Early Life
Author Ray
Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard
Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman for power and telephone utilities, and Ester
Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant. Bradbury enjoyed a relatively idyllic
childhood in Waukegan, which he later incorporated into several
semi-autobiographical novels and short stories. As a child, he was a huge fan
of magicians, and a voracious reader of adventure and fantasy
fiction—especially L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Bradbury decided
to become a writer at about age 12 or 13. He later said that he made the
decision in hopes of emulating his heroes, and to "live forever"
through his fiction.
Bradbury's
family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1934. As a teenager, he participated
in his school's drama club and occasionally befriended Hollywood celebrities.
His first official pay as a writer came for contributing a joke to George Burns's
Burns & Allen Show. After graduation from high school in 1938, Bradbury
couldn't afford to go to college, so he went to the local library instead.
"Libraries raised me," he later said. "I believe in libraries
because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school,
it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so
I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."
Literary Works and Honors
To support
himself while he wrote, Bradbury sold newspapers. He published his first short
story in a fan magazine in 1938, the same year he graduated from high school.
The next year, he published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria
Fantasia. Nearly every piece in the magazine was written by Bradbury himself;
he used a variety of pseudonyms to try to hide the fact that the magazine was a
virtual one-man show. "I was still years away from writing my first good
short story," he later said, "but I could see my future. I knew where
I wanted to go."
Bradbury sold
his first professional piece, the story "Pendulum," in November 1941,
just a month before the United States entered World War II, following the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ruled ineligible for military service by his
local draft board because of his vision problems, Bradbury became a full-time
writer by early 1943. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival, was
published in 1947.
That same year,
he married Marguerite "Maggie" McClure, whom he met while she was
working as a clerk at a bookstore. McClure was the breadwinner in the early
days of their marriage, supporting Bradbury as he worked on his writing for
little to no pay. The couple had four daughters, Susan (1949), Ramona (1951),
Bettina (1955) and Alexandra (1958).
In 1950,
Bradbury published his first major work, The Martian Chronicles, which detailed
the conflict between humans colonizing the red planet and the native Martians
they encountered there. While taken by many to be a work of science fiction,
Bradbury himself considered it to be fantasy. "I don't write science
fiction," he said. "Science fiction is a depiction of the real.
Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science
fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see?" Television and comic
book adaptations of Bradbury's short stories began to appear in 1951, introducing
him to a wider audience.
Bradbury's
best-known work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, became an instant classic
in the era of McCarthyism for its exploration of themes of censorship and
conformity. In 2007, Bradbury himself disputed that censorship was the main
theme of Fahrenheit 451, instead explaining the book as a story about how
television drives away interest in reading: "Television gives you the
dates of Napoleon, but not who he was."
Despite his
apparent distaste for television, Bradbury advocated for film adaptations of
his work. He wrote numerous screenplays and treatments, including a 1956 take
on Moby Dick. In 1986, Bradbury developed his own HBO television series, allowing
him to produce adaptations of his short stories. The series ran until 1992.
Famously
prolific, Bradbury wrote for several hours every day throughout his entire
life, allowing him to publish more than 30 books, close to 600 short stories,
and numerous poems, essays, screenplays and plays.
Though Bradbury
won many honors and awards throughout his life, his favorite was perhaps being
named "ideas consultant" for the United States Pavilion at the 1964
World's Fair. "Can you imagine how excited I was?" he later said
about the honor. "'Cause I'm changing lives, and that's the thing. If you
can build a good museum, if you can make a good film, if you can build a good
world's fair, if you can build a good mall, you're changing the future. You're
influencing people, so that they'll get up in the morning and say, 'Hey, it's
worthwhile going to work.' That's my function, and it should be the function of
every science fiction writer around. To offer hope. To name the problem and
then offer the solution. And I do, all the time."
Death and Legacy
Bradbury wrote
well into his 90s, dictating for three hours at a time to one of his daughters,
who would transcribe his words to the page. Though curtailing much of his
traveling and public appearances, he granted several interviews in recent years
and helped raise funds for his local library.
In 2007,
Bradbury received a special citation from the Pulitzer board for his
"distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched
author of science fiction and fantasy." In his final years, Bradbury felt
content about his place in the annals of science fiction history, having
achieved his childhood ambition of living forever through his work. "I
don't need to be vindicated," he said, "and I don't want attention. I
never question. I never ask anyone else's opinion. They don't count."
Bradbury died in
Los Angeles on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. He was survived by daughters
Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra, as well as several grandchildren. An
inspiration to writers, teachers and science-fiction enthusiasts, among
countless others, Bradbury's fascinating science-fiction works will be
remembered for decades to come.
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