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A chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with the British expatriate writer [[Christopher Isherwood]] gave Bradbury the opportunity to put ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]'' into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed and was a substantial boost to Bradbury's career.
A chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with the British expatriate writer [[Christopher Isherwood]] gave Bradbury the opportunity to put ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]'' into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed and was a substantial boost to Bradbury's career.
==Works==
Although Bradbury is often described as a [[science fiction]] writer, Bradbury does not describe himself in that way:
<blockquote>First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'', based on reality. 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? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.<ref>http://weeklywire.com/ww/09-27-99/alibi_feat1.html</ref></blockquote>
Besides his better known fiction work, Bradbury has written many [[essay]]s on art and culture. Bradbury was a consultant for the American Pavilion at the [[1964 New York World's Fair]] and the original exhibit housed in [[Epcot]]'s [[Spaceship Earth (Disney)|Spaceship Earth]] geosphere at [[Walt Disney World]] <ref name="Ray Bradbury, Spaceship Earth 1">Ray Bradbury. "In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World." http://www.raybradbury.com/bio.html</ref><ref name="Ray Bradbury, Spaceship Earth 2">Ray Bradbury. "The images at Spaceship Earth in DisneyWorld's EPCOT Center in Orlando? Well, they are all Bradbury's ideas." http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_town_talk.html</ref><ref name="Ray Bradbury, Spaceship Earth 3">Ray Bradbury. "He also serves as a consultant, having collaborated, for example, in the design of a pavilion in the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World." Referring to Spaceship Earth ...http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_book_mag.html</ref>.
===Novels===
* (1950) ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]''
* (1953) ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]''
* (1957) ''[[Dandelion Wine]]''
* (1962) ''[[Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel)|Something Wicked This Way Comes]]''
* (1972) ''[[The Halloween Tree]]''
* (1985) ''[[Death Is a Lonely Business]]''
* (1990) ''[[A Graveyard for Lunatics]]''
* (1992) ''[[Green Shadows, White Whale]]''
* (2001) ''[[From the Dust Returned]]''
* (2003) ''[[Let's All Kill Constance]]''
* (2006) ''[[Farewell Summer]]''
===Short story collections===
In addition to these collections, many of the stories have been published in multi-author anthologies. Almost 50 additional Bradbury stories have never been collected anywhere after their initial publication in periodicals.<ref>Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, ''Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction'', Kent State University Press (2004). ISBN 0-87338-779-1</ref>
* (1947) ''[[Dark Carnival (book)|Dark Carnival]]''
* (1951) ''[[The Illustrated Man]]''
* (1953) ''[[The Golden Apples of the Sun]]''
* (1955) ''[[The October Country]]''
* (1959) ''[[A Medicine for Melancholy]]''
* (1962) ''[[R is for Rocket]]''
* (1962) ''[[The Small Assassin]]''
* (1964) ''[[The Machineries of Joy]]''
* (1965) ''[[The Vintage Bradbury]]''
* (1966) ''[[S is for Space]]''
* (1966) ''[[Twice 22]]''
* (1969) ''[[I Sing the Body Electric (Bradbury)|I Sing The Body Electric]]''
* (1976) ''[[Long After Midnight]]''
* (1980) ''[[The Stories of Ray Bradbury]]''
* (1984) ''[[A Memory of Murder]]''
* (1988) ''[[The Toynbee Convector]]''
* (1996) ''[[Quicker Than The Eye]]''
* (1997) ''[[Driving Blind]]''
* (2002) ''[[One More for the Road]]''
* (2003) ''[[Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales]]''
* (2004) ''[[The Cat's Pajamas: Stories]]''
* (2005) ''[[A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories]]''
===Plays===
* (1948) ''[[The Meadow]]''
* (1963) ''[[The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics]]''
* (1966) ''[[The Day It Rained Forever]]''
* (1966) ''[[The Pedestrian]]''
* (1972) ''[[The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays]]''
* (1975) ''[[Pillar of Fire and Other Plays]]''
* (1986) ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]''
* (1986) ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]''
* (1988) ''[[Dandelion Wine]]''
* (1988) ''[[Falling Upward]]''
* (1988) ''[[Bradbury on Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays]]''
{{col-2}}
===Screenplays and teleplays===
This list does not include adaptations by others of Bradbury's published stories.
* (1953) ''[[It Came from Outer Space (book)|It Came from Outer Space]]'' (original story)
* (1956) ''[[Moby Dick (1956 film)|Moby Dick]]''
* ''[[Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre]]''
** (1956) ''The Bullet Trick'' / ''The Marked Bullet''
* ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]''
** (1956) ''Shopping for Death''
** (1958) ''Design for Loving''
** (1959) ''Special Delivery''
** (1962) ''The Faith of Aaron Menefee'' (from the story by Stanley Ellin)
* ''[[Steve Canyon]]''
** (1959) ''The Gift''
* ''[[Trouble Shooters]]''
** (1959) ''The Tunnel to Yesterday''
* (1961) ''[[King of Kings (film)|King of Kings]]'' (narration, uncredited)
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]''
** (1962) ''[[I Sing the Body Electric (The Twilight Zone)|I Sing the Body Electric]]''
* ''[[Alcoa Premiere]]''
** (1962) ''The Jail''
* (1962) ''[[Icarus Montgolfier Wright]]''
* (1963) ''Dial Double Zero'' (The Story of a Writer)
* ''[[The Alfred Hitchcock Hour]]''
** (1964) ''The Life Work of Juan Diaz''
* (1969) ''[[The Picasso Summer]]''
* ''[[The Curiosity Shop]]''
** (1971) ''The Groon''
* (1979) ''[[Gnomes (movie)|Gnomes]]''
* (1982) ''[[The Electric Grandmother]]''
* (1983) ''[[Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983 film)|Something Wicked This Way Comes]]''
* (1983) ''[[Quest (movie)|Quest]]''
* (1985-1992) ''[[The Ray Bradbury Theater]]''
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]''
** (1986) ''The Elevator''
* (1992) ''[[Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland]]''
* (1993) ''[[The Halloween Tree]]''
* (1998) ''[[The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit]]''
* (2003) ''[[It Came from Outer Space (book)|It Came from Outer Space]]''
===Radio===
This list does not include adaptations by others of Bradbury's published stories.
* ''[[World Security Workshop]]''
** (1947) ''[[The Meadow]]''
* ''[[Suspense (radio program)|Suspense]]''
** (1947) ''Riabouchinska'' (story)
** (1948) ''Summer Night'' (story)
** (1948) ''The Screaming Woman'' (story)
* (1968) ''[[Leviathan '99]]''
===Poetry===
* (1975) ''[[When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed]]''
* (1977) ''[[Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns]]''
* (1980) ''[[The Ghosts of Forever]]''
* (1981) ''[[The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope]]''
* (2002) ''[[They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury]]''
{{col-2}}
===Children===
* (1955) ''[[Switch on the Night]]''
* (1997) ''[[With Cat for Comforter]]''
* (1997) ''[[Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas]]''
===Fable===
* (1998) ''[[Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines]]''
===Anthologies===
* (1952) ''[[Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow]]''
* (1956) ''[[The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories]]''
===Non-fiction===
* (1990) ''[[Zen in the Art of Writing]]''
* (1991) ''[[Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures]]''
* (2004) ''[[Conversations With Ray Bradbury]]''
* (2005) ''[[Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars]]''
==Adaptations of his work==
Many of Bradbury's stories and [[novel]]s have been adapted to films, radio, television, theater and comic books. From 1951 to 1954, 27 of Bradbury's stories were adapted by [[Al Feldstein]] for [[EC Comics]], and 16 of these were collected in the paperbacks, ''The Autumn People'' (1965) and ''Tomorrow Midnight'' (1966).
Also in the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury's stories were televised on a variety of shows including ''Tales of Tomorrow'', ''Lights Out'', ''Out There'', ''Suspense'', ''CBS Television Workshop'', ''Jane Wyman's Fireside Theatre'', ''Star Tonight'', ''Windows'' and ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents''. "The Merry-Go-Round," a half-hour film adaptation of Bradbury's "The Black Ferris," praised by ''Variety'', was shown on ''Starlight Summer Theater'' in 1954 and NBC's ''Sneak Preview'' in 1956.
From 1985 to 1992 Bradbury hosted a [[television syndication|syndicated]] anthology television series, ''[[The Ray Bradbury Theater]]'', for which he adapted 65 of his stories. Each episode would begin with a shot of Bradbury in his office, gazing over mementoes of his life, which he states (in narrative) are used to spark ideas for stories.
''[[The Martian Chronicles (TV miniseries)|The Martian Chronicles]]'' became a three-part TV [[miniseries]] starring [[Rock Hudson]] which was first broadcast by [[NBC]] in 1980.
Director [[Jack Arnold]] first brought Bradbury to movie theaters in 1953 with ''[[It Came from Outer Space (book)|It Came from Outer Space]]'', a [[Harry Essex]] screenplay developed from Bradbury's screen treatment, "The Meteor". Three weeks later, [[Eugène Lourié]]'s ''[[The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms]]'' (1953), based on Bradbury's "[[The Fog Horn]]," about a sea monster mistaking the sound of a fog horn for the mating cry of a female, was released. Bradbury's close friend [[Ray Harryhausen]] produced the stop-motion animation of the creature. (Bradbury would later return the favor by writing a short story, "Tyrannosaurus Rex", about a stop-motion animator who strongly resembled Harryhausen.) Over the next 50 years, more than 35 features, shorts, and TV movies were based on Bradbury's stories or screenplays.
Recently, [[Peter Hyams]]' film version of Bradbury's 1953 story, ''A Sound of Thunder'' (2005), brought an almost unanimous negative reaction from film critics. Reviewing for ''[[The New York Times]]'', A.O. Scott observed that "it illustrates the dangers of turning a lean, elegant short story into a loud, noisy, incoherent [[B movie]]."
[[Oskar Werner]] and [[Julie Christie]] starred in ''[[Fahrenheit 451 (1966 film)|Fahrenheit 451]]'' (1966), an adaptation of Bradbury's novel by [[François Truffaut]]. A [[Fahrenheit 451 (2007 film)|new film version]] of ''Fahrenheit 451'' is being planned by director [[Frank Darabont]]. In 2002, Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company production of ''Fahrenheit 451'' at Burbank's Falcon Theatre combined live acting with projected digital animation by the [http://sromagazine.biz/mag/one_hot_stage/index.html Pixel Pups]. In [[1984]] [[Telarium]] released a [[video game]] for [[Commodore 64]] based on ''Fahrenheit 451''.[http://www.lemon64.com/?game_id=1567] Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded Pandemonium in 1964, staging the New York production of ''The World of Ray Bradbury'' (1964), adaptations of "[[The Pedestrian]]," "The Veldt" and "To the Chicago Abyss."




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Specific references:
Specific references:
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [http://www.raybradbury.com/ Ray Bradbury] - Official site
* [http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/08/23/people.bradbury.ap/index.html]
* [http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/08/23/people.bradbury.ap/index.html]
* [http://www.bradburymedia.co.uk Bradbury Media] - Extensive coverage of work in film, TV, radio plus exhaustive short story cross-reference.
* [http://www.americanfilmfoundation.com/order/ray_bradbury.shtml Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer], film by Terry Sanders
* [http://immersion.raybradbury.ru Illustrated guide to Bradbury's stories] (English, Polish and Russian languages)
* [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Ray_Bradbury.htm Exhaustive bibliography at FantasticFiction.com]
* [http://www.erinorourke.com/bradbury.html Survey of Scholarship] Detailed look at critical scholarship of Bradbury's works throughout his career.
* [http://wiredforbooks.org/raybradbury/ Two audio interviews of Ray Bradbury (1992 and 1993), RealAudio]
* [http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html Videos of Bradbury on the Internet, censorship and other subjects]

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Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22 1920) is an American writer of novels, essays and short stories, particularly on topics in fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery. He is probably best known for The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 book which can be seen as either a short story collection or a novel, and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.

Beginnings

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, to a Swedish immigrant mother and a father who was a power and telephone lineman.[1] His paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were newspaper publishers. Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth, spending much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan. His novels Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer depict the town of Waukegan as "Green Town" and are semi-autobiographical. The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, in 1926–27 and 1932–33 as his father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan, and eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen. Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938 but chose not to attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. He continued to educate himself at the local library, and having been influenced by science fiction heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, he began to publish science fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. His first paid piece was for the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in 1941, for which he earned $15.[2] He became a full-time writer by the end of 1942. His first book, Dark Carnival, a collection of short works, was published in 1947 by Arkham House. He married Marguerite McClure (1922–2003) in 1947, and they had four daughters.

A chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with the British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put The Martian Chronicles into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed and was a substantial boost to Bradbury's career.


Honors and awards


Further reading

  • William F. Nolan, The Ray Bradbury Companion: A Life and Career History, Photolog, and Comprehensive Checklist of Writings, Gale Research (1975). Hardcover, 339 pages. ISBN 0-8103-0930-0
  • Donn Albright, Bradbury Bits & Pieces: The Ray Bradbury Bibliography, 1974-88, Starmont House (1990). ISBN 155742151X
  • Robin Anne Reid, Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press (2000). 133 pages. ISBN 0313309019
  • Jerry Weist, Bradbury, an Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor, William Morrow & Company (2002). Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN 0-06-001182-3
  • Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, Kent State University Press (2004). Hardcover, 320 pages. ISBN 0-87338-779-1
  • Sam Weller, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, HarperCollins (2005). Hardcover, 384 pages. ISBN 0-06-054581-X

Documentaries about Ray Bradbury

  • Bradbury's works and approach to writing are documented in Terry Sanders' film Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963).

References

General references:

Specific references:

  1. ↑ Certificate of Birth, Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22, 1920, Lake County Clerk's Record #4750. Although he was named after Rae Williams, a cousin on his father's side, Ray Bradbury's birth certificate spells his first name as "Ray."
  2. ↑ http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/08/23/people.bradbury.ap/index.html]
  3. ↑ 2007 Special Awards from the Pulitzer Prize website]
  4. ↑ http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/BasicSearchInput.jsp
  5. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056091/%7C title = Icarus Montgolfier Wright
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