Ray Bradbury


Ray Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938.Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter.He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947.

His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences.Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden.In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state.Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind.In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays.His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies.Mr. Bradbury's eagerly awaited new novel, From the Dust Returned, will be published by William Morrow at Halloween 2001.Morrow will release One More For the Road, a new collection Bradbury stories, at Christmas 2001.

Ray Bradbury's work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. He has been awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, among others.In November 2000, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was conferred upon Mr. Bradbury at the 2000 National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City.

Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary. He has been nominated for an Academy Award (for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright), and has won an Emmy Award (for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree).He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the creative consultant on the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World, and later contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France.

Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie live in Los Angeles with their four beloved cats.They have four daughters and eight grandchildren.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve.In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me.I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along."

Awards
World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement nominee (1976)
World Fantasy Best Collection nominee (1977) : Long After Midnight
World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement winner (1977)
Bram Stoker Best Short story nominee (1988) : The Young Thing at the Top of the Stairs
Bram Stoker Best Collection nominee (1988) : The Toynbee Convector
British Fantasy Society Best Collection nominee (1998) : Driving Blind
World Fantasy Best Collection nominee (1998) : Driving Blind
Collections
Dark Carnival (1947)
The Golden Apples of the Sun: And Other Stories (1950)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)
The Illustrated Man (1951)
The Silver Locusts (1951)
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
The October Country (1956)
The Day It Rained Forever (1959)
R Is for Rocket (1960)
The Anthem Sprinters And Other Antics (1963)
The Machineries of Joy (1964)
The Vintage Bradbury (1965)
S Is for Space (1966)
Tomorrow Midnight (1966)
I Sing the Body Electric!: And Other Stories (1969)
Fever Dream And Other Fantasies (1970)
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit: And Other Plays (1972)
Pillar of Fire And Other Plays (1973)
Long After Midnight (1976)
The Small Assassin (1976)
Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns: New Poems, Both Light and Dark (1977)
Colonies in Space (1978)
Twin Hieroglyphs That Swim the River Dust (1978)
Beyond 1984: A Remembrance of Things Future (1979)
This Attic Where the Meadow Greens (1979)
To Sing Strange Songs (1979)
The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980)
Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (1982)
Dinosaur Tales (1983)
A Memory of Murder (1984)
The Smile (1984)
The Million Year Picnic: And Other Stories (1986)
Cuts (1987)
A Sound of Thunder (1987)
Lord John Ten (1988)
The Toynbee Convector (1988)
Classic Stories 1 (1990)
Quicker Than the Eye (1992)
The Ravine and Here There Be Tigers (1994)
Dogs Think That Every Day is Christmas (1997)
Driving Blind (1997)
A Chapbook for Burnt Out Priests, Rabbis And Ministers (1998)
Kaleidoscope (1998)
Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001)
They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poems of Ray Bradbury (2001)
I Live by the Invisible (2002)
One More for the Road (2002)
Non Fiction
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year (1973)
Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)
Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures (1991)
Back There Where the Past Was: A Small-Town Boyhood (1999) (with Charles Champlin)
Rod Steiger: Memoirs of a Friendship (2000)
60 Greatest Science Fiction Shows Selected By Ray Bradbury (2001)
Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities : 1950-2050 (2001) (with Roger D Launius)
Novels
Switch on the Night (1955)
Dandelion Wine (1957)
A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
Twice 22 (1959)
Something Wicked this Way Comes (1962)
Autumn People (1965)
The Halloween Tree (1972)
The Ghosts of Forever (1980)
The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope (1981)
The Love Affair (1982)
Death Is a Lonely Business (1985)
Green Shadows, White Whale (1985)
Fever Dream (Night Lights) (1987)
The Dragon (1988)
Folon's Folons (1990)
A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities (1990)
With Cat for Comforter (1997)
Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable (1998)
From the Dust Returned (1999)
Let's All Kill Constance (2003)
Short Stories
The Crowd (1943)
Doodad (1943)
The Ducker (1943)
The Piper (1943)
R is for Rocket (1943)
The Scythe (1943)
The Wind (1943)
Bang! You're Dead! (1944)
The Jar (1944)
The Lake (1944)
There was an Old Woman (1944)
Undersea Guardians (1944)
The Big Black and White Game (1945)
Corpse Carnival (1945)
The Dead Man (1945)
Invisible Boy (1945)
The Poems (1945)
Skeleton (1945)
The Tombstone (1945)
A Careful Man Dies (1946)
Chrysalis (1946)
Electrocution (1946)
The Emissary (1946)
Frost and Fire (1946)
The Homecoming (1946)
I See You Never (1946)
Let's Play 'Poison' (1946)
Lorelei of the Red Mist (1946) (with Leigh Brackett)
The Million-year Picnic (1946)
The Miracles of Jamie (1946)
The Night (1946)
One Timeless Spring (1946)
Our Timeless Spring (1946)
The Small Assassin (1946)
The Smiling People (1946)
The Traveller (1946)
The Cistern (1947)
El Dia de Muerte (1947)
The Handler (1947)
Interim (1947)
Jack-in-the-Box (1947)
The Man Upstairs (1947)
The Next in Line (1947)
Rocket Summer (1947)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947)
Uncle Einar (1947)
Zero Hour (1947)
Asleep in Armageddon (1948)
The Black Ferris (1948)
End of Summer (1948)
Fever Dream (1948)
The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl (1948)
The Long Years (1948)
Mars Is Heaven! (1948)
The October Game (1948)
The Off Season (1948)
Pillar of Fire (1948)
Powerhouse (1948)
Referent (1948)
The Shape of Things (1948)
The Third Expedition (1948)
Tomorrow's Child (1948)
The Undead Die (1948) (with E Everett Evans)
The Visitor (1948)
The Women (1948)
Changeling (1949)
Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed (1949)
The Exiles (1949)
The Great Fire (1949)
I, Mars (1949)
Kaleidoscope (1949)
The Mad Wizards of Mars (1949)
The Man (1949)
Marionettes, Inc. (1949)
The Martian (1949)
The Naming of Names (1949)
Night Call, Collect (1949)
The One Who Waits (1949)
The Silent Towns (1949)
The Summer Night (1949)
The Blue Bottle (1950)
The City (1950)
Forever and the Earth (1950)
The Fox and the Forest (1950)
The Green Morning (1950)
The Highway (1950)
I'll Not Look for Wine (1950)
The Illustrated Man (1950)
The Locusts (1950)
The Long Rain (1950)
The Luggage Store (1950)
The Musicians (1950)
Night Meeting (1950)
Punishment Without Crime (1950)
The Rocket (1950)
The Settlers (1950)
The Shore (1950)
The Taxpayer (1950)
There Will Come Soft Rains (1950)
Usher II (1950)
The Veldt (1950)
The Watchers (1950)
Way in the Middle of the Air (1950)
The Whole Town's Sleeping (1950)
Ylla (1950)
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1951)
Embroidery (1951)
The Fire Balloons (1951)
The Fog Horn (1951)
Here There Be Tygers (1951)
The Last Night of the World (1951)
No Particular Night Or Morning (1951)
The Other Foot (1951)
The Pedestrian (1951)
The Pumpernickel (1951)
The Rocket Man (1951)
The Screaming Woman (1951)
The April Witch (1952)
En La Noche (1952)
A Flight of Ravens (1952)
The Gift (1952)
The Great Wide World Over There (1952)
A Piece of Wood (1952)
The Smile (1952)
A Sound of Thunder (1952)
The Tombling Day (1952)
The Wilderness (1952)
And So Died Riabouchinska (1953)
And the Rock Cried Out (1953)
The Flying Machine (1953)
The Garbage Collector (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind (1953)
Hail and Farewell (1953)
The Meadow (1953)
The Murderer (1953)
The Playground (1953)
A Scent of Sarsaparilla (1953)
Sun and Shadow (1953)
Time in Thy Flight (1953)
All Summer in a Day (1954)
The Dwarf (1954)
Interval in Sunlight (1954)
It Came from Outer Space (1954)
The Strawberry Window (1954)
Touched with Fire (1954)
The Watchful Poker Chip of H Matisse (1954)
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1954)
The Dragon (1955)
The Little Mice (1955)
The Time Machine (1955)
The Trolley (1955)
The End of the Beginning (1956)
Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1956)
The Sound of Summer Running (1956)
The Time of Going Away (1956)
Almost the End of the World (1957)
Dandelion Wine (excerpts) (1957)
The Day it Rained Forever (1957)
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1958)
In a Season of Calm Weather (1959)
A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
The Shoreline at Sunset (1959)
The Sunset Harp (1959)
And the Sailor, Home from the Sea (1960)
The Best of All Possible Worlds (1960)
Death and the Maiden (1960)
The Drummer Boy of Shiloh (1960)
Some Live Like Lazarus (1960)
The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge (1961)
The Illustrated Woman (1961)
Long After Midnight (1961)
Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! (1962)
Come into My Cellar (1962)
Getting Through Sunday Somehow (1962)
The Machineries of Joy (1962)
A Miracle of Rare Device (1962)
Perhaps We Are Going Away (1962)
The Prehistoric Producer (1962)
Tyrannosaurus Rex (1962)
The Anthem Sprinters (1963)
The Lifework of Juan Diaz (1963)
To the Chicago Abyss (1963)
The Vacation (1963)
The Cold Wind and the Warm (1964)
Heavy-Set (1964)
The Kilimanjaro Device (1965)
Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine (1966)
The Man in the Rorschach Shirt (1966)
The Lost City of Mars (1967)
The Year the Glop-Monster Won the Golden Lion at Cannes (1967)
Death Warmed Over (1968)
Christus Apollo (1969)
Downwind from Gettysburg (1969)
The Haunting of the New (1969)
Henry the Ninth (1969)
I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)
The Inspired Chicken Motel (1969)
The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place (1969)
Yes, We'll Gather at the River (1969)
The Messiah (1971)
The Utterly Perfect Murder (1971)
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
McGillahee's Brat (1972)
The Parrot Who Met Papa (1972)
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! (1973)
The Wish (1973)
That Old Dog Lying in the Dust (1974)
The Burning Man (1975)
The Better Part of Wisdom (1976)
Darling Adolf (1976)
Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds (1976)
G. B. S. - Mark V (1976)
A Story of Love (1976)
Gotcha! (1978)
The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope (1980)
The Last Circus (1980)
A Touch of Petulance (1980)
Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-Made Truly Egyptian Mummy (1981)
Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up? (1983)
Lo, the Dear Daft Dinosaurs! (1983)
What If I Said: the Dinosaur's Not Dead (1983)
Banshee (1984)
The Collector Speaks (1984)
Long After Ecclesiastes (1984)
At Midnight, in the Month of June (1988)
Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned (1988)
By the Numbers! (1988)
Come, and Bring Constance! (1988)
I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here? (1988)
Junior (1988)
Lafayette, Farewell (1988)
The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair (1988)
Long Division (1988)
The Love Affair (1988)
On the Orient, North (1988)
One for His Lordship, and One for the Road! (1988)
One Night in Your Life (1988)
Promises, Promises (1988)
The Thing at the Top of the Stairs (1988)
The Toynbee Convector (1988)
Trapdoor (1988)
West of October (1988)
The Young Thing at the Top of the Stairs (1988)
Of Absence, Darkness, Death: Things Which Are Not (1989)
Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas (1990)
Fee Fie Foe Fum (1993)
Last Rites (1994)
No News, or What Killed the Dog? (1994)
Unterseeboot Doktor (1994)
The Very Gentle Murders (1994)
Another Fine Mess (1995)
At the End of the Ninth Year (1995)
Dorian in Excelsis (1995)
Grand Theft (1995)
Once More, Legato (1995)
Quicker than the Eye (1995)
The Witch Door (1995)
Bug (1996)
Exchange (1996)
The Finnegan (1996)
Free Dirt (1996)
The Ghost in the Machine (1996)
Hopscotch (1996)
The Other Highway (1996)
Remember Sascha? (1996)
That Woman on the Lawn (1996)
Zaharoff/Richter Mark V (1996)
Driving Blind (1997)
Hello, I Must Be Going (1997)
The Highest Branch on the Tree (1997)
House Divided (1997)
I Wonder What's Become of Sally (1997)
If MGM Is Killed, Who Gets the Lion? (1997)
Madame Et Monsieur Shill (1997)
The Mirror (1997)
Mr Pale (1997)
Night Train to Babylon (1997)
Nothing Changes (1997)
Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come II (1997)
Remember Me? (1997)
Someone in the Rain (1997)
That Bird That Comes Out of the Clock (1997)
Thunder in the Morning (1997)
Virgin Resusitas (1997)
A Woman Is a Fast-Moving Picnic (1997)
Pilgrimage (1999)
The Affluence of Despair (2000)
Haunted House (2000) (with Elizabeth Albright)
And the Moon Be Still as Bright
And This Did Dante Do
The Earth Men
Epilogue
The Headpiece
Holiday
The Marriage Mender
The Old Ones
Perchance to Dream
The Town Where No One Got Off