Guild, Science Fantasy Writers of America, Pacific Art Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS: O. Henry Prize, 1947 and 1948; Benjamin Franklin Award, 1953–54, for "Sun and Shadow"; gold medal, Commonwealth Club of California, 1954, for Fahrenheit 451; National Institute of Arts and Letters award, 1954, for contribution to American literature; Junior Book Award, Boys' Clubs of America, 1956, for Switch on the Night; Golden Eagle Award, 1957, for screenwriting; Academy Award nomination for best short film, 1963, for Icarus Montgolfier Wright; Mrs. Ann Radcliffe Award, Count Dracula Society, 1965, 1971; Writers Guild Award, 1974; World Fantasy Award, 1977, for lifetime achievement; D.Litt., Whittier College, 1979, Woodbury University, 2005; Balrog Award, 1979, for best poet; Aviation and Space Writers Award, 1979, for television documentary; Gandalf Award, 1980; Body of Work Award, PEN, 1985; inducted into the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, 1999; medal for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters," National Book Foundation, 2000; Bram Stoker Award nominee in novel category, Horror Writers Association, 2001, for From the Dust Returned, and 2003, for One More for the Road; the play version of The Martian Chronicles won five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards; Grand Master Nebula Award, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; star on Hollywood Walk of Fame; National Medal of the Arts, 2004; honorary degree, National University of Ireland, 2005.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Martian Chronicles (also see below), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1950, revised edition published as The Silver Locusts, Hart-Davis (London, England), 1965, anniversary edition published as The Martian Chronicles: The Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1990.

Fahrenheit 451 (novelette; also see below), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1953, Long Beach Public Library Foundation (Long Beach, CA), 2005.

Dandelion Wine (also see below), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1957, Avon (New York, NY), 1999.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1962, Avon (New York, NY), 1999.

Death Is a Lonely Business, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985, Avon (New York, NY), 1999.

A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

Quicker Than the Eye, Avon (New York, NY), 1996.

Green Shadows, White Whale, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992, published with a new afterword by the author, Perennial (New York, NY), 2002.

From the Dust Returned: A Family Remembrance, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2001.

Let's All Kill Constance, Morrow (New York, NY), 2003.

STORY COLLECTIONS

Dark Carnival, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1947, revised edition, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1948, published as The October Country, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1955.

The Illustrated Man, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1951, revised edition, Hart-Davis (London, England), 1952, Chivers Press (Bath, England), 1999.

Fahrenheit 451 (contains "Fahrenheit 451" [also see below], "The Playground", and "And the Rock Cried Out"), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1953.

The Golden Apples of the Sun (also see below), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1953, fortieth anniversary edition with a new foreword by the author, G. K. Hall (Thorndike, ME), 1997.

A Medicine for Melancholy (also see below), Double-day (Garden City, NY), 1959, revised edition published as The Day It Rained Forever (also see below), Hart-Davis (London, England), 1959.

The Ghoul Keepers, Pyramid (New York, NY), 1961.

The Small Assassin, Ace (New York, NY), 1962.

The Machineries of Joy, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1964.

The Vintage Bradbury, Vintage (New York, NY), 1965.

The Autumn People, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1965.

Tomorrow Midnight, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1966.

Twice Twenty-Two (contains The Golden Apples of the Sun and A Medicine for Melancholy), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1966.

I Sing the Body Electric!, Knopf (New York, NY), 1969.

(With Robert Bloch) Bloch and Bradbury: Ten Masterpieces of Science Fiction, Tower, 1969 (published as Fever Dreams and Other Fantasies, Sphere (London, England), 1970.

(With Robert Bloch) Whispers from Beyond, Peacock Press, 1972.

Selected Stories, Harrap (London, England), 1975.

Long after Midnight, Knopf (New York, NY), 1976.

The Best of Bradbury, Bantam (New York, NY), 1976.

To Sing Strange Songs, Wheaton, 1979.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Knopf (New York, NY), 1980.

Dinosaur Tales, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

A Memory of Murder, Dell (New York, NY), 1984.

The Toynbee Convector, Random House (New York, NY), 1988.

Quicker Than the Eye, Avon (New York, NY), 1997.

Driving Blind, Avon (New York, NY), 1997.

Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories, illustrated by Robert Court, Peterson Publishing (North Mankato, MN), 2001.

One More for the Road: A New Short Story Collection, Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, Morrow (New York, NY), 2003.

The Cat's Pajamas, Morrow (New York, NY), 2004.

(Edited by Donn Albright) Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths of Fahrenheit 451, Gauntlet Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2006.

FOR CHILDREN

Switch on the Night, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1955, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

R Is for Rocket (story collection), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1962.

S Is for Space (story collection), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1966.

The Halloween Tree, Knopf (New York, NY), 1972, updated edition, compiled by Donn Albright, edited by Jon Eller, illustrated by Joe Mugnaini, Gauntlet Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2005.

The April Witch, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1987.

The Other Foot, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1987.

The Foghorn (also see below), Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1987.

The Veldt (also see below), Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1987.

Fever Dream, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines, Avon (New York, NY), 1998.

The Country, illustrated by Joe Mugnaini, Avon (New York, NY), 1999.

PLAYS

The Meadow, produced in Hollywood at the Huntington Hartford Theatre, 1960.

Way in the Middle of the Air, produced in Hollywood at the Desilu Gower Studios, 1962.

The Anthem Sprinters, and Other Antics (play collection produced in Beverly Hills, CA), Dial (New York, NY), 1963.

The World of Ray Bradbury (three one-acts), produced in Los Angeles, CA, at the Coronet Theater, 1964, produced off- Broadway at Orpheum Theatre, 1965.

Leviathan 99 (radio play), British Broadcasting Corp., 1966, produced in Hollywood, 1972.

The New York, NYed Forever (one-act), Samuel French (New York, NY), 1966.

The Pedestrian (one-act), Samuel French (New York, NY), 1966.

Dandelion Wine (based on his novel of same title; music composed by Billy Goldenberg), produced at Lincoln Center's Forum Theatre, 1967.

Christus Apollo (music composed by Jerry Goldsmith), produced in Los Angeles at Royce Hall, University of California, 1969.

The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit and Other Plays (collection; The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit, produced in Los Angeles at the Coronet Theater, 1965; The Veldt [based on his story of same title], produced in London, 1980; includes To the Chicago Abyss), Bantam (New York, NY), 1972, published as The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow, Hart-Davis (London, England), 1973.

Madrigals for the Space Age (chorus and narration; music composed by Lalo Schifrin; performed in Los Angeles, 1976), Associated Music Publishers, 1972.

Pillar of Fire and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow (Pillar of Fire, produced in Fullerton at the Little Theatre, California State College, 1973; The Foghorn [based on his story of same title], produced in New York, 1977; includes Kaleidoscope), Bantam (New York, NY), 1975.

That Ghost, That Bride of Time: Excerpts from a Play-in-Progress, Squires, 1976.

The Martian Chronicles (based on his novel of same title), produced in Los Angeles, 1977.

Fahrenheit 451 (musical, based on his story of same title), produced in Los Angeles, 1979.

A Device out of Time, Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1986.

Falling Upward (produced in Los Angeles, March, 1988), Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1988.

To the Chicago Abyss, Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1988.

The Day It Rained Forever (musical based on his story of the same title), Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1990.

On Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays, Primus (New York, NY), 1991.

SCREENPLAYS

It Came from Outer Space, Universal Pictures, 1953.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (based on his story, "The Foghorn"), Warner Bros., 1953.

Moby Dick, Warner Bros., 1956.

(With George C. Johnson) Icarus Montgolfier Wright, Format Films, 1962.

(Author of narration and creative consultant) An American Journey, U.S. Government for United States Pavilion at New York World's Fair, 1964.

(Under pseudonym Douglas Spaulding, with Ed Weinberger) Picasso Summer, Warner Bros./Seven Arts, 1972.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (based on his novel of same title), Walt Disney, 1983.

Also author of television scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Jane Wyman's Fireside Theatre, Steve Canyon, Trouble Shooters, Twilight Zone, Alcoa Premiere, and Curiosity Shop series. Author of television scripts for Ray Bradbury Television Theatre, USA Cable Network, 1985–90.

POETRY

Old Ahab's Friend, and Friend to Noah, Speaks His Piece: A Celebration, Roy A. Squires Press (Glen-dale, CA), 1971.

When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year (also see below), Knopf (New York, NY), 1973.

That Son of Richard III: A Birth Announcement, Roy A. Squires Press (Glendale, CA), 1974.

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run 'Round in Robot Towns (also see below), Knopf (New York, NY), 1977.

Twin Hieroglyphs That Swim the River Dust, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1978.

The Bike Repairman, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1978.

The Author Considers His Resources, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1979.

The Aqueduct, Roy A. Squires Press (Glendale, CA), 1979.

This Attic Where the Meadow Greens, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1979.

The Last Circus and The Electrocution, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1980.

The Ghosts of Forever (five poems, a story, and an essay), Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1980.

The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope (also see below), Knopf (New York, NY), 1981.

The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (contains Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run 'Round in Robot Towns, The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope, and When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1982.

The Love Affair (a short story and two poems), Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1983.

Forever and the Earth, limited edition, Croissant & Co. (Athens, OH), 1984.

Death Has Lost Its Charm for Me, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1987.

With Cat for Comforter, illustrated by Louise Reinoehl Max, Gibbs Smith (Salt Lake City, UT), 1997.

Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas, illustrated by Louise Reinoehl Max, Gibbs Smith (Salt Lake City, UT), 1997.

(With others) You Are Here: The Jerde Partnership International (architecture), Phaidon Press Limited (London, England), 1999.

I Live by the Invisible: New and Selected Poems, Salmon (Dublin, Ireland), 2002.

OTHER

(Editor and contributor) Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, Bantam (New York, NY), 1952.

(Editor and contributor) The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories, Bantam (New York, NY), 1956.

Sun and Shadow (short story), Quenian Press (Berkeley, CA), 1957.

(With Lewy Olfson) Teacher's Guide: Science Fiction, Bantam (New York, NY), 1968.

Zen and the Art of Writing, Capra Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1973.

(With Bruce Murray, Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Sullivan, and Carl Sagan) Mars and the Mind of Man, Harper (New York, NY), 1973.

The Mummies of Guanajuato, Abrams (New York, NY), 1978.

(Author of text) About Norman Corwin, Santa Susana Press (Northridge, CA), 1979.

Beyond 1984: Remembrance of Things Future, Targ (New York, NY), 1979.

(Author of text) Los Angeles, Skyline Press, 1984.

The Last Good Kiss: A Poem, Santa Susana Press (Glendale, CA), 1984.

(Author of text) Orange County, Skyline Press, 1985.

(Author of text) The Art of "Playboy," Alfred Van der Marck (New York, NY), 1985.

The Dragon, B. Munster (Round Top, NY), 1988.

The Fog Horn, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1988.

Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures, Joshua O'Dell (New York, NY), 1991.

The Smile, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1991.

Journey to Far Metaphor: Further Essays on Creativity, Writing, Literature, and the Arts, Joshua O'Dell (New York, NY), 1994.

A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers, 2001.

Conversations with Ray Bradbury, edited by Steven L. Aggelis, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2004.

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars (essays), Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

Work represented in more than seven hundred anthologies. Contributor of short stories and articles, sometimes under pseudonyms including Leonard Spaulding, to Playboy, Saturday Review, Weird Tales, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, Life, and other publications.

ADAPTATIONS: Fahrenheit 451 was filmed by Universal in 1966 and adapted as an opera by Georgia Holof and David Mettere and produced in Fort Wayne, IN, 1988; The Illustrated Man was filmed by Warner Bros. in 1969; the story "The Screaming Woman" was filmed for television in 1972; the story "Murderer" was filmed for television by WGBH-TV (Boston, MA), 1976; The Martian Chronicles was filmed as a television mini-series in 1980. Bradbury Theatre presented adaptations of Bradbury's short stories on the USA Network from 1985 to 1992. Several of Bradbury's short stories have been adapted as comics and included in The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel, 2003. Many of Bradbury's works have also been adapted as sound recordings.

SIDELIGHTS: Ray Bradbury is one of the best-known writers of science fiction, thanks to his numerous short stories, screenplays, and classic books such as The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ironically, Bradbury does not identify himself as a science fiction writer and has proclaimed his aversion to portions of modern technology: he does not drive a car or own a computer. His fiction reflects this mindset, for unlike many of his colleagues, Bradbury deemphasizes gimmicky space hardware and gadgetry in favor of an exploration of the impact of scientific development on human lives. In general, Bradbury warns man against becoming too dependent on science and technology at the expense of moral and aesthetic concerns. Writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, George Edgar Slusser noted that "to Bradbury, science is the forbidden fruit, destroyer of Eden…. In like manner, Bradbury is a fantasist whose fantasies are oddly circumscribed: he writes less about strange things happening to people than about strange imaginings of the human mind. Corresponding, then, to an outer labyrinth of modern technological society is this inner one—fallen beings feeding in isolation on their hopeless dreams."

Bradbury's works have provided a foundation for much of the science fiction written in the twentieth century. James Sallis, in an article for the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, described, "Some artists have a presence so pervasive that we take them wholly for granted; they're the floor we walk on. Ray Bradbury, for instance." In spite of his reputation, Bradbury maintained in Writer, "I do not feel like a science fiction writer at all," stating that much of his work is too fantastic to be considered science fiction, which he felt had to be based on possibilities for the future. Regardless of how his work has been classified, whether in his prose, his children's stories, his poetry, his noir mysteries, or his plays, it is clear that his writings have had a profound affect on his audiences. Writer contributor Beatrice Cassina summed up what makes Bradbury's work stand out: "In his writing we meet people like us; people who are not all that involved with futuristic machines; human beings who cry, love and sometimes live in doubt. We read about people who are emotionally involved with their lives, and about places and times that everybody can, in some way, recognize and relate to."

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. "At age six he began reading comic strips," reported David Steinberg in the Albuquerque Journal. By the age of eight he was eagerly reading the popular pulp magazines of the time, such as Amazing Stories. Steinberg continued, "From there he moved on to reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and Warlord of Mars and the novels of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne." He started writing when he was twelve years old, and has been reported to have written a short story every week from then on. In 1934 the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, California. Bradbury began to work seriously on his writing at that time, his efforts including attendance at a writing class taught by science fiction master Robert Heinlein. His first published story appeared in an amateur fan magazine in 1938. He continued to work hard on honing his writing craft, and by the 1940s he was publishing in the better magazines and receiving national recognition for his work, winning several important awards and being featured in major anthologies. His first short story collection, Dark Carnival, later published by its better-known title October Country, features eerie and fantastic short stories, including "The Homecoming," the first tale to introduce the Elliott family, who appear in his later fiction.

In 1950 Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles, a cycle of stories chronicling the Earth's colonization of, and eventual destruction of, the planet Mars. The portrayal of the Martians ranged from sympathetic to threatening, but the stories really focus on the Earthling colonists. The Martian Chronicles was lavishly praised by such literary standouts as Christopher Isherwood, Orville Prescott, and Angus Wilson, bringing its author a standing as a writer of highest merit. "The book owed much to the American tradition of frontier literature, and quickly consolidated Bradbury's reputation as one of science fiction's leading stylists," commented an essayist for St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. The book continued to be published throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first; a 2000 edition was published with dates pushed back, so that the events take place in 2030 instead of 1999. "I did not change them for any other reason than to encourage (people) to go to Mars," he told Steven G. Reed of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. "I didn't want people to read the book and get discouraged, you see." In the years The Martian Chronicles has been in print, it has been made into a movie, a miniseries, a radio show, a stage play, and an interactive adventure game on CD-ROM. According to a contributor to the Newark, NJ, Star Ledger, on Bradbury's eighty-third birthday, the author made the following wish, "One night, 100 years from now, a youngster will stay up late reading The Martian Chronicles with a flashlight under his blanket—on the Red Planet."

The Illustrated Man, which appeared the following year, is another story cycle; in this volume, though, each story represents a tattoo that has come alive. The Martian setting of the previous book is revisited in a few of the tales, notably "The Fire Balloons," which probes the question of whether or not an alien life form can receive Christian grace. The amoral tendencies of children is the basis of "The Veldt" and "Zero Hour." In "Kaleidoscope," Bradbury dramatized the fate of a crew of astronauts whose spaceship has exploded, and who are drifting through space to slowly meet their deaths. Charles De Lint, reviewing a new edition of the collection published in 1997 for the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, commented that the stories are "still as vibrant and startling and telling" as they were when the book was published, containing "strong characters, fascinating ideas, crisp dialogue."

The novella Fahrenheit 451 is, along with The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury's most famous work. In this story, "firemen" are those who set forbidden books aflame, rather than those who put out fires. Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a fireman himself; however, he begins to question his work when he takes home one of the books he is supposed to have destroyed and reads it. Fahrenheit 451 is a somewhat simple tale, "as much an attack on mass culture as it is a satire of McCarthy-era censorship," remarked the essayist for St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. The tale implies that the government-sanctioned illiteracy is the outgrowth of pandering to special interest groups in the mass media, as well as a result of the rise of television. A society of outcasts is the only bastion of great literature; its members dedicate themselves to memorizing the great books of the world. Many commentators note a disturbing similarity between Bradbury's fictional world and our real one. The repressive future world is so vividly depicted in this work that the novella has become as much a staple of political study as George Orwell's 1984. Fahrenheit 451 has become both a banned book and a book used in many high school classrooms to discuss the topic of censorship. In 2002 Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn used the book as the focus of a citywide reading campaign.

Fahrenheit 451 has an interesting history: the germ of the idea came to Bradbury when he was a teenager, watching a newsreel of Nazis performing a book burning in Berlin. The first draft, published as "The Fireman," introduces Montag for the first time, and was written in nine days on a typewriter that Bradbury rented in the library for ten cents per half hour. At the urging of a publisher, Bradbury expanded the novella into its current form. The title, Fahrenheit 451, refers to the temperature at which paper ignites. Robert A. Baker, in an article for the Syracuse, NY, Post-Standard, reported that Bradbury explained, "he called several places to get the answer before thinking of the fire department. He asked the fire chief, who left the phone briefly before returning to tell him '451 Fahrenheit.' 'I hope he wasn't lying to me,' Bradbury said." Reviewers of the anniversary edition made a point of acknowledging the book's continued relevance. "It has reminded readers over the past fifty years that books can be dangerous things," wrote a reviewer from Australia's Canberra Times.

After the publication of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury moved away from the science fiction genre with which he had become identified. He published other story collections during the 1950s containing a mix of fantasies, stories set in Mexico (a setting which had a lasting fascination for the author), crime stories, and small town tales. In A Medicine for Melancholy, Bradbury published his first stories concerning Irish life and character. This interest, sparked during a stay in Ireland in 1954, would be another ongoing concern in his work for years to come. He also continued publishing regularly in magazines, both inside the science fiction genre and in more mainstream publications.

Published in 1962, Something Wicked This Way Comes was Bradbury's first full-length novel, and another of his best-known works. This fantasy concerns a malevolent carnival that disrupts life in a small Midwestern town. The action occurs mostly at night and explores the darker parts of humanity. The supernatural powers within the carnival have the power to grant dreams, but also to steal away one's soul. "The merry-go-round, the Hall of Mirrors, the parade and other carnivalesque trappings become truly creepy under Bradbury's skillful pen," noted the writer for St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Bradbury's subject matter became more realistic, and his output slightly less prolific. His themes were frequently rather dark, concerning dysfunctional marriages, fear of aging and death, and more warnings on the dangers of technology. Such stories can be found in The Machineries of Joy and I Sing the Body Electric! The author also worked on nonfiction, plays, editing of anthologies, and writing children's stories. Many of his plays are adaptations of his short stories, and they have continued to appear on stage over the years and in many incarnations. Bradbury's love of theater began at an early age; he was cast for the first time in a musical when he was twelve years old. "His second love has always been theater," reported Ben P. Indick in Publishers Weekly. In 2003 Los Angeles theaters featured no less than four of Bradbury's plays.

Bradbury's children's books have featured elements of his science fiction writing; Switch on the Night tells of a boy who is afraid of the darkness until a girl named Dark shows him that there are many things to be experienced at night that can't be seen or heard during the day: the stars, the crickets, the croaking frogs. In 1993 Switch on the Night was published with new illustrations by Caldecott Medalists Leo and Diane Dillon. Another of Bradbury's children's tales, Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines, tells the story of a young boy who is separated from his family in the desert and rescued by an "old god" who shows him the meaning of life.

In 1985 Bradbury published a long-awaited new novel, a noir mystery titled Death Is a Lonely Business. Based loosely on his early years as a writer in the pulp fiction market, it features a protagonist whose optimism works to save him from the strange deaths that are striking down his comrades. Characters introduced in this book are the tough cop Elmo Crumley and the hard-living Constance, both of whom appear in later mysteries; with these two, wrote John Coleman of London's Sunday Times, Bradbury has "created a memorable couple of tough, compassionate characters: the match for any Martian."

A Graveyard for Lunatics is another noir tale of a writer, working in Hollywood during the 1950s, who discovers a body, frozen in time, in the graveyard next to the studio that employs him. There are autobiographical threads in this story as well; Bradbury wrote for such popular early television shows as The Twilight Zone and the Alfred Hitchcock series, and his work in Hollywood included writing the award-winning screen adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. "Bradbury is at his best when he grants real people and actual events the quality of hallucinations," commented Stefan Kanfer in his Time review of A Graveyard for Lunatics. Sybil Steinberg, writing for Publishers Weekly, pointed out that "Bradbury toes the fine line between reality and illusion."

Using another of his screenwriting experiences, Bradbury developed the novel Green Shadows, White Whale around his work adapting Moby-Dick as a screenplay in Ireland. In the novel, the director John Huston has a large impact on everything that occurs—reviewers compared Huston in the novel to the white whale in Melville's original tale. Kanfer, again writing for Time, called the novel Bradbury's "most entertaining book in a distinguished fifty-year career." A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted, "Bradbury's prose is as vibrant and distinctive as the landscape in which these delightful tales are set."

Several of Bardbury's short story collections were released in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Driving Blind features twenty-one new tales by the author. One More for the Road is a collection of short stories and novellas, most of them new to print. Several of Bradbury's earlier themes appear here as well: nostalgia for childhood, love, and time travel. Dorman T. Shindler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that Bradbury's writing has a "fluid, elegiac style that's impossible to copy." A Kirkus Reviews contributor considered the collection "slight, affecting, voluble, exuberant," and Roland Green, writing for Booklist, stated that "Bradbury is justly considered a master of the short story."

As Bradbury turned eighty-three, he selected one hundred of his stories to be collected in Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. "This will quite likely go down as grandmaster Bradbury's magnum opus," commented a critic for Kirkus Reviews. Bradbury's 2004 collection The Cat's Pajamas combines new stories with "lost" stories, written early in his career but never before published; "old or new, they are remarkably of a piece," Ray Olson noted in his Booklist review. Some critics felt that Bradbury's earlier unpublished stories were stronger than the collection's newer stories. According to Meg Jones in her review for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, "Bradbury still writes great stories, but it's his older tales that shine in this collection." However, Jessie Milligan, also writing for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, was unabashed in her praise: "This collection is a true gift from a powerful writing talent who has entertained Americans for almost sixty years."

With From the Dust Returned, Bradbury returns to the Elliot family of "The Homecoming." The Elliots live in a Victorian style castle; each of them has a supernatural ability that makes them something more or less than human. "Like the members of his Family, Bradbury's talents are immortal," praised Shindler, this time writing for the Denver Post. "The book reads like liquid poetry while telling the interconnected stories of a number of unusual … family members," Rachel Singer Gordon declared in her Library Journal review. Featured family members include Grand-Mere, a mummy who was once a pharoah's daughter; Uncle Einar, whose bat wings allow the younger family members to use him as a kite; Cecy, who enters people's minds and occasionally controls their actions; and Timothy, a human foundling who is recording the family history.

In 2003 Bradbury penned another mystery with a film noir flavor: Let's All Kill Constance. "When Bradbury writes stories set during Hollywood's heyday of the '40s and '50s, the result is a crackerjack tale full of sly wit and gentle insight," Shindler praised in his review of the book for the Austin American Statesman. In this tale, the screenwriter/detective who appeared in Death Is a Lonely Business and A Graveyard for Lunatics is asked for help by Constance Rattigan, an aging film star who seems to be the next prey of a killer. Constance visits the screenwriter in the middle of the night, producing an old address book of hers and an ancient phone book, both of which have old contacts and friends marked with red crucifixes. Once Constance confesses her fears, she vanishes into the night, leaving the screenwriter to try to pick up her trail—along which there are plenty of dead bodies. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the book a "whirlwind of staccato dialogue, puns and references to old Hollywood," and added that "it's the author's exuberant voice more than the mystery itself that will have readers hooked." Meg Jones, in a review of the book for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, concluded, "In Bradbury's breathless and unbeatable prose, the mystery slowly reveals itself like a flickering projector in a darkened theater."

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, a collection of 37 essays, was published in 2005. Some essays provide a background for the creation of many of Bradbury's classic stories, and in others the author provides "opinions galore on books, movies, [science fiction] and the people and places in his life," according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor. The same reviewer called the collection "uneven," stating that Bradbury sometimes resorts to "preening and ranting." However, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly claimed that in this collection, the author's "enthusiasm remains as contagious as ever."

Throughout his career, Bradbury has remained an energetic and insightful writer. Damon Knight observed in his In Search of Wonder: Critical Essays on Science Fiction: "His imagery is luminous and penetrating, continually lighting up familiar corners with unexpected words. He never lets an idea go until he has squeezed it dry, and never wastes one. As his talent expands, some of his stories become pointed social commentary; some are surprisingly effective religious tracts, disguised as science fiction; others still are nostalgic vignettes; but under it all is still Bradbury the poet of twentieth-century neurosis. Bradbury the isolated spark of consciousness, awake and alone at midnight; Bradbury the grown-up child who still remembers, still believes." As Shindler wrote in his Denver Post article, "After nearly six decades of professional publication, Ray Bradbury could lie back and relax…. Yet, instead of resting on his laurels, Bradbury is riding his third wind into a creative vortex, hurling out screenplays, stage adaptations, new stories," not to mention new novels. In addition, Bradbury has declared he has no intention of slowing down. He still writes every day. "It is not that I have to," he explained to Beatrice Cassina in Writer. "It is just that I feel I need to. Every day, every morning when I wake up. It is nice to be in the twenty-first century. It is like a new challenge. It is really a good and threatening new century to create for!"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Adams, Anthony, Ray Bradbury, Harrap (London, England), 1975.

Clareson, Thomas D., editor, Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Volume 1, Bowling Green State University Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1976.

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening Views, 1968–1988, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 42, 1987.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2: American Novelists since World War II, 1978; Volume 8: Twentieth-Century American Science Fiction Writers, 1981.

Ketterer, David, New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1974.

Kirk, Russell, Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics, Arlington House (New Rochelle, NY), 1969.

Knight, Damon, In Search of Wonder: Critical Essays on Science Fiction, 2nd edition, Advent, 1967.

Moskowitz, Sam, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1967, pp. 351-370.

Nolan, William F., The Ray Bradbury Companion, Gale (New York, NY), 1975.

Platt, Charles, Dream Makers: Science- Fiction and Fantasy Writers at Work, Ungar (New York, NY), 1987.

Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: The 1960s, Charles Scribners Sons (New York, NY), 2003.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Slusser, George Edgar, The Bradbury Chronicles, Borgo Press (San Bernardino, CA), 1977.

Touponce, William F., Ray Bradbury and the Poetics of Reverie: Fantasy, Science Fiction, and the Reader, UMI Research Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984.

Touponce, William F., Naming the Unnameable: Ray Bradbury and the Fantastic after Freud, Starmont House, 1997.

Weller, Sam, The Bradbury Chronicles, Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

Wollheim, Donald, The Universe Makers, Harper (New York, NY), 1971.

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography, volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.

World Literature Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

PERIODICALS

Albuquerque Journal, November 29, 1998, David Steinberg, "Bradbury Keeps Pounding Both Keys and Pavement," p. F6.

Atlanta Journal- Constitution (Atlanta, GA), August 31, 2003, Gary A. Witte, interview with Bradbury, p. M1.

Austin American- Statesman, February 16, 2003, Dorman T. Shindler, "Bradbury Has Mystery Noir Down to a Science," p. K5.

Back Stage West, July 25, 2002, Dally Margolies, "Bradbury: Past, Present and Future at the Court Theatre," p. 27; April 3, 2003, Jenelle Riley, "What's Up with Ray Bradbury?," p. 4.

Book, September- October, 2003, Eric Wetzel, review of the Fiftieth anniversary hardcover of Fahrenheit 451, p. 34.

Booklist, October 1, 1998, Ray Olson, review of Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines, p. 312; August, 2001, Candace Smith, review of From the Dust Returned, p. 2049; April 1, 2002, Roland Green, review of One More for the Road, pp. 1312-1313; November 15, 2002, Connie Fletcher, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. 579; July, 2003, Olson, review of Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, p. 1844; July, 2004, Ray Olson, review of The Cat's Pajamas, p. 1796.

Canberra Times, September 26, 2004, "Burning Bright after Fifty Years."

Coventry Evening Telegraph, May 31, 2003, Michael Wood, review of One More for the Road, p. 26.

Denver Post, October 7, 2001, Dorman T. Shindler, review of From the Dust Returned, p. FF-04; August 10, 2003, Shindler, "Fantasy Genius Bradbury Cranks 'em out at Eighty-three," p. EE-02.

Hollywood Reporter, May 10, 2005, "Angelica Huston, Author Ray Bradbury, and Merv Griffin Were Conferred Honorary Degrees," p. 16.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of From the Dust Returned, p. 1143; February 15, 2002, review of One More for the Road, p. 227; October 15, 2002, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. 1491; June 15, 2003, review of Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, p. 834; June 1, 2004, review of The Cat's Pajamas, pp. 504-505; June 1, 2005, review of Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, p. 619.

Kliatt, September, 2002, Bette D. Ammon, review of From the Dust Returned, pp. 52-53.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 15, 1999, Luaine Lee, "A Conversation with Ray Bradbury," p. K5648; August 23, 2000, John Mark Eberhart, "Fifty Years of Fantasy," p. K151; January 8, 2003, Meg Jones, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. K4394; July 8, 2004, Meg Jones, "Ray Bradbury's Older Work Still Purrs," p. K0626; August 12, 2004, Jessie Milligan, "Ray Bradbury's Cat's Pajamas Is Exactly That," p. K5315.

Library Journal, May 1, 1999, Michael Rogers, review of Death Is a Lonely Business, p. 118; September 15, 2001, Rachel Singer Gordon, review of From the Dust Returned, p. 108; December, 2002, Devon Thomas, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. 174; August, 2003, A. Berger, review of Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, p. 138; November 15, 2003, Michael Rogers, review of the fiftieth anniversary hardcover of Fahrenheit 451, p. 103; December 2004, Karen Sokol, review of The Cat's Pajamas, p. 174.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 1997, Charles De Lint, review of The Illustrated Man, p. 41; August, 2003, De Lint, review of They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury, p. 34; March, 2005, James Sallis, review of Bradbury biographies, pp. 30-35.

New York Times, October 15, 2000, Emily-Greta Tabourin, review of Switch on the Night, p. L31.

New York Times Book Review, December 9, 2001, Mary Elizabeth Williams, review of From the Dust Returned, p. 28; January 26, 2003, Marilyn Stasio, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. 20.

New York Times Magazine, November 5, 2000, Mary Roach, interview with Bradbury, p. 21.

Palm Beach Post, March 10, 2002, Scott Eyman, interview with Bradbury, p. J1.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), February 18, 2003, Karen Sandstrom, "Library Lover Bradbury Shares Burning Passion for Books," p. E1.

Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), October 6, 2004, Robert A. Baker, " Fahrenheit 451 Author Discusses Book," p. B1.

PR Newswire, April 22, 2003, "Ray Bradbury to Receive Honorary Degree from Woodbury University."

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of A Graveyard for Lunatics, p. 249; April 6, 1992, review of Green Shadows, White Whale, p. 52; October 26, 1998, review of Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines, p. 49; March 19, 2001, review of A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers, p. 81; August 27, 2001, review of From the Dust Returned, p. 60; October 22, 2001, Ben P. Indick, interview with Bradbury, p. 40; March 11, 2002, review of One More for the Road, p. 51; September, 2002, review of I Live by the Invisible: New and Selected Poems, p. 54; November 11, 2002, review of Let's All Kill Constance, p. 40; March 22, 2004, review of It Came from Outer Space, p. 68; June 28, 2004, review of The Cat's Pajamas, p. 31; June 6, 2005, review of Bradbury Speaks, p. 51; September 26, 2005, review of The Halloween Tree, p. 67.

Sarasota Herald Tribune, February 6, 2000, Steven G. Reed, "A Phone Call from Ray Bradbury."

St. Louis Post- Dispatch, June 16, 2002, Dorman T. Shindler, "Bradbury Is Back with a Fascinating New Collection," p. F10.

Star Ledger (Newark, NJ), August 25, 2003, "A Nearly Out-of-This-World Party," p. O26.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), April 25, 2003, Gray-don Royce, "A Suitable Storyteller," p. E8; April 29, 2003, Lisa Brock, " Ice Cream Suit Topped with a Sense of Wonder," p. B4.

Sunday Mirror (London, England), May 15, 2005, "History Made in Galway Uni," p. 11.

Sunday Times (London, England), May 25, 1986, John Coleman, review of Death Is a Lonely Business.

Time, March 24, 1975; October 13, 1980; August 6, 1990, Stefan Kanfer, review of A Graveyard for Lunatics, p. 75; May 25, 1992, Kanfer, review of Green Shadows, White Whale, p. 68.

Writer, January, 2003, Beatrice Cassina, "Ray Bradbury's 'Theater of the Morning': When His Characters Come Talk to Him, He Listens," pp. 26-31; December, 2003, "'I Was Never a Science Fiction Writer,' Ray Bradbury Says," p. 11.

Writing!, November-December, 2001, Sarah Kizis, "A Virtual Visit to the Veldt," p. 14.

ONLINE

Ray Bradbury Home Page,http://www.raybradbury.com/ (June 5, 2005).

Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/ (July 11, 2003), James Hibberd, "Ray Bradbury Is on Fire!"

BRADBURY, Ray 1920–

(Douglas Spaulding)

PERSONAL

Full name, Ray Douglas Bradbury; born August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, IL; son of Leonard Spaulding (an electric company linesman) and Esther Marie (maiden name, Moberg) Bradbury; married Marguerite Susan McClure, September 27, 1947 (died November 24, 2003); children: Susan Marguerite, Ramona, Bettina, Alexandra. Education: Attended public schools in Waukegan, IL, and Los Angeles, CA. Politics: Independent. Religion: Unitarian–Universalist. Avocational Interests: Swimming, oil painting, walking, collecting masks, ceramics.

Addresses:

Agent—Don Congdon, 156 Fifth Ave., No. 625, New York, NY 10010.

Career:

Writer, producer, television show creator, and editor. Pandemonium Theatre Company, founder, producer, and director, 1963; Pacific Art Foundation, vice president. Worked as a newsboy in Los Angeles, CA, 1940–43.

Member:

Writers Guild of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (president, 1951–53), Screenwriters Guild of America (member of board of directors, 1957–61), Pacific Art Foundation.

Awards, Honors:

O'Henry Short Story Prize, 1947 and 1948; Benjamin Franklin Award, best short story of 1953–54 in an American magazine, for "Sun and Shadow" in Reporter; award for contribution to American literature, National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1954; Gold Medal, Commonwealth Club of California, 1954, for Fahrenheit 451; Junior Book Award, Boys' Clubs of America, 1956, for Switch on the Night; CINE Golden Eagle Award, screenwriting, Council on International Nontheatrical Events, 1957; Academy Award nomination, best short film, 1963, for Icarus Montgolfier Wright; Mrs. Ann Radcliffe Awards, Count Dracula Society, 1965 and 1971; Valentine Davies Award, Writers Guild of America, West, 1974; World Fantasy Award, life achievement, 1977; D.Litt., Whittier College, 1979; Balrog Award, best poet, 1979; Aviation and Space Writers Award, 1979, for a television documentary; award from PEN, 1985, for body of work; Gandalf Award (Grand Master), Science Fiction Achievement, 1989; the play version of The Martian Chronicles won five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards; Gemini Award nomination, best short dramatic program, Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, 1990, for To the Chicago Abyss; Annual Cable Excellence (ACE) Award nomination, best dramatic series, National Cable Television Association, 1991, for The Ray Bradbury Theatre; George Pal Memorial Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy Films, 1999; National Book Foundation, 2000; Bram Stoker Award nomination, Horror Writers Association, 2001, for From the Dust Returned; novel category, Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2002; Bram Stoker Award nomination, Horror Writers Association, 2003, for One More for the Road; National Medal of the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, 2004.

CREDITS

Television Work; Series:

Creator, editor, and (with Peter Sussman and Larry Wilcox) executive producer, The Ray Bradbury Theatre (also known as The Bradbury Trilogy, Le monde fantastique de Ray Bradbury, Mystery Theatre, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, and Ray Bradbury presente; includes adaptations of Bradbury's stories, such as "The Playground," "The Crowd," "Banshee," "The Screaming Woman," "The Town Where No One Got Off," "The Lake," "The Pedestrian," "The Chicago Abyss," and "The Veldt"), HBO, 1985–87, then USA Network, 1987–92.

Television Work; Specials:

Executive producer (Wilcox Productions), The Town Where No One Got Off, HBO, 1986.

Executive producer (Wilcox Productions), The Screaming Woman, HBO, 1986.

Executive producer (Wilcox Productions), Banshee, HBO, 1986.

Television Appearances; Series:

Host, The Ray Bradbury Theatre (also known as The Bradbury Trilogy, Le monde fantastique de Ray Bradbury, Mystery Theatre, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, and Ray Bradbury presente), HBO, 1985–87, then USA Network, 1987–92.

Television Appearances; Specials:

Voice of Ralph as Man, Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine, 1982.

Himself, The Whimsical World of Oz (documentary), 1985.

Host, The Town Where No One Got Off, HBO, 1986.

Host, The Screaming Woman, HBO, 1986.

Host, Banshee, HBO, 1986.

Neptune All Night, PBS, 1989.

Presenter, The 64th Annual Academy Awards, ABC, 1992.

Voice, The Halloween Tree (animated), syndicated, 1993.

Himself, In Search of Oz (documentary), Arts and Entertainment, 1994.

"Outer Space: Can We afford to Go?," The Cronkite Report, The Discovery Channel, 1994.

Corwin (documentary), PBS, 1996.

Interviewee, "Moby Dick," Great Books, The Learning Channel, 1996.

Interviewee, Ray Bradbury: An American Icon (also known as Masters of Fantasy: Ray Bradbury, an American Icon), Sci-Fi Channel, 1996.

Fantasy: Ray Bradbury, an American Icon), Sci–Fi Channel, 1996.

Future Fantastic (documentary), The Learning Channel, 1997.

Masters of Fantasy: Arthur C. Clarke (documentary), Sci–Fi Channel, 1997.

Himself, Universal Horror (documentary), TCM, 1998.

Himself, The Harryhausen Chronicles (documentary), AMC, 1998.

Himself, Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (documentary), TCM, 2000.

Himself, Walt: The Man Behind the Myth (documentary), ABC, 2001.

Tales of Edgar Allen Poe (documentary), The Learning Channel, 2001.

Hugh Hefner: American Playboy Revisited (documentary), Arts and Entertainment, 2001.

Himself, Hollywood Legends (documentary), 2004.

Television Appearances; Episodic:

Guest, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Comedy Central, 1996.

Himself, The Screen Savers, Tech TV, 2003.

Himself, Dennis Miller, CNBC, 2004.

Also appeared in Today, NBC; also interviewed on numerous Larry King shows, as well as other talk shows.

Film Work:

Creative consultant, Mirrors (also known as Marianne), 1978.

Film Appearances:

Narrator, King of Kings, 1961.

Literary party guest, Rich and Famous, Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer/United Artists, 1981.

Himself, The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (documentary), Passport Video, 1985.

Himself, 100 Years of Horror: The Evil Unseeable (documentary), Passport Video, 1996.

Himself, 100 Years of Horror: Sorcerers (documentary), Passport Video, 1996.

Himself, 100 Years of Horror: Giants and Dinosaurs (documentary), Passport Video, 1996.

Himself, Amargoas, 2000.

(Uncredited), The Tramp and the Dictator (documentary), 2002.

Ray Bradbury Dancing among the Muses, 2001.

Himself, The Optimistic Futurist (documentary short film), 2004.

Stage Work:

(With S. L. Stebel and Charles Rome Smith) Producer, Next in Line, Pandemonium Theatre Company, New Ivar Theatre, 1992.

RECORDINGS

Videos:

Himself, "Brace New Prune," The Stan Freberg Commercials (also known as Tip of the Freberg: The Stan Freberg Collection), 1999.

WRITINGS

Plays:

The Meadow, produced at Huntington Hartford Theatre, Hollywood, CA, 1960.

Way in the Middle of the Air, produced at Desilu Gower Studios, Hollywood, 1962.

The Anthem Sprinters, and Other Antics (four one–acts), produced at Beverly Hills Playhouse, Beverly Hills, CA, 1967, published by Dial, 1963.

The World of Ray Bradbury (three one–acts: The Pedestrian, The Veldt, and To the Chicago Abyss), produced at Coronet Theatre, Los Angeles, 1964, then Orpheum Theatre, New York City, 1965.

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, produced at Coronet Theater, 1965, later Bouwerie Lane Theatre, New York City, 1981, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

The Day It Rained Forever (one–act), published by Samuel French, 1966.

The Pedestrian (one–act), published by Samuel French, 1966.

Dandelion Wine (based on his novel of the same title; music composed by Billy Goldenberg), produced at Forum Theatre, New York City, 1967, later Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL, 1976, then Arena Stage, Washington, DC, 1982–83, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1988.

Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine, produced 1968.

Christus Apollo (music by Jerry Goldsmith), produced at Royce Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, 1969.

Leviathan 99, produced at Stage 9 Theatre, 1972.

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (contains The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, The Veldt, and To the Chicago Abyss), published by Bantam, 1972, published in England as The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow, Hart–Davis, 1973.

Madrigals for the Space Age (for chorus and narrator; music composed by Lalo Schifrin) produced at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, 1973, published by Music Publishers, 1972.

Pillar of Fire, produced at Little Theatre, California State College, Fullerton, CA, 1973.

Pillar of Fire and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow (contains Pillar of Fire, Kaleidoscope, and The Foghorn [based on his story of same title]), published by Bantam, 1975.

That Ghost, That Bride of Time: Excerpts from a Play–in–Progress, published by Roy A. Squires Press, 1976.

The Martian Chronicles (based on his novel of same title), produced at Colony Theatre, Los Angeles, 1977, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

Fahrenheit 451 (musical; based on his story of same title), produced at Colony Theatre, 1979, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

The Veldt (based on his story of the same title), first produced in London, 1980, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1989.

A Device Out of Time, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

The Flying Machine, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

Kaleidoscope, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1986.

Falling Upward, produced at Melrose Theatre, Los Angeles, 1988, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1989.

To the Chicago Abyss, published by Dramatic Publishing, 1989.

Ray Bradbury on Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays, 1991.

Screenplays:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (based on his story "The Foghorn"), Warner Bros., 1953.

It Came from Outer Space (based on a story by Bradbury), 1953.

(With John Huston) Moby Dick (based on Herman Melville's novel of the same title; also known as Herman Melville's Moby Dick), Warner Bros., 1956.

(With George C. Johnson) Icarus Montgolfier Wright, Format Films, 1962.

(Author of narration and creative consultant) An American Journey, U.S. Government for United States Pavilion at New York World's Fair, 1964.

(As Douglas Spaulding; with Ed Weinberger) Picasso Summer, Warner Bros./Seven Arts, 1972.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (based on his novel of same title), Buena Vista, 1983.

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, 1992.

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (based on his stage play of the same title and the short story "The Magic White Suit"), Buena Vista, 1998.

Con palos y piedras (short film), 2000.

Television Episodes:

"Shopping for Death," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1955.

"The Marked Bullet," Jane Wyman's Fireside Theatre (also known as Jane Wyman Presents and Jane Wyman Theatre), 1956.

"Design for Loving," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1958.

"The Gift," Steve Canyon, 1958.

"Tunnel to Yesterday," The Troubleshooters, 1959.

"Special Delivery," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1959.

"The Faith of Aaron Menefee," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1962.

"The Jail," Alcoa Premiere, 1962.

"I Sing the Body Electric," The Twilight Zone, 1962.

"The Life Work of Juan Diaz," The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1964.

The Fox and the Forest (also known as Out of the Unknown: Fox and the Forest), 1965.

"The Burning Man," Twilight Zone, CBS, 1985.

The Ray Bradbury Theatre, HBO, 1985–87, then USA Network, 1987–92.

"The Elevator," Twilight Zone, CBS, 1986.

Also wrote "The Groon," The Curiosity Shop; "Zero Hour," Star Tonight; "The Jar," Alfred Hitchcock Presents; episodes of Suspense, CBS Television Workshop, CBS, Windows, and Historias para no dormir.

Television Specials:

Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine, 1982.

"The Invisible Boy," Robbers, Rooftops and Witches, 1982.

Savannen, 1983.

"Walking on Air," WonderWorks, PBS, 1987.

The Halloween Tree (animated; based on his juvenile novel of the same title), syndicated, 1993.

Radio Plays:

Leviathan 99, BBC, 1966.

"Bradbury 13," NPR Playhouse, National Public Radio, 1984.

Forever and the Earth (limited edition), published by Croissant and Co., 1984.

Also contributed to CBS Radio Playhouse, c. 1940s.

Novels:

The Martian Chronicles, Doubleday, 1950, revised edition published as The Silver Locusts, Hart–Davis, 1951.

Dandelion Wine, Doubleday, 1957.

Sun and Shadow, Quenian Press, 1957.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Simon & Schuster, 1962.

Death Is a Lonely Business, Knopf, 1985.

A Graveyard for Lunatics, Knopf, 1990.

The Dead Ride Fast, Knopf, 1990.

Green Shadows, White Whale, 1992.

Let's All Kill Constance, Morrow, 2003.

Short Story Collections:

Dark Carnival, Arkham, 1947, revised edition, Hamish Hamilton, 1948.

The Illustrated Man, Doubleday, 1951, revised edition, Hart–Davis, 1952.

The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday, 1953, revised edition, Hart–Davis, 1953.

The October Country, Ballantine, 1955.

A Medicine for Melancholy, Doubleday, 1959, revised edition published in England as The Day It Rained Forever, Hart–Davis, 1959.

The Small Assassin, Ace Books, 1962.

The Machineries of Joy, Simon & Schuster, 1964.

The Vintage Bradbury, Vintage, 1965.

Twice Twenty–Two (contains The Golden Apples of the Sun and A Medicine for Melancholy), Doubleday, 1966.

(With Robert Bloch) Bloch and Bradbury: Ten Masterpieces of Science Fiction, Tower, 1969, published in England as Fever Dreams and Other Fantasies, Sphere, 1970, published as Whispers from Beyond, Peacock Press, 1972.

I Sing the Body Electric!, Knopf, 1969.

Ray Bradbury, Harrap, 1975.

Long after Midnight, Knopf, 1976.

(And author of introduction) To Sing Strange Songs, Wheaton, 1979.

(And author of introduction) The Last Circus, Lord John, 1980.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Knopf, 1980.

(And author of introduction) A Memory for Murder, Dell, 1984.

The Toynbee Convector, Knopf, 1988.

Kaleidoscope, 1994.

Quicker Than the Eye, Avon, 1997.

Driving Blind, Avon, 1997.

Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable, 1998.

Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories, Peterson Publishing, 2001.

One More for the Road: A New Short Story Collection, Morrow, 2002.

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, Morrow, 2003.

Poetry:

Old Ahab's Friend, and Friend to Noah, Speaks His Piece: A Celebration, Roy A. Squires Press, 1971.

When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year, Knopf, 1973.

That Son of Richard III: A Birth Announcement, Roy A. Squires Press, 1974.

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns: New Poems, Both Light and Dark, Knopf, 1977.

Twin Hieroglyphs That Swim the River Dust, Lord John, 1978.

The Bike Repairman, Lord John, 1978.

The Author Considers His Resources, Lord John, 1979.

The Attic Where the Meadow Greens, Lord John, 1979.

The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope, Knopf, 1981.

The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (contains Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns, The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope, and When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed), Ballantine, 1982.

The Last Good Kiss: A Poem, illustrated by Hans Burkhardt, Santa Susana Press, 1984.

Forever and the Earth, 1984.

Death Has Lost Its Charm for Me, Lord John, 1987.

With Cat for Comforter, Gibbs Smith, 1997.

Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas, Gibbs Smith, 1997.

I Love by the Invisible: New and Selected Poems, Salmon, 2002.

Juvenile Story Collections:

R Is for Rocket, Doubleday, 1962.

S Is for Space, Doubleday, 1966.

The April Witch, Creative Education, Inc., 1987.

The Other Foot, Creative Education, Inc., 1987.

The Foghorn, Creative Education, Inc., 1987.

The Veldt, Creative Education, Inc., 1987.

Fever Dream, St. Martin's, 1987.

The Smile, Creative Education, Inc., 1991.

Other Juveniles:

Switch on the Night, Pantheon, 1955, reprinted with illustrations by Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon, Knopf, 1993.

The Halloween Tree (novel), Knopf, 1972.

The Dragon, illustrated by Ken Snyder, B. Munster, 1988.

A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities, Knopf, 1990.

Ahmed and the Oblivions Machines, Avon, 1998.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Avon, 1999.

You Are Here: The Jerde Partnership International, Phaidon Press Ltd., 1999.

Death Is a Lonely Business, Avon, 1999.

The Illustrated Many, Chivers Press, 1999.

The Country, Avon, 1999.

From the Dust Returns: A Family Remembrance, William Morrow, 2001.

The Cat's Pajamas, Morrow, 2004.

Other:

(Editor and contributor) Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, Bantam, 1952.

Fahrenheit 451 (collection; contains "Fahrenheit 451," "The Playground," and "And the Rock Cried Out"), Ballantine, 1953, reprinted with foreword by Bradbury, Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Fahrenheit 451 (previously published as part of collection), Hart–Davis, 1954.

(Editor) The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories, Bantam, 1956.

(With Lewy Olfson) Teachers Guide: Science Fiction (essay), Bantam, 1968.

(With Bruce Murray, Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Sullivan, and Carl Sagan) Mars and the Mind of Man (verse and essays), Harper, 1973.

Zen and the Art of Writing (essays), Capra Press, 1973.

The Best of Bradbury, Bantam, 1976.

The Mummies of Guanajuato (short story), Abrams, 1978.

The Aqueduct (short story), Roy A. Squires Press, 1979.

Beyond 1984: Remembrance of Things Future (articles and poems), Targ, 1979.

About Norman Corwin (essay), California State University, Northridge, 1980.

The Ghosts of Forever (five poems, a story, and an essay), Rizzoli, c. 1981.

Dinosaur Tales (verse and short story collection), Bantam, 1983.

The Love Affair (a short story and two poems), Lord John, 1983.

(Author of text) Los Angeles, Skyline Press, 1984.

(Author of text) Orange County, Skyline Press, 1985.

(Author of text) The Art of "Playboy," Alfred Van der Mack, 1985.

Folon's Folons, 1990.

Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures, 1991.

(Editor) A Day in the Life of Hollywood, 1992.

Journey to Far Metaphor: Further Essays on Creativity, Writing, Literature, and the Arts, 1994.

The First Book of Dichotomy, the Second Book of Symbiosis, 1995.

A Chapbook for Burnt–Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers, 2001.

Conversations with Ray Bradbury, University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

Author of forewords and prologues for other publications and authors. Bradbury's work is represented in seven hundred anthologies (many of which are school texts), including Best American Short Stories, 1946, 1948, 1952, and 1958, and The Ghoul Keepers, Pyramid Books, 1961.

Contributor of short stories and articles, sometimes under pseudonyms, to Life, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, Reporter, Playboy, Saturday Review, Weird Tales, and other periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS

The motion picture El marciano, released in 1965, was based on a Bradbury story. Fahrenheit 451 was adapted into a screenplay, released by Universal, 1966, a new film version was released in 2005, and it was adapted as an opera, by Georgia Holof and David Mettere, first produced at the Indiana Civic Theater, Fort Wayne, IN, 1988. The Illustrated Man was adapted into a screenplay, released by Warner Bros., 1969. The film Melodrama Infernal, released in 1969, was based on stories by Bradbury. The story "The Screaming Woman" was filmed for television in 1972; and the story "Murderer" was filmed for television by WGBH–TV, Boston, MA, 1976. The Martian Chronicles was filmed as a television miniseries, c. 1980; it also served as the basis for the screenplay Trinadtsaty Apostol (also known as The 13th Apostle), released in 1988. The story "Frost and Fire" was adapted as the screenplay Quest, released in 1983. The film All Summer in a Day, released in 1982, is based on a story by Bradbury. "The Electric Grandmother" has been adapted into a television play, by Jeffrey Kindley, Peacock Theatre, NBC, 1983. The 1986 television special, Banshee, was based on a Bradbury story, as was the film Veld, 1987. The story "Next in Line" was adapted as a play by S. L. Stebel and Charles Rome Smith, and produced by the Pandemonium Theatre Company, at the New Ivar Theatre, 1992. The television movie It Came from Outer Space II, released on the Sci–Fi Channel in 1996, was based on a story by Bradbury. The motion picture El Umrbal was based a story by Bradbury and released in 2003. The motion picture A Sound of Thunder was based on a short story by Bradbury and released by Warner Bros., 2005. The 1996 television miniseries Vino iz Oduvanchikov (also known as Dandelion Wine) was also based on Bradbury's books. Other Bradbury works have been adapted into other media, including sound recordings. The Autumn People, Ballantine, 1965, and Tomorrow Midnight, Ballantine, 1966, are comic adaptations of some of Bradbury's stories. The television special Walking on Air (also known as Wonderworks), which aired on PBS, was adapted from one of his short stories.

OTHER SOURCES

Books:

Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Volume 30, Gale, 1990.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 42, 1987.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press, 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 2: American Novelists since World War II, 1978, Volume 8, Twentieth-Century American Science Fiction Writers, 1981.

Greenberg, Martin H., and Joseph D. Olander, editors, Ray Bradbury, Taplinger, 1980.

Johnson, Wayne L., Ray Bradbury, Ungar, 1980.

Nolan, William F., The Ray Bradbury Companion, Gale, 1974.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press, 2004.

Weist, Bradbury: An Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor, HarperCollins, 2002.

Periodicals:

Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2001, p. 40.

Starlog, April, 1990, p. 29.

BRADBURY, Ray(mond Douglas)

Nationality: American. Born: Waukegan, Illinois, 22 August 1920. Education: Los Angeles High School, graduated 1938. Family: Married Marguerite Susan McClure in 1947; four daughters. Career: Since 1943 full-time writer. President, Science-Fantasy Writers of America, 1951-53. Member of the Board of Directors, Screen Writers Guild of America, 1957-61. Lives in Los Angeles. Awards: O. Henry prize, 1947, 1948; Benjamin Franklin award, 1954; American Academy award, 1954; Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book award, 1956; Golden Eagle award, for screenplay, 1957; Ann Radcliffe award, 1965, 1971; Writers Guild award, 1974; Aviation and Space Writers award, for television documentary, 1979; Gandalf award, 1980. D. Litt.: Whittier College, California, 1979. Agent: Harold Matson Company, 276 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10001. Address: c/o Bantam, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103, U.S.A.

Publications

Novels

Fahrenheit 451. New York, Ballantine, 1953; London, Hart Davis, 1954; with a new foreword by the author, Thorndike, Maine, G. K. Hall, 1997.

Something Wicked This Way Comes. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1962; London, Hart Davis, 1963.

Death Is a Lonely Business. New York, Knopf, 1985; London, Grafton, 1986.

A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities. New York, Knopf, and London, Grafton, 1990.

The Smile. Mankato, Minnesota, Creative Education, 1991.

Green Shadows, White Whale. New York, Knopf, and London, HarperCollins, 1992.

Quicker Than the Eye. New York, Avon Books, 1996.

Driving Blind. New York, Avon Books, 1997.

With Cat for Comforter, illustrated by Louise Reinoehl Max. SaltLake City, Utah, Gibbs Smith, 1997.

Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas, illustrated by LouiseReinoehl Max. Salt Lake City, Utah, Gibbs Smith, 1997.

Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable, illustrated by ChrisLane. New York, Avon Books, 1998.

Short Stories

Dark Carnival. Sauk City, Wisconsin, Arkham House, 1947; abridged edition, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1948; abridged edition, as The Small Assassin, London, New English Library, 1962.

The Martian Chronicles. New York, Doubleday, 1950; as The Silver Locusts, London, Hart Davis, 1951.

The Illustrated Man. New York, Doubleday, 1951; London, HartDavis, 1952; New York, Avon Books, 1997.

The Golden Apples of the Sun. New York, Doubleday, and London, Hart Davis, 1953.

The October Country. New York, Ballantine, 1955; London, HartDavis, 1956; with a new introduction by the author. New York, Ballantine Books, 1996.

Dandelion Wine. New York, Doubleday, and London, Hart Davis, 1957; New York, Avon Books, 1999.

A Medicine for Melancholy. New York, Doubleday, 1959.

The Day It Rained Forever. London, Hart Davis, 1959.

The Machineries of Joy. New York, Simon and Schuster, and London, Hart Davis, 1964.

The Vintage Bradbury. New York, Random House, 1965.

The Autumn People. New York, Ballantine, 1965.

Tomorrow Midnight. New York, Ballantine, 1966.

Twice Twenty Two (selection). New York, Doubleday, 1966.

I Sing the Body Electric! New York, Knopf, 1969; London, HartDavis, 1970; published as I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories, New York, Avon Books, 1998.

Bloch and Bradbury, with Robert Bloch. New York, Tower, 1969; asFever Dreams and Other Fantasies, London, Sphere, 1970.

(Selected Stories ), edited by Anthony Adams. London, Harrap, 1975.

Long after Midnight. New York, Knopf, 1976; London, Hart DavisMacGibbon, 1977.

The Best of Bradbury. New York, Bantam, 1976.

To Sing Strange Songs. Exeter, Devon, Wheaton, 1979.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury. New York, Knopf, and London, Granada, 1980.

The Last Circus, and The Electrocution. Northridge, California, LordJohn Press, 1980.

Dinosaur Tales. New York, Bantam, 1983.

A Memory of Murder. New York, Dell, 1984.

The Toynbee Convector. New York, Knopf, 1988; London, Grafton, 1989.

Plays

The Meadow, in Best One-Act Plays of 1947-48, edited by MargaretMayorga. New York, Dodd Mead, 1948.

The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics (produced Los Angeles, 1968). New York, Dial Press, 1963.

The World of Ray Bradbury (produced Los Angeles, 1964; NewYork, 1965).

The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit (produced Los Angeles, 1965; NewYork, 1987; musical version, music by Jose Feliciano, produced Pasadena, California, 1990). Included in The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit and Other Plays, 1972.

The Day It Rained Forever, music by Bill Whitefield (producedEdinburgh, 1988). New York, French, 1966.

The Pedestrian. New York, French, 1966.

Christus Apollo, music by Jerry Goldsmith (produced Los Angeles, 1969).

The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit and Other Plays (includes The Veldt and To the Chicago Abyss ). New York, Bantam, 1972; London, Hart Davis, 1973.

The Veldt (produced London, 1980). Included in The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit and Other Plays, 1972.

Leviathan 99 (produced Los Angeles, 1972).

Pillar of Fire and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow (includes Kaleidoscope and The Foghorn ). New York, Bantam, 1975.

The Foghorn (produced New York, 1977). Included in Pillar of Fire and Other Plays, 1975.

That Ghost, That Bride of Time: Excerpts from a Play-in-Progress. Glendale, California, Squires, 1976.

The Martian Chronicles, adaptation of his own stories (produced LosAngeles, 1977).

Fahrenheit 451, adaptation of his own novel (produced Los Angeles, 1979).

Dandelion Wine, adaptation of his own story (produced Los Angeles, 1980).

Forever and the Earth (radio play). Athens, Ohio, Croissant, 1984.

On Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays. New York, Primus, 1991.

Screenplays:

It Came from Outer Space, with David Schwartz, 1952;Moby-Dick, with John Huston, 1956; Icarus Montgolfier Wright, with George C. Johnston, 1961; Picasso Summer (as Douglas Spaulding), with Edwin Booth, 1972.

Television Plays:

Shopping for Death, 1956, Design for Loving, 1958, Special Delivery, 1959, The Faith of Aaron Menefee, 1962, and The Life Work of Juan Diaz, 1963 (all Alfred Hitchcock Presents series); The Marked Bullet (Jane Wyman's Fireside Theater series), 1956; The Gift (Steve Canyon series), 1958; The Tunnel to Yesterday (Trouble Shooters series), 1960; I Sing the Body Electric! (Twilight Zone series), 1962; The Jail (Alcoa Premier series), 1962; The Groom (Curiosity Shop series), 1971; The Coffin, from his own short story, 1988 (U.K.).

Poetry

Old Ahab's Friend, and Friend to Noah, Speaks His Piece: A Celebration. Glendale, California, Squires, 1971.

When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year. New York, Knopf, 1973; London, Hart Davis MacGibbon, 1975.

That Son of Richard III: A Birth Announcement. Privately printed, 1974.

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run round in Robot Towns: New Poems, Both Light and Dark. New York, Knopf, 1977; London, Hart Davis MacGibbon, 1979.

Twin Hieroglyphs That Swim the River Dust. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1978.

The Bike Repairman. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1978.

The Author Considers His Resources. Northridge, California, LordJohn Press, 1979.

The Aqueduct. Glendale, California, Squires, 1979.

The Attic Where the Meadow Greens. Northridge, California, LordJohn Press, 1980.

Imagine. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1981.

The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope. New York, Knopf, and London, Granada, 1981.

The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury. New York, Ballantine, 1982.

Two Poems. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1982.

The Love Affair. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1983.

Other

Switch on the Night (for children). New York, Pantheon, and London, Hart Davis, 1955.

R Is for Rocket (for children). New York, Doubleday, 1962; London, Hart Davis, 1968.

S Is for Space (for children). New York, Doubleday, 1966; London, Hart Davis, 1968.

Teacher's Guide: Science Fiction, with Lewy Olfson. New York, Bantam, 1968.

The Halloween Tree (for children). New York, Knopf, 1972; London, Hart Davis MacGibbon, 1973.

Mars and the Mind of Man. New York, Harper, 1973.

Zen and the Art of Writing, and The Joy of Writing. Santa Barbara, California, Capra Press, 1973.

The Mummies of Guanajuato, photographs by Archie Lieberman. New York, Abrams, 1978.

Beyond 1984: Remembrance of Things Future. New York, Targ, 1979.

About Norman Corwin. Northridge, California, Santa Susana Press, 1979.

The Ghosts of Forever, illustrated by Aldo Sessa. New York, Rizzoli, 1981.

Los Angeles, photographs by West Light. Port Washington, NewYork, Skyline Press, 1984.

Orange County, photographs by Bill Ross and others. Port Washington, New York, Skyline Press, 1985.

The Art of Playboy (text by Bradbury). New York, van der MarckEditions, 1985.

Zen in the Art of Writing (essays). Santa Barbara, California, CapraPress, 1990.

Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures (essays).Santa Barbara, California, Capra Press, 1991.

Editor, Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow. New York, Bantam, 1952.

Editor, The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories. NewYork, Bantam, 1956.

Manuscript Collections:

Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

Critical Studies: Interview in

Show (New York), December 1964; introduction by Gilbert Highet to The Vintage Bradbury, 1965; "The Revival of Fantasy" by Russell Kirk, in Triumph (Washington, D.C.), May 1968; "Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine: Themes, Sources, and Style" by Marvin E. Mengeling, in English Journal (Champaign, Illinois), October 1971; The Ray Bradbury Companion (includes bibliography) by William F. Nolan, Detroit, Gale, 1975; The Drama of Ray Bradbury by Benjamin P. Indick, Baltimore, T-K Graphics, 1977; The Bradbury Chronicles by George Edgar Slusser, San Bernardino, California, Borgo Press, 1977; Ray Bradbury (includes bibliography) edited by Joseph D. Olander and Martin H. Greenberg, New York, Taplinger, and Edinburgh, Harris, 1980; Ray Bradbury by Wayne L. Johnson, New York, Ungar, 1980; Ray Bradbury and the Poetics of Reverie: Fantasy, Science Fiction, and the Reader by William F. Toupence, Ann Arbor, Michigan, UMI Research Press, 1984; Ray Bradbury by David Mogen, Boston, Twayne, 1986; Ray Bradbury: An American Icon (video cassette), Great Northern Productions, 1996; Ray Bradbury and the Poetics of Reverie by William F. Touponce, San Bernardino, California, Borgo Press, 1998; American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers by Claire L. Datnow, Springfield, New Jersey, Enslow Publishers, 1999; Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion by Robin Anne Reid, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 2000; Ray Bradbury, edited by Harold Bloom, Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2000.

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. Any idea, no matter how large or small, that is busy growing itself alive, starting from nowhere and at last dominating a town, a culture, or a world, is of interest. Man the problem solver is the writer of my tales. Science fiction becoming science fact. The machineries of our world putting away and keeping our facts for us so they can be used and learned from. Machines as humanist teachers. Ideas of men built into those machines in order to help us survive and survive well. 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.

Although he has written six novels, including the classics Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Ray Bradbury is best known as an author of short stories. His style is so economical, striking, and lyrical that it has been described as prose poetry, and he is as skillful at presenting horror and the grotesque as was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), his primary influence. Bradbury is known as one of "the big four" of the genres of science fiction and fantasy, the others being Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. He is deeply respected and beloved by genre fans and by students who study him in high school and college. His significance in fantasy and horror owe much to his background, his prose style, his recurrent themes, and the sense of wonder that pervades his work.

Bradbury's second story sale, "The Candle" (1941), marked the beginning of his association with Weird Tales, the legendary American pulp magazine that first appeared in 1923 and that, despite changes in editorial staff and many deaths and resurrections, keeps returning from the literary grave. This magazine published such enormously popular authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch of Psycho fame, and Conan the Barbarian 's creator Robert E. Howard. Weird Tales led supernatural fiction out of a poorly written Gothic and ghost tradition. It is essential to grasp the primacy of Weird Tales and its large fan base to recognize Bradbury's contemporary literary milieu and the adulation he earned during the years 1941 to 1948, when he became the most distinguished contributor to that magazine.

Bradbury began publishing collections of linked stories in the 1950s with The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man (1951). Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Dandelion Wine (1957) are fix-ups, or novels constructed of previously published short stories. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Death Is a Lonely Business (1985), and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) are stand-alone novels.

The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man exemplify Bradbury's evolving style, motifs, and themes. Though his technique varies from the subtle to the ironic to the hair-raising, one can call The Martian Chronicles a fantasy based on science fiction motifs and The Illustrated Man, which is darker and more tainted by the supernatural, despite occasional nods to science fiction (futuristic machines, spaceships, aliens), overall a work of horror.

The Martian Chronicles tells of the emigration of humans to a Mars that is either peopled by or haunted by eerie, wistful, telepathic Martians. Humans gradually displace and replace the natives, and in 2003 (which, in the 1940s, seemed sufficiently distant to allow for terraforming technologies), the settlement of Tenth City has hardly any red dust blowing through it, so exactly is it like a small midwestern town. In 2005 Earth is destroyed by thermonuclear war (as recounted in the classic short story "There Will Come Soft Rains") and, not long after, human colonies and customs have erased all vestiges of the natives. The men now are the Martians.

This sounds like an allegory of the European colonization of the West, and read in one sitting the stories may be taken as a dirge for lost civilizations. The theme of loss runs like a sad tune throughout Bradbury's work: loss of loved ones, of friendships, of youth, of golden opportunities, of marvels trampled in a blind rush of capitalistic greed. The dictum that "you can't stand in the way of progress" is multivalent in Bradbury's fiction. Progress brings us to the stars, but dazzles us so that many other good things are left behind.

The stories in The Illustrated Man are united by a slight yet disturbing conceit: the narrator encounters a man whose skin is painted by "living" tattoos. One of these will show the death of the observer if watched long enough. After a night of viewing different tattoo stories as though films in miniature, the narrator is horrified to see his own destiny revealed—in the future, from some unimaginable need for revenge, the illustrated man will strangle him to death.

Both books testify to Bradbury's deceptively simple, sentimental, lyrical prose and to challenging themes such as revenge, insanity, loneliness, hope, and survival. Bradbury's short, straightforward sentences owe their delights and horrors to sensory descriptions (such as the aromas of cut grass or burning autumn leaves), to settings evocative of his fondly remembered hometown Waukegan, Illinois, and to pensive dialogues in which young children or old men express their sense of wonder when contemplating the star-filled night sky, the miracles of sunlight or the menace of shadows, the innocence of childhood, or the tragedies of missed meetings and lost loves.

Dandelion Wine is narrated by twelve-year-old Douglas (Bradbury's middle name) Spaulding, who is, like many of his young protagonists, loosely based on Bradbury himself. This work captures, as though in a glass of home-made wine, the recurring flavors and themes of his fiction. During the summer of 1928, Douglas gains maturity as the loss of a friend and the appearance of a murderer transform his perceptions of his world. The boy's powers of imagination, Bradbury emphasizes, both enrich and darken his life.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is again semi-autobiographical, but far darker—literally—than Dandelion Wine. Sunlight and sunset color Dandelion Wine, but much of Something Wicked occurs at night and in the dark places of the human psyche. Light and Dark are allegorized throughout the tale of Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, who are seduced by the arrival in Green Town, Illinois, of a carnival called Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show. This evil carnival tempts the townsfolk with its supernatural powers to grant dreams—but also to steal souls. The merry-go-round, the Hall of Mirrors, the parade, and other carnivalesque trappings become truly creepy under Bradbury's skillful pen.

Fahrenheit 451 treats the themes of imagination and loss so powerfully that it is alluded to in discussions of governmental oppression and censorship almost as commonly as George Orwell's 1984. The protagonist, Guy Montag, has happily labored as a "fireman"—a burner of books—for ten years. As the novel opens, he meets seventeen-year-old Clarisse, who asks him unsettling questions: Does he ever think about his society instead of mouthing the socially acceptable phrases? Is he curious about the books he burns? Is he happy?

Their friendship changes his life. Montag begins to question his world, and finds fear and unhappiness everywhere. Eventually he meets a secret society of readers who preserve illegal books by memorizing them. A New York Times reviewer praised "Bradbury's account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own."

Bradbury's fiction developed into a more realistic (though still rhapsodic) mode during the 1960s and 1970s, and relied more on non-supernatural, if sometimes morbid, themes, such as dysfunctional marriages, the dangers of technology, fear of aging, and fear of death. This development can be observed in the collections The Machineries of Joy (1964) and I Sing the Body Electric (1969). Bradbury contributed to his favorite genres by editing anthologies and writing children's stories; he also wrote nonfiction and plays.

Not until 1985 did a new Bradbury novel appear: Death Is a Lonely Business, which is based on his years as a pulp fiction writer. The protagonist's optimism and hope of success bizarrely preserve him from the deaths that are striking down many of his contemporaries. Like Death, A Graveyard for Lunatics is a detective novel about a writer, this one working in the Hollywood of the 1950s. Hired as a science fiction film writer at a big studio, he is led to the adjoining graveyard, where he discovers a body frozen in time. Though not as famous as his earlier work, both novels continue his theme of a past that cannot stop haunting the present.

Perhaps the greatest contribution Bradbury has made to fantasy and horror lies in his creating and ever re-creating a bona fide American romantic, melancholic tradition: a nostalgia for corn fields and small towns and suburbs, replacing the previously overwhelming European nostalgia for aristocracies and castles and cathedrals.

Bradbury began writing for television in 1951 for such programs as Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone, and the highly praised USA Network television series The Bradbury Theatre (1985-1992) is based on many of his short stories. Bradbury has also written plays and filmscripts, including the Gregory Peck-starring Moby Dick (1956) and the Academy Award-nominated Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962). Fahrenheit 451 was adapted for film (by François Truffaut) in 1966, The Illustrated Man in 1969, and Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1983, and The Martian Chronicles appeared as a television miniseries (1979). Something Wicked is the best of these adaptations.

In 1991 the extent of Bradbury's influence on later generations of writers was evidenced when William F. Nolan and Martin H. Greenberg commissioned twenty-two original stories (one by Bradbury) for The Bradbury Chronicles, published to honor his fiftieth year as a writer. The contributors included such noted names as Richard Matheson and his son Richard Christian Matheson, Charles L. Grant, F. Paul Wilson, Ed Gorman, and Chad Oliver. Horror authors Steven King and Clive Barker have also acknowledged his influence. Bradbury has earned the 1977 World Fantasy Award, the 1980 Grandmaster of Fantasy Gandalf Award, the 1989 Bram Stoker Award, and the 1988 Nebula Grand Master Award, and was inducted into the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (1999), all for Lifetime Achievement.

—Fiona Kelleghan

BRADBURY, Ray

(b. 22 August 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois), prolific author noted for his fantastic fiction, often set in science-fictional settings. His best-known works are The Martian Chronicles (1950), Dandelion Wine (1953), and Fahrenheit 451 (1957).

Ray Bradbury was the third son of Leonard Spaulding and Esther Moberg. His older brother had a twin who died before Bradbury was born, and Bradbury's younger sister Elizabeth died when Bradbury was seven. Bradbury, who even as a child was noted for his highly impressionable and vivid imagination, grew up in the small town of Waukegan, Illinois, a peaceful place that later appeared in his stories as "Green Town, Illinois." His Aunt Neva, who gave him books of fairy tales and took him to see the films The Hunchback of Notre Dam e and The Wizard of Oz, did much to encourage his imaginative life. Bradbury's teenage years were marked by the Great Depression, which drove his father west in search of work. The family lived in Arizona from 1926 to 1927, and from 1932 to 1933; in 1934, they moved to Los Angeles, where Bradbury has lived ever since. Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School, and after graduating, lived with his family and found work delivering newspapers.

Bradbury began publishing stories in amateur science-fiction magazines in the mid-1930s, and in 1941, with the encouragement of the well-known science-fiction writers Leigh Brackett and Robert Heinlein, he sold three stories of the fifty-two he had written that year. With this success, he decided to become a writer, and quit his job as a newspaper salesperson to begin a prolific career.

On 27 September 1947 Bradbury married Marguerite Susan McClure, with whom he had four daughters between 1949 and 1958. Bradbury, who was the only science-fiction writer of the time to be published in higher-paying, mainstream periodicals, supported his family through selling his stories; in 1944 he made $800 from the sale of forty stories.

During the late 1950s Bradbury published some of his best-known works: The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Dandelion Wine (1957), as well as several story collections. Bradbury's introduction to the literary mainstream came in 1950, when writer Christopher Isherwood "discovered" The Martian Chronicles, a lyrical account of human exploration on Mars, and wrote a highly favorable review of it in Tomorrow magazine. Isherwood, like many other mainstream readers, had assumed that all science fiction was bad by definition, and was delighted to discover that this book was marked by a vivid and original style, as well as sensitivity and imagination. "His is a very great and unusual talent," Isherwood wrote of Bradbury.

Bradbury also worked on films, writing the treatment that later became the script for the first 3-D science-fiction film, It Came from Outer Space (1953). Also in 1953, John Huston hired him to write the script for the film Moby Dick, released in 1956 .

Although Fahrenheit 451 appeared in 1953, it presaged many issues of the 1960s. In the book, set in an undetermined future era, fireman Guy Montag and his colleagues no longer put out fires, but start them for the purpose of burning books. The book examines issues of free speech, the proper authority of the government, and individualism versus conformity. Although Bradbury told Everett T. Moore in the ALA Bulletin that the novel was inspired by the repressive events of the McCarthy era, its themes were still relevant in the 1960s, when social forces, including the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, and the hippie subculture, emphasized personal freedom, social justice, and antiauthoritarianism. Montag, in fact, goes through clear phases of rebellion and consciousness-raising. He begins as a loyal and unquestioning fireman following orders. Gradually, he begins to examine his actions and wonder why the system is so repressive. Over time, he realizes that as a book burner, he is destroying the shared heritage and consciousness of his community. He calls in sick to work, an act of passive resistance similar to those used by 1960s social demonstrators, who favored peaceful refusal to cooperate over violent rebellion. As the book progresses, Montag moves more and more to the fringe of his society, living among other outcasts and misfits.

As Wayne L. Johnson noted in Ray Bradbury, some of the characters and events in the novel "might have been drawn from the turbulent political events of the sixties," including the portrayal of Montag's wife, who spends all her time doing drugs and watching television; Clarisse, a young woman who prefigures the "flower children" of the 1960s; and an old woman, who resists the firemen by pouring kerosene not only over her books, but also over her body before lighting a match, just as Buddhist monks did in the 1960s to protest the Vietnam War.

In 1962 Bradbury published Something Wicked This Way Comes, a novel that in setting and theme is similar to his earlier Dandelion Wine. Set in idyllic Green Town, Illinois, a fictionalized version of Bradbury's hometown, the novel explores life-changing events in the lives of two friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, when "Cooper and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show," a mysterious carnival, comes to town. Emphasizing themes of coming-ofage, as well as good versus evil, the novel contrasts the wholesome nature of the town with the evil brought by the supernatural carnival people, who feed on fear and spiritual pain.

Bradbury has also written screenplays, plays, and poetry, as well as a book on creative writing. A prolific writer, he writes every day. He has received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement (1977), the Grand Master Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (1988), the Horror Writers' Association Bram Stoker Award and lifetime achievement award (1989). Bradbury received an Emmy award for his teleplay The Halloween Tree, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1961). His influence on other writers was honored in a collection, The Bradbury Chronicles: Stories in Honor of Ray Bradbury (1991). Perhaps the greatest tribute Bradbury received came in 1971, when the Apollo 15 crew named a lunar crater Dandelion Crater in honor of Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury, who claimed to recall everything that had happened to him since the moment of his birth, as well as every book he ever read and every movie he had ever seen, drew on his memories of small-town Midwestern childhood, as well as images in popular movies and books of his youth, to create his own fiction. Although his books are often categorized as science fiction, critics continue to argue to what genre his work belongs; he has been highly honored by mainstream literary critics, and at the same time, often disowned by the science-fiction community. In Dream Makers, Bradbury told Charles Platt that the rift between him and other science-fiction writers occurred because "I left the family, you see. And that's a danger …to [sciencefiction writers]. Because they haven't got out of the house."

David Mogen observed in Ray Bradbury that throughout Bradbury's career, many critics within science fiction have commented that his "values and philosophy are fundamentally opposed to the ethos of true 'science fiction'," a reference to his apparent distrust of machinery, his lack of detailed scientific knowledge, and his emphasis on a nostalgic past rather than the future.

In The Universe Makers, Donald A. Wollheim examined Bradbury's work and noted that he was not a science fiction writer, because "His stories are stories of people—real and honest and true in their understanding of human nature—but for his purposes the trappings of science fiction are sufficient—mere stage settings." Unlike the stories of other science fiction writers, Bradbury's works do not have an underpinning of solid science or a logical extrapolation. For example, as Wollheim noted, "His Mars bears no relation to the astronomical planet," but is largely derived from the imagined Mars of 1930s pulp novels and horror movies. However, Wollheim wrote, Bradbury is "a mainstream fantasist of great brilliance."

David Mogen, Ray Bradbury (1986), provides details on Bradbury's life and work, and Robin Anne Reid, Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion (2000), examines each of his works and provides varying critical interpretations. Donald A. Wollheim, The Universe Makers (1971), includes a profile of Bradbury, and Charles Platt, The Dream Makers (1980), features an interview. Fahrenheit 451 is discussed in Wayne L. Johnson, Ray Bradbury (1980), as well as in Everett T. Moore, "A Rationale for Bookburners: A Further Word from Ray Bradbury," ALA Bulletin 55, no. 5 (May 1961): 403–404.

Kelly Winters

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury (born 1920) was among the first authors to combine the concepts of science fiction with a sophisticated prose style. Often described as economical yet poetic, Bradbury's fiction conveys a vivid sense of place in which everyday events are transformed into unusual, sometimes sinister situations.

Bradbury began his career during the 1940s as a writer for such pulp magazines as Black Mask, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales. The latter magazine served to showcase the works of such fantasy writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Derleth. Derleth, who founded Arkham House, a publishing company specializing in fantasy literature, accepted one of Bradbury's stories for Who Knocks?, an anthology published by his firm. Derleth subsequently suggested that Bradbury compile a volume of his own stories; the resulting book, Dark Carnival (1947), collects Bradbury's early fantasy tales. Although Bradbury rarely published pure fantasy later in his career, such themes of his future work as the need to retain humanistic values and the importance of the imagination are displayed in the stories of this collection. Many of these pieces were republished with new material in The October Country (1955).

The publication of The Martian Chronicles (1950) established Bradbury's reputation as an author of sophisticated science fiction. This collection of stories is connected by the framing device of the settling of Mars by human beings and is dominated by tales of space travel and environmental adaptation. Bradbury's themes, however, reflect many of the important issues of the post-World War II era— racism, censorship, technology, and nuclear war—and the stories delineate the implications of these themes through authorial commentary. Clifton Fadiman described The Martian Chronicles as being "as grave and troubling as one of Hawthorne's allegories." Another significant collection of short stories, The Illustrated Man (1951), also uses a framing device, basing the stories on the tattoos of the title character.

Bradbury's later short story collections are generally considered to be less significant than The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. Bradbury shifted his focus in these volumes from outer space to more familiar earthbound settings. Dandelion Wine (1957), for example, has as its main subject the midwestern youth of Bradbury's semiautobiographical protagonist, Douglas Spaulding. Although Bradbury used many of the same techniques in these stories as in his science fiction and fantasy publications, Dandelion Wine was not as well received as his earlier work. Other later collections, including A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), The Machineries of Joy (1964), I Sing the Body Electric! (1969), and Long after Midnight (1976), contain stories set in Bradbury's familiar outer space or midwestern settings and explore his typical themes. Many of Bradbury's stories have been anthologized or filmed for such television programs as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Ray Bradbury Theater.

In addition to his short fiction, Bradbury has several adult novels. The first of these, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), originally published as a short story and later expanded into novel form, concerns a future society in which books are burned because they are perceived as threats to societal conformity. In Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) a father attempts to save his son and a friend from the sinister forces of a mysterious traveling carnival. Both of these novels have been adapted for film. Death Is a Lonely Business(1985) is a detective story featuring Douglas Spaulding, the protagonist of Dandelion Wine, as a struggling writer for pulp magazines Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles are often included in the category of novel. Bradbury has also written poetry and drama; critics have faulted his efforts in these genres as lacking the impact of his fiction.

While Bradbury's popularity is acknowledged even by his detractors, many critics find the reasons for his success difficult to pinpoint. Some believe that the tension Bradbury creates between fantasy and reality is central to his ability to convey his visions and interests to his readers. Peter Stoler asserted that Bradbury's reputation rests on his "chillingly understated stories about a familiar world where it is always a few minutes before midnight on Halloween, and where the unspeakable and unthinkable become commonplace." Mary Ross proposed that "Perhaps the special quality of [Bradbury's] fantasy lies in the fact that people to whom amazing things happen are often so simply, often touchingly, like ourselves." In a genre in which futurism and the fantastic are usually synonymous, Bradbury stands out for his celebration of the future in realistic terms and his exploration of conventional values and ideas. As one of the first science fiction writers to convey his themes through a refined prose style replete with subtlety and humanistic analogies, Bradbury has helped make science fiction a more respected literary genre and is widely admired by the literary establishment.

Further Reading

Authors in the News, Gale, Volume 1, 1976, Volume 2, 1976.

Amis, Kingsley, New Maps of Hell, Ballantine, 1960, pp. 90-7.

Berton, Pierre, Voices from the Sixties, Doubleday, 1967, pp. 1-10.

Breit, Harvey, The Writer Observed, World Publishing, 1956.

Clareson, Thomas D., editor, Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Volume 1, Bowling Green State University Press, 1976.

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening Views, 1968-1988, Gale, 1989.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 42, 1987. □