Ray bradbury

Ray Bradbury (Waukegan, Illinois, August 22, 1920 - Los Angeles, California, June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction writer. He is mainly known for his work Martian Chronicles (1950) and the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). He was also known, although not massively, for being a great-great grandson of Mary Bradbury.

Biography

Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, the son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Moberg. His family moved several times from their hometown of Illinois, finally settling in Los Angeles, California, in 1934. Bradbury had older twin brothers born in 1916: Leonard and Sam, but Sam died at the age two years old His sister Isabel, who was born in 1926, also died in infancy of pneumonia. In the same year the writer's grandfather died. This early familiarity with death was reflected in many future literary works.

Thereafter, Bradbury was an avid reader throughout his youth and an amateur writer.

In 1936, Bradbury joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, which was one of many actively emerging associations for young writers in the post-Great Depression United States.

He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1938, but was unable to attend college for financial reasons.

To earn a living, he began selling newspapers from 1938 to 1942. In addition, he set out to become self-taught by spending most of his time in the public library reading books, and during this period he began writing his first short stories. He began publishing in Futuria Fantasy , in which he begins to reflect on the future and its dangers. In just two years, four issues of this magazine were published.

In these small publications he gradually honed his literary skills, forming an individual style.

His initial works were sold to magazines and, thus, in the early 1940s, some of these were compiled into Dark Carnival in 1947. The publication, however, was received by the public without much interest.

Eventually, he settled in California, where he resided and continued his production until his death.

In 1942, Bradbury finally stopped selling newspapers and was able to support himself comfortably from his literary activity, creating as many as 52 stories a year. He also actively followed the development of science and technology; he visited the World's Fair in Chicago and the World's Fair in New York (1939).

In 1946, in a Los Angeles bookstore, Bradbury met Margaret McClure (Maggie), who would be his future wife. On September 27, 1947, Maggie and Ray were married, a union that lasted until McClure's death in 2003. In 1949, his first daughter was born; Susan, followed by Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra. During the first years, Maggie worked hard to give Ray the opportunity to develop his writing, since Ray's writing profession at that time did not bring him much income; the family's total monthly income was about $250, half of which was earned by Margaret.

Three years later, a collection of "Martian" stories appeared, making up the novel The Martian Chronicles, which became Bradbury's first commercially successful book, recounting the first six voyages to Mars and its subsequent colonization.

The writer later admitted that he considers the "Chronicles" the best book of him. When Ray took this collection to New York to literary agent Don Congdon, he had no money even for the train: he had to travel by bus, and he communicated with Congdon exclusively by phone at the gas station across from his house. But already on his second trip to New York, Bradbury was received by fans of his work.

Ray wrote short stories and novels of various genres, from detective to realistic and folkloric, but he is known as a classic writer of science fiction and fantasy. He also worked as a screenwriter and scriptwriter in numerous films and television series, including his collaboration with John Huston in the adaptation of Moby Dick for the homonymous film that he directed in 1956. In addition, he wrote poems and essays.

Death

She died on June 5, 2012 at the age of ninety-one in Los Angeles, California. Bradbury's personal library was bequeathed to the Waukegan Public Library where she had many of his formative reading experiences.

The New York Times called Bradbury: the writer responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. The Angeles Times credited Bradbury with the ability to write lyrically and evocatively about lands an imagination away, worlds he anchored in the here and now with a sense of visual clarity and small-town familiarity..

Bradbury's grandson, Danny Karapetian, said Bradbury's works have influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it's always really moving and heartwarming to hear their stories.

The Washington Post pointed to several modern technologies that Bradbury had envisioned long before in his writing, such as the idea of ATMs and Fahrenheit 451 Bluetooth headsets and headphones and the concepts of artificial intelligence within Ghosts of the New.

On June 6, 2012, in an official public statement from the White House Press Office, President Barack Obama said:

For many Americans, the news of Ray Bradbury's death immediately brought to mind images of his work, printed in our minds, often from an early age. His gift to tell stories reformulated our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imagination could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change and an expression of our most precious values. There is no doubt that Ray will continue to inspire many more generations with his writings, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

Many Bradbury fans have paid tribute to the author, noting the influence of his works on their own careers and creations. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg stated that Bradbury was his muse for most of his science fiction career. In the world of science fiction, fantasy, and imagination, he is immortal.

Writer Neil Gaiman asserted that "the landscape of the world we live in would have diminished if we had not had it in our world." Author Stephen King posted a statement on his website that said: "Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was titled 'The Sound of Thunder'. The sound I hear today is the thunder of the fading footsteps of a giant. But the novels and short stories remain, with all their resonance and strange beauty.

At his request, his gravestone, at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, bears the epitaph: "Author of Fahrenheit 451".

Work

He considered himself "a storyteller with moral purposes." His works often produce in the reader a metaphysical anguish and, therefore, disconcerting, but always with a touch of the manners of daily life, since they reflect Bradbury's conviction that the destiny of humanity is "to travel infinite spaces and suffer oppressive sufferings to conclude defeated, contemplating the end of eternity".

A poetic halo and a certain romanticism are other persistent traits in Bradbury's work, although his themes are inspired by people's daily lives. Due to its peculiar characteristics and themes, her work can be considered as an exponent of epic realism, although she has never defined it in this way.

Although Bradbury is known as a science fiction writer, he himself stated that he was not a science fiction writer, but a fantasy writer, and that his only science fiction novel is Fahrenheit 451.

“In my works I have not tried to make predictions about the future, but warnings. It is curious, in my country every time a problem of censorship emerged it was to relucite as a paradigm of freedom Fahrenheit 451. The intellectuals, whether on the right or on the left, are always afraid of the fantastic because they feel so real about that world that they think you're trying to fool and obviously so. (...) We live in a world that absorbs us with its rules, with its rules and bureaucracy, which serves nothing. You have to be very careful with the intellectuals and psychologists, who try to tell you what you have to read and what not."

Along with Leigh Brackett, he is considered one of the writers most identified with the pulp magazine Planet Stories; both authors collaborated on the short novel Lorelei of the Red Mist, which appeared in 1946. Bradbury's submissions to the magazine include one of the early stories in the Martian Chronicles series.

Fame after Fahrenheit 451

World fame came to Bradbury after the novel Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953. The novel was first published in the newly launched Playboy magazine. In the novel, Bradbury showed a totalitarian society in which any book is subject to burning. In 1966, director François Truffaut adapted the novel into a feature film.

Cinema in general played an important role in the life of the writer: he created many scripts for films. Likewise, Bradbury could have become a screenwriter for the famous Hitchcock film The Birds , but he was busy at the time with the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents , so he did not could take another project.

After becoming a popular writer, Bradbury continued to write actively, working several hours a day. In 1957, he published his book Summer Wine , to which he later wrote a sequel called Farewell Summer . However, the publishers refused to publish the sequel, citing the "immaturity" from the text: the writer released the second part in 2006, half a century after the first.

Ray Bradbury at a conference

The novel Summer Wine, like Martian Chronicles, was made up of individual stories, some of which had been previously published. This book, however, is a more complete work than Chronicle, as it is considered Bradbury's most autobiographical novel, and the author's characteristics can be seen in two characters at once: the brothers Tom and Douglas Spaulding, who live in the city of Green Town, whose prototype was Waukegan, where Bradbury is a native.

After 1963, Bradbury continued to publish new stories, but also actively concentrated on another genre: drama. The first collection of short works by him, The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics, was published in 1963 and focused on Ireland, where Bradbury spent six months. Two shows based on Bradbury's works soon appeared on television: The World of Ray Bradbury and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. Also in the 1960s, the writer participated in the creation of a film on the history of America for the World's Fair in New York in 1964.

His interest in fiction and the dramatic arts continued into the 1970s, but at this time Bradbury also became interested in poetry, publishing three collections of his poems. In 1982 all the poems were published in one volume. During this period of her life, Bradbury also created many literary works, far from science fiction, published in magazines on everything from Life to Playboy .

Bradbury republished some of his early stories in 1984 in a special collection Memoirs of Crimes, and later published the crime novel Death Is a Lonely Business. Also at this time, he began appearing on cable television's Ray Bradbury Theater series, in which many of the writer's stories were filmed. During this period of his life, Bradbury received numerous awards in the field of literature.

Ray Bradbury is often called the "master of science fiction ". He is, however, considered as himself; a fantasy writer; only a part of his works were written in the science fiction genre.

Film, television and musical adaptations

• Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut, 1966), with Julie Christie and Oskar Werner;
• The illustrated man (Jack Smight, 1969), with Rod Steiger;
• Martian Chronicles(Michael Anderson, 1980), with Rock Hudson, Gayle Hunnicutt and Fritz Weaver;
• The carnival of darkness (Something wicked this way eatsJack Clayton, 1983), Disney, Ray Bradbury script;
• The Ray Bradbury Theatertelevision series, 65 episodes, 1985-1986 and 1988-1992;
• The Halloween tree (The Halloween Tree1993), animated film by Hanna-Barbera;
• The sound of thunder (Peter Hyams, 2005), Warner Bros, with Edward Burns, Ben Kingsley and Catherine McCormack;
• Argentine rock band Abra Vador composed the song called That thing at the end of the ladderbased on the story that bears the same name;
• Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani, 2018), TV movie, with Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon;
• Episode 35 of the third season of the series The Twilight Zone (1959) I sing the body electric! is based on his homonymous account;
• The episode 8 B of the first season of the series The Twilight Zone (1985), entitled The burning manIt is based on its homonymous account;
• The episode entitled The jar series Alfred Hitchcock presents is based on his homonymous account;
• The movie It came from outer space, led in 1953 by Jack Arnold, is based on the story The meteor;
• The movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathomsaddressed in 1953 by Eugène Lourié, is based on the homonymous account;
• The series Stories for not sleepingcreated in 1964 by Narcissus Ibáñez Serrador adapted numerous stories.

Awards

• 1947: O. Henry Award;
• 1948: O. Henry Award;
• 1954: Benjamin Franklin Award which recognizes excellence in independent publication;
• 1968: ASWA Award for the best article referring to space in an American magazine in 1967 An Impatient Gulliver Above Our Roots;
• 1970: Hall of the Fame of Science Fiction by the Story Third expeditionFrom the book Marcianas Chronicles;
• 1971: Seiun Tale Award for The Poems;
• 1972: Seiun fairytale award The Blue Bottle;
• 1973: Seiun Tale Award for The Black Ferris;
• 1977:
  • World Fantasy Award: for a lifetime of achievements;
  • Locus Survey: Fourteenth in the ranking of best authors of all time;
• 1979: Balrog Prize in the Poetry category;
• 1980: Gandalf Fantasy Award;
• 1983: Saturn Award for Best Screenplay The carnival of darkness;
• 1984:
  • Prometheus Hall of Fame of the Futuristic Libertarian Society by Fahrenheit 451;
  • Jules Verne Award;
  • Valentine Davies Prize by Writers Guild of America for his work as a film writer;
• 1985: PEN Center USA West Award for a Life of Achievements;
• 1988: Grand Master appointed by the Association of American Fiction Science Writers (SFWA);
• 1989: Bram Stoker Award in three categories (Best Fiction Work, Best Short History and Recognition for a Life of Work);
• 1993: CableACE to the best drama series by The Ray Bradbury Theater;
• 1994: Emmy for the television screen The Tree of Witches;
• 1998:
  • Locus Survey, 23rd best novel before 1990 by Martian Chronicles;
  • Locus Survey, 29.a best novel before 1990 by Fahrenheit 451;
  • Included in the Hall of Fame of Fiction Science;
• 1999: George Pal Memorial of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Terror Films;
• 2000: Medal for the outstanding contribution to American letters;
• 2003: Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology One More for the Road;
• 2004:
  • Retro Hugo Award to the best novel of 1953 by Fahrenheit 451;
  • National Medal of Arts for its contribution to science fiction in the United States;
• 2006: Redonda Kingdom Award that distinguishes the work of non-Spanish authors;
• 2007: Special mention of the Pulitzer Prize for his “distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an incomparable author of science fiction and fantasy.”