Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920 – June
5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter.
He worked in a variety of genres, including
fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery
fiction.
Widely known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit
451 (1953), and his science-fiction and horror-story
collections, The Martian Chronicles (1950),
The Illustrated Man (1951), and I Sing the
Body Electric (1969), Bradbury was one of
the most celebrated 20th- and 21st-century
American writers. While most of his best known
work is in speculative fiction, he also wrote
in other genres, such as the coming-of-age
novel Dandelion Wine (1957) and the fictionalized
memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992).
Recipient of numerous awards, including a
2007 Pulitzer Citation, Bradbury also wrote
and consulted on screenplays and television
scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from
Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted
to comic book, television, and film formats.
Upon his death in 2012, The New York Times
called Bradbury "the writer most responsible
for bringing modern science fiction into the
literary mainstream".
== Early life ==
Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan,
Illinois, to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury
(1888–1966), a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard
Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power
and telephone lineman of English ancestry.
He was given the middle name "Douglas" after
the actor Douglas Fairbanks. Bradbury was
related to the American Shakespeare scholar
Douglas Spaulding and descended from Mary
Bradbury, who was tried at one of the Salem
witch trials in 1692.Bradbury was surrounded
by an extended family during his early childhood
and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read
him short stories when he was a child. This
period provided foundations for both the author
and his stories. In Bradbury's works of fiction,
1920s Waukegan becomes "Green Town", Illinois.
The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona,
during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their
father pursued employment, each time returning
to Waukegan. They eventually settled in Los
Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury was 14 years
old. The family arrived with only US$40, which
paid for rent and food until his father finally
found a job making wire at a cable company
for $14 a week. This meant that they could
stay, and Bradbury, who was in love with Hollywood,
was ecstatic.Bradbury attended Los Angeles
High School and was active in the drama club.
He often roller-skated through Hollywood in
hopes of meeting celebrities. Among the creative
and talented people Bradbury met were special-effects
pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George
Burns. Bradbury's first pay as a writer, at
age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns
to use on the Burns and Allen radio show.
== Influences ==
=== 
Literature ===
Throughout his youth, Bradbury was an avid
reader and writer and knew at a young age
that he was "going into one of the arts."
Bradbury began writing his own stories at
age 11 (1931), during the Great Depression
— sometimes writing on the only available
paper, butcher paper.In his youth, he spent
much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan,
reading such authors as H. G. Wells, Jules
Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. At 12, Bradbury
began writing traditional horror stories and
said he tried to imitate Poe until he was
about 18. In addition to comics, he loved
Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan of
the Apes, especially Burroughs' John Carter
of Mars series. The Warlord of Mars impressed
him so much that at the age of 12, he wrote
his own sequel. The young Bradbury was also
a cartoonist and loved to illustrate. He wrote
about Tarzan and drew his own Sunday panels.
He listened to the radio show Chandu the Magician,
and every night when the show went off the
air, he would sit and write the entire script
from memory.As a teen in Beverly Hills, he
often visited his mentor and friend science-fiction
writer Bob Olsen, sharing ideas and maintaining
contact. In 1936, at a secondhand bookstore
in Hollywood, Bradbury discovered a handbill
promoting meetings of the Los Angeles Science
Fiction Society. Excited to find there were
others sharing his interest, Bradbury joined
a weekly Thursday-night conclave at age 16.Bradbury
cited H. G. Wells and Jules Verne as his primary
science-fiction influences. Bradbury identified
with Verne, saying, "He believes the human
being is in a strange situation in a very
strange world, and he believes that we can
triumph by behaving morally".
Bradbury admitted that he stopped reading
science-fiction books in his 20s and embraced
a broad field of literature that included
Alexander Pope and poet John Donne. Bradbury
had just graduated from high school when he
met Robert Heinlein, then 31 years old. Bradbury
recalled, "He was well known, and he wrote
humanistic science fiction, which influenced
me to dare to be human instead of mechanical."In
young adulthood Bradbury read stories published
in Astounding Science Fiction, and read everything
by Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and
the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and
A. E. van Vogt.
=== Hollywood ===
The family lived about four blocks from the
Fox Uptown Theatre on Western Avenue in Los
Angeles, the flagship theater for MGM and
Fox. There, Bradbury learned how to sneak
in and watched previews almost every week.
He rollerskated there, as well as all over
town, as he put it, "hell-bent on getting
autographs from glamorous stars. It was glorious."
Among stars the young Bradbury was thrilled
to encounter were Norma Shearer, Laurel and
Hardy, and Ronald Colman. Sometimes, he spent
all day in front of Paramount Pictures or
Columbia Pictures and then skated to the Brown
Derby to watch the stars who came and went
for meals. He recounted seeing Cary Grant,
Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West, whom he learned
made a regular appearance every Friday night,
bodyguard in tow.Bradbury relates the following
meeting with Sergei Bondarchuk, director of
Soviet epic film series War and Peace, at
a Hollywood award ceremony in Bondarchuk's
honor:
They formed a long queue and as Bondarchuk
was walking along it he recognized several
people: "Oh Mr. Ford, I like your film." He
recognized the director, Greta Garbo, and
someone else. I was standing at the very end
of the queue and silently watched this. Bondarchuk
shouted to me; "Ray Bradbury, is that you?"
He rushed up to me, embraced me, dragged me
inside, grabbed a bottle of Stolichnaya, sat
down at his table where his closest friends
were sitting. All the famous Hollywood directors
in the queue were bewildered. They stared
at me and asked each other "Who is this Bradbury?"
And, swearing, they left, leaving me alone
with Bondarchuk...
== 
Career ==
Bradbury's first published story was "Hollerbochen's
Dilemma", which appeared in the January 1938
number of Forrest J. Ackerman's fanzine Imagination!.
In July 1939, Ackerman and his then-girlfriend
Morojo gave 19-year-old Bradbury the money
to head to New York for the First World Science
Fiction Convention in New York City, and funded
Bradbury's fanzine, titled Futuria Fantasia.
Bradbury wrote most of its four issues, each
limited to under 100 copies.Between 1940 and
1947, he was a contributor to Rob Wagner's
film magazine, Script.Bradbury was free to
start a career in writing, when owing to his
bad eyesight, he was rejected admission into
the military during World War II. Having been
inspired by science-fiction heroes such as
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Bradbury began
to publish science-fiction stories in fanzines
in 1938. Bradbury was invited by Forrest J.
Ackerman to attend the Los Angeles Science
Fiction Society, which at the time met at
Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles.
This was where he met the writers Robert A.
Heinlein, Emil Petaja, Fredric Brown, Henry
Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, and Jack Williamson.In
1939, Bradbury joined Laraine Day's Wilshire
Players Guild, where for two years, he wrote
and acted in several plays. They were, as
Bradbury later described, "so incredibly bad"
that he gave up playwriting for two decades.
Bradbury's first paid piece, "Pendulum", written
with Henry Hasse, was published in the pulp
magazine Super Science Stories in November
1941, for which he earned $15.Bradbury sold
his first story, "The Lake", for $13.75 at
22, and became a full-time writer by 24. His
first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival,
was published in 1947 by Arkham House, a small
press in Sauk City, Wisconsin, owned by writer
August Derleth. Reviewing Dark Carnival for
the New York Herald Tribune, Will Cuppy proclaimed
Bradbury "suitable for general consumption"
and predicted that he would become a writer
of the caliber of British fantasy author John
Collier.After a rejection notice from the
pulp Weird Tales, Bradbury submitted "Homecoming"
to Mademoiselle, which was spotted by a young
editorial assistant named Truman Capote. Capote
picked the Bradbury manuscript from a slush
pile, which led to its publication. Homecoming
won a place in the O. Henry Award Stories
of 1947.In UCLA's Powell Library, in a study
room with typewriters for rent, Bradbury wrote
his classic story of a book burning future,
The Fireman, which was about 25,000 words
long. It was later published at about 50,000
words under the name Fahrenheit 451, for a
total cost of $9.80, due to the library's
typewriter-rental fees of ten cents per half-hour.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.
== Writing ==
Bradbury attributed his lifelong habit of
writing every day to two incidents. The first
of these, occurring when he was three years
old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon
Chaney's performance in The Hunchback of Notre
Dame. The second incident occurred in 1932,
when a carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico,
touched the young man on the nose with an
electrified sword, made his hair stand on
end, and shouted, "Live forever!" Bradbury
remarked, "I felt that something strange and
wonderful had happened to me because of my
encounter with Mr. Electrico...[he] gave me
a future...I began to write, full-time. I
have written every single day of my life since
that day 69 years ago." At that age, Bradbury
first started to do magic, which was his first
great love. If he had not discovered writing,
he would have become a magician.Bradbury claimed
a wide variety of influences, and described
discussions he might have with his favorite
poets and writers Robert Frost, William Shakespeare,
John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, and Thomas
Wolfe. From Steinbeck, he said he learned
"how to write objectively and yet insert all
of the insights without too much extra comment".
He studied Eudora Welty for her "remarkable
ability to give you atmosphere, character,
and motion in a single line". Bradbury's favorite
writers growing up included Katherine Anne
Porter, who wrote about the American South,
Edith Wharton, and Jessamyn West.Bradbury
was once described as a "Midwest surrealist"
and is often labeled a science-fiction writer,
which he described as "the art of the possible."
Bradbury resisted that categorization, however:
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.
Bradbury recounted when he came into his own
as a writer, the afternoon he wrote a short
story about his first encounter with death.
When he was a boy, he met a young girl at
the beach and she went out into the water
and never came back. Years later, as he wrote
about it, tears flowed from him. He recognized
he had taken the leap from emulating the many
writers he admired to connecting with his
voice as a writer.When later asked about the
lyrical power of his prose, Bradbury replied,
"From reading so much poetry every day of
my life. My favorite writers have been those
who’ve said things well." He is quoted,
"If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live
a full and complete life."In high school,
Bradbury was active in both the poetry club
and the drama club, continuing plans to become
an actor, but becoming serious about his writing
as his high school years progressed. Bradbury
graduated from Los Angeles High School, where
he took poetry classes with Snow Longley Housh,
and short-story writing courses taught by
Jeannet Johnson. The teachers recognized his
talent and furthered his interest in writing,
but he did not attend college. Instead, he
sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton
Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to
his education, Bradbury said:
Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges
and universities. 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.
He told The Paris Review, "You can't learn
to write in college. It's a very bad place
for writers because the teachers always think
they know more than you do – and they don’t."Bradbury
described his inspiration as, "My stories
run up and bite me in the leg—I respond
by writing them down—everything that goes
on during the bite. When I finish, the idea
lets go and runs off".
=== "Green Town" ===
A reinvention of Waukegan, Green Town is a
symbol of safety and home, which is often
juxtaposed as a contrasting backdrop to tales
of fantasy or menace. It serves as the setting
of his semiautobiographical classics Dandelion
Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and
Farewell Summer, as well as in many of his
short stories. In Green Town, Bradbury's favorite
uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal
supernatural powers, and his grandparents
provide room and board to Charles Dickens.
Perhaps the most definitive usage of the pseudonym
for his hometown, in Summer Morning, Summer
Night, a collection of short stories and vignettes
exclusively about Green Town, Bradbury returns
to the signature locale as a look back at
the rapidly disappearing small-town world
of the American heartland, which was the foundation
of his roots.
== Cultural contributions ==
Bradbury wrote many short essays on the culture
and the arts, attracting the attention of
critics in this field, but he used his fiction
to explore and criticize his culture and society.
Bradbury observed, for example, that Fahrenheit
451 touches on the alienation of people by
media:
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451
I thought I was describing a world that might
evolve in four or five decades. But only a
few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night,
a husband and wife passed me, walking their
dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely
stunned. The woman held in one hand a small
cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna
quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires
which ended in a dainty cone plugged into
her right ear. There she was, oblivious to
man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers
and soap opera cries, sleep walking, helped
up and down curbs by a husband who might just
as well not have been there. This was not
fiction.
Bradbury stated the novel worked as a critique
of the later development of political correctness:
How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand
up in 1994?R.B.: It works even better because
we have political correctness now. Political
correctness is the real enemy these days.
The black groups want to control our thinking
and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual
groups don’t want you to criticize them.
It’s thought control and freedom of speech
control.
In a 1982 essay, he wrote, "People ask me
to predict the Future, when all I want to
do is prevent it". This intent had been expressed
earlier by other authors, who sometimes attributed
it to him.
On May 24, 1956, Bradbury appeared on television
in Hollywood on the popular quiz show You
Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx. During
his introductory comments and on-air banter
with Marx, Bradbury briefly discussed some
of his books and other works, including giving
an overview of "The Veldt", his short story
published six years earlier in The Saturday
Evening Post under the title "The World the
Children Made".Bradbury was a consultant for
the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York
World's Fair and for the original exhibit
housed in Epcot's Spaceship Earth geosphere
at Walt Disney World. Bradbury concentrated
on detective fiction in the 1980s. In the
latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s,
he also hosted The Ray Bradbury Theater, a
televised anthology series based on his short
stories.
Bradbury was a strong supporter of public
library systems, raising money to prevent
the closure of several libraries in California
facing budgetary cuts. He said "libraries
raised me", and shunned colleges and universities,
comparing his own lack of funds during the
Depression with poor contemporary students.
His opinion varied on modern technology. In
1985 Bradbury wrote, "I see nothing but good
coming from computers. When they first appeared
on the scene, people were saying, 'Oh my God,
I'm so afraid.' I hate people like that – I
call them the neo-Luddites", and "In a sense,
[computers] are simply books. Books are all
over the place, and computers will be, too".
He resisted the conversion of his work into
e-books, saying in 2010, "We have too many
cellphones. We've got too many internets.
We have got to get rid of those machines.
We have too many machines now". When the publishing
rights for Fahrenheit 451 came up for renewal
in December 2011, Bradbury permitted its publication
in electronic form provided that the publisher,
Simon & Schuster, allowed the e-book to be
digitally downloaded by any library patron.
The title remains the only book in the Simon
& Schuster catalog where this is possible.Several
comic-book writers have adapted Bradbury's
stories. Particularly noted among these were
EC Comics' line of horror and science-fiction
comics. Initially, the writers plagiarized
his stories, but a diplomatic letter from
Bradbury about it led to the company paying
him and negotiating properly licensed adaptations
of his work. The comics featuring Bradbury's
stories included Tales from the Crypt, Weird
Science, Weird Fantasy, Crime Suspenstories,
and Haunt of Fear.Bradbury remained an enthusiastic
playwright all his life, leaving a rich theatrical
legacy, as well as literary. Bradbury headed
the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles
for many years and had a five-year relationship
with the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena.Bradbury
is featured prominently in two documentaries
related to his classic 1950s-1960s era: Jason
V Brock's Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight
Zone's Magic Man, which details his troubles
with Rod Serling, and his friendships with
writers Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson,
and most especially his dear friend William
F. Nolan, as well as Brock's The AckerMonster
Chronicles!, which delves into the life of
former Bradbury agent, close friend, mega-fan,
and Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest
J Ackerman.Bradbury's legacy was celebrated
by the bookstore Fahrenheit 451 Books in Laguna
Beach, California, in the 1970s and 1980s.
The grand opening of an annex to the store
was attended by Bradbury and his favorite
illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini, in the mid-1980s.
The shop closed its doors in 1987, but in
1990, another shop with the same name (with
different owners) opened in Carlsbad, California.In
the 1980s and 90s, Bradbury served on the
advisory board of the Los Angeles Student
Film Institute.
== Personal life ==
Bradbury was married to Marguerite McClure
(January 16, 1922 – November 24, 2003) from
1947 until her death; they had four daughters:
Susan, Ramona, Bettina, and Alexandra. Bradbury
never obtained a driver's license, but relied
on public transportation or his bicycle. He
lived at home until he was 27 and married.
His wife of 56 years, Maggie, as she was affectionately
called, was the only woman Bradbury ever dated.He
was raised Baptist by his parents, who were
themselves infrequent churchgoers. As an adult,
Bradbury considered himself a "delicatessen
religionist" who resisted categorization of
his beliefs and took guidance from both Eastern
and Western faiths. He felt that his career
was "a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful,
so, so grateful. The best description of my
career as a writer is 'At play in the fields
of the Lord.'"Bradbury was a close friend
of Charles Addams, and Addams illustrated
the first of Bradbury's stories about the
Elliotts, a family that resembled Addams'
own Addams Family placed in rural Illinois.
Bradbury's first story about them was "Homecoming",
published in the 1946 Halloween issue of Mademoiselle,
with Addams' illustrations. Addams and he
planned a larger collaborative work that would
tell the family's complete history, but it
never materialized, and according to a 2001
interview, they went their separate ways.
In October 2001, Bradbury published all the
Family stories he had written in one book
with a connecting narrative, From the Dust
Returned, featuring a wraparound Addams cover
of the original "Homecoming" illustration.Another
close friend was animator Ray Harryhausen,
who was best man at Bradbury's wedding. During
a BAFTA 2010 awards tribute in honor of Ray
Harryhausen's 90th birthday, Bradbury spoke
of his first meeting Harryhausen at Forrest
J Ackerman's house when they were both 18
years old. Their shared love for science fiction,
King Kong, and the King Vidor-directed film
The Fountainhead, written by Ayn Rand, was
the beginning of a lifelong friendship. These
early influences inspired the pair to believe
in themselves and affirm their career choices.
After their first meeting, they kept in touch
at least once a month, in a friendship that
spanned over 70 years.Late in life, Bradbury
retained his dedication and passion despite
what he described as the "devastation of illnesses
and deaths of many good friends." Among the
losses that deeply grieved Bradbury was the
death of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry,
who was an intimate friend for many years.
They remained close friends for nearly three
decades after Roddenberry asked him to write
for Star Trek, which Bradbury never did, objecting
that he "never had the ability to adapt other
people's ideas into any sensible form."Bradbury
suffered a stroke in 1999 that left him partially
dependent on a wheelchair for mobility. Despite
this, he continued to write, and had even
written an essay for The New Yorker, about
his inspiration for writing, published only
a week prior to his death. Bradbury made regular
appearances at science-fiction conventions
until 2009, when he retired from the circuit.
Bradbury chose a burial place at Westwood
Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles,
with a headstone that reads "Author of Fahrenheit
451". On February 6, 2015, The New York Times
reported that the house that Bradbury lived
and wrote in for 50 years of his life, at
10265 Cheviot Drive in Cheviot Hills, Los
Angeles, California, had been demolished by
the buyer, architect Thom Mayne.
== Death ==
Bradbury died in Los Angeles, California,
on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, after a
lengthy illness. Bradbury's personal library
was willed to the Waukegan Public Library,
where he had many of his formative reading
experiences.The New York Times called Bradbury
"the writer most responsible for bringing
modern science fiction into the literary mainstream."
The Los Angeles Times credited Bradbury with
the ability "to write lyrically and evocatively
of 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 had "influenced so many artists, writers,
teachers, scientists, and it's always really
touching and comforting to hear their stories".
The Washington Post noted several modern day
technologies that Bradbury had envisioned
much earlier in his writing, such as the idea
of banking ATMs and earbuds and Bluetooth
headsets from Fahrenheit 451, and the concepts
of artificial intelligence within I Sing the
Body Electric.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 from
his work, imprinted in our minds, often from
a young age. His gift for storytelling reshaped
our culture and expanded our world. But Ray
also understood that our imaginations could
be used as a tool for better understanding,
a vehicle for change, and an expression of
our most cherished values. There is no doubt
that Ray will continue to inspire many more
generations with his writing, and our thoughts
and prayers are with his family and friends.
Numerous Bradbury fans 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 the better part of [his] sci-fi
career.... On the world of science fiction
and fantasy and imagination he is immortal".
Writer Neil Gaiman felt that "the landscape
of the world we live in would have been diminished
if we had not had him in our world". Author
Stephen King released a statement on his website
saying, "Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels
and three hundred great stories. One of the
latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder'. The
sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant's
footsteps fading away. But the novels and
stories remain, in all their resonance and
strange beauty."
== 
Bibliography ==
Bradbury is credited with writing 27 novels
and over 600 short stories. More than eight
million copies of his works, published in
over 36 languages, have been sold around the
world.
=== First novel ===
In 1949, Bradbury and his wife were expecting
their first child. He took a Greyhound bus
to New York and checked into a room at the
YMCA for 50 cents a night. He took his short
stories to a dozen publishers and no one wanted
them. Just before getting ready to go home,
Bradbury had dinner with an editor at Doubleday.
When Bradbury recounted that everyone wanted
a novel and he did not have one, the editor,
coincidentally named Walter Bradbury, asked
if the short stories might be tied together
into a book-length collection. The title was
the editor's idea; he suggested, "You could
call it The Martian Chronicles." Bradbury
liked the idea and recalled making notes in
1944 to do a book set on Mars. That evening,
he stayed up all night at the YMCA and typed
out an outline. He took it to the Doubleday
editor the next morning, who read it and wrote
Bradbury a check for $750. When Bradbury returned
to Los Angeles, he connected all the short
stories that became The Martian Chronicles.
=== Intended first novel ===
What was later issued as a collection of stories
and vignettes, Summer Morning, Summer Night,
started out to be Bradbury's first true novel.
The core of the work was Bradbury's witnessing
of the American small-town life in the American
heartland.In the winter of 1955–56, after
a consultation with his Doubleday editor,
Bradbury deferred publication of a novel based
on Green Town, the pseudonym for his hometown.
Instead, he extracted 17 stories and, with
three other Green Town tales, bridged them
into his 1957 book Dandelion Wine. Later,
in 2006, Bradbury published the original novel
remaining after the extraction, and retitled
it Farewell Summer. These two titles show
what stories and episodes Bradbury decided
to retain as he created the two books out
of one.The most significant of the remaining
unpublished stories, scenes, and fragments
were published under the originally intended
name for the novel, Summer Morning, Summer
Night, in 2007.
== Adaptations to other media ==
From 1950 to 1954, 31 of Bradbury's stories
were adapted by Al Feldstein for EC Comics
(seven of them uncredited in six stories,
including "Kaleidoscope" and "Rocket Man"
being combined as "Home To Stay" - for which
Bradbury was retroactively paid - and EC's
first version of "The Handler" under the title
"A Strange Undertaking") and 16 of these were
collected in the paperbacks, The Autumn People
(1965) and Tomorrow Midnight (1966), both
published by Ballantine Books with cover illustrations
by Frank Frazetta.
Also in the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury's
stories were televised in several anthology
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. During that same period, several stories
were adapted for radio drama, notably on the
science fiction anthologies Dimension X and
its successor X Minus One.
Producer William Alland first brought Bradbury
to movie theaters in 1953 with It Came from
Outer Space, a Harry Essex screenplay developed
from Bradbury's screen treatment "Atomic Monster".
Three weeks later came the release of Eugène
Lourié's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953),
which featured one scene 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. Bradbury's close friend Ray Harryhausen
produced the stop-motion animation of the
creature. Bradbury later returned 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.
Bradbury was hired in 1953 by director John
Huston to work on the screenplay for his film
version of Melville's Moby Dick (1956), which
stars Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, Richard
Basehart as Ishmael, and Orson Welles as Father
Mapple. A significant result of the film was
Bradbury's book Green Shadows, White Whale,
a semifictionalized account of the making
of the film, including Bradbury's dealings
with Huston and his time in Ireland, where
exterior scenes that were set in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, were filmed.
Bradbury's short story I Sing the Body Electric
(from the book of the same name) was adapted
for the 100th episode of The Twilight Zone.
The episode was first aired on May 18, 1962.
Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded
the Pandemonium Theatre Company in 1964. Its
first production was The World of Ray Bradbury,
consisting of one-act adaptations of "The
Pedestrian", "The Veldt", and "To the Chicago
Abyss". It ran for four months at the Coronet
Theatre in Los Angeles (October 1964 - February
1965); an off-Broadway production was presented
in October 1965. Another Pandemonium Theatre
Company production was mounted at the Coronet
Theatre in 1965, again presenting adaptations
of three Bradbury short stories: "The Wonderful
Ice Cream Suit," "The Day It Rained Forever,"
and "Device Out of Time." (The last was adapted
from his 1957 novel Dandelion Wine). The original
cast for this production featured Booth Coleman,
Joby Baker, Fredric Villani, Arnold Lessing,
Eddie Sallia, Keith Taylor, Richard Bull,
Gene Otis Shane, Henry T. Delgado, F. Murray
Abraham, Anne Loos, and Len Lesser. The director,
again, was Charles Rome Smith.
Oskar Werner and Julie Christie starred in
Fahrenheit 451 (1966), an adaptation of Bradbury's
novel directed by François Truffaut.
In 1966, Bradbury helped Lynn Garrison create
AVIAN, a specialist aviation magazine. For
the first issue, Bradbury wrote a poem, "Planes
That Land on Grass".
In 1969, The Illustrated Man was brought to
the big screen, starring Rod Steiger, Claire
Bloom, and Robert Drivas. Containing the prologue
and three short stories from the book, the
film received mediocre reviews. The same year,
Bradbury approached composer Jerry Goldsmith,
who had worked with Bradbury in dramatic radio
of the 1950s and later scored the film version,
to compose a cantata Christus Apollo based
on Bradbury's text. The work premiered in
late 1969, with the California Chamber Symphony
performing with narrator Charlton Heston at
UCLA.
In 1972, The Screaming Woman was adapted as
an ABC Movie-of-the-Week starring Olivia de
Havilland.
The Martian Chronicles became a three-part
TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson, which
was first broadcast by NBC in 1980. Bradbury
found the miniseries "just boring".The 1982
television movie The Electric Grandmother
was based on Bradbury's short story "I Sing
the Body Electric".
The 1983 horror film Something Wicked This
Way Comes, starring Jason Robards and Jonathan
Pryce, is based on the Bradbury novel of the
same name.
In 1984, Michael McDonough of Brigham Young
University produced "Bradbury 13", a series
of 13 audio adaptations of famous stories
from Bradbury, in conjunction with National
Public Radio. The full-cast dramatizations
featured adaptations of "The Ravine", "Night
Call, Collect", "The Veldt", "There Was an
Old Woman", "Kaleidoscope", "Dark They Were,
and Golden-Eyed", "The Screaming Woman", "A
Sound of Thunder", "The Man", "The Wind",
"The Fox and the Forest", "Here There Be Tygers",
and "The Happiness Machine". Voiceover actor
Paul Frees provided narration, while Bradbury
was responsible for the opening voiceover;
Greg Hansen and Roger Hoffman scored the episodes.
The series won a Peabody Award and two Gold
Cindy awards, and was released on CD on May
1, 2010. The series began airing on BBC Radio
4 Extra on June 12, 2011.
From 1985 to 1992, Bradbury hosted a syndicated
anthology television series, The Ray Bradbury
Theater, for which he adapted 65 of his stories.
Each episode began 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. During the first
two seasons, Bradbury also provided additional
voiceover narration specific to the featured
story and appeared on screen.
Deeply respected in the USSR, Bradbury's fiction
has been adapted into five episodes of the
Soviet science-fiction TV series This Fantastic
World which adapted the stories film version
of "I Sing The Body Electric", Fahrenheit
451, "A Piece of Wood", "To the Chicago Abyss",
and "Forever and the Earth". In 1984 a cartoon
adaptation of There Will Come Soft Rains («Будет
ласковый дождь») came out by
Uzbek director Nazim Tyuhladziev. He made
a film adaptation of The Veldt in 1987. In
1989, a cartoon adaptation of "Here There
Be Tygers" («Здесь могут водиться
тигры») by director Vladimir Samsonov
came out.Bradbury wrote and narrated the 1993
animated television version of The Halloween
Tree, based on his 1972 novel.
The 1998 film The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,
released by Touchstone Pictures, was written
by Bradbury. It was based on his story "The
Magic White Suit" originally published in
The Saturday Evening Post in 1957. The story
had also previously been adapted as a play,
a musical, and a 1958 television version.
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 Pixel Pups. In 1984,
Telarium released a game for Commodore 64
based on Fahrenheit 451.In 2005, the film
A Sound of Thunder was released, loosely based
upon the short story of the same name. The
film The Butterfly Effect revolves around
the same theory as A Sound of Thunder and
contains many references to its inspiration.
Short film adaptations of A Piece of Wood
and The Small Assassin were released in 2005
and 2007, respectively.
In 2005, it was reported that Bradbury was
upset with filmmaker Michael Moore for using
the title Fahrenheit 9/11, which is an allusion
to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, for his documentary
about the George W. Bush administration. Bradbury
expressed displeasure with Moore's use of
the title, but stated that his resentment
was not politically motivated, though Bradbury
was conservative-leaning politically. Bradbury
asserted that he did not want any of the money
made by the movie, nor did he believe that
he deserved it. He pressured Moore to change
the name, but to no avail. Moore called Bradbury
two weeks before the film's release to apologize,
saying that the film's marketing had been
set in motion a long time ago and it was too
late to change the title.In 2008, the film
Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis was produced by Roger
Lay Jr. for Urban Archipelago Films, based
upon the short story of the same name. The
film won the best feature award at the International
Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival in Phoenix.
The film has international distribution by
Arsenal Pictures and domestic distribution
by Lightning Entertainment.
In 2010, The Martian Chronicles was adapted
for radio by Colonial Radio Theatre on the
Air.
Bradbury's works and approach to writing are
documented in Terry Sanders' film Ray Bradbury:
Story of a Writer (1963).
Bradbury's poem "Groon" was voiced as a tribute
in 2012.
== Awards and honors ==
The Ray Bradbury Award for excellency in screenwriting
was occasionally presented by the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America – presented
to six people on four occasions from 1992
to 2009. Beginning 2010, the Ray Bradbury
Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
is presented annually according to Nebula
Awards rules and procedures, although it is
not a Nebula Award. The revamped Bradbury
Award replaced the Nebula Award for Best Script.
In 1972, an impact crater on Earth's moon
was named Dandelion Crater by the Apollo 15
astronauts, in honor of Bradbury's novel Dandelion
Wine.
In 1984, he received the Prometheus Award
for Fahrenheit 451.
Ray Bradbury Park was dedicated in Waukegan,
Illinois, in 1990. He was present for the
ribbon-cutting ceremony. The park contains
locations described in Dandelion Wine, most
notably the "113 steps". In 2009, a panel
designed by artist Michael Pavelich was added
to the park detailing the history of Ray Bradbury
and Ray Bradbury Park.
An asteroid discovered in 1992 was named "9766
Bradbury" in his honor.
In 1994, he received the Peggy V. Helmerich
Distinguished Author Award, presented annually
by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 1994, he won an Emmy Award for the screenplay
The Halloween Tree.
In 2000, he was awarded the Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters from the
National Book Foundation.
For his contribution to the motion picture
industry, Bradbury was given a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 1, 2002.
In 2003, he received an honorary doctorate
from Woodbury University, where he presented
the Ray Bradbury Creativity Award each year
until his death.
On November 17, 2004, Bradbury received the
National Medal of Arts, presented by President
George W. Bush and Laura Bush.
Bradbury received a World Fantasy Award for
Life Achievement at the 1977 World Fantasy
Convention and was named Gandalf Grand Master
of Fantasy at the 1980 World Science Fiction
Convention. In 1989 the Horror Writers Association
gave him the fourth or fifth Bram Stoker Award
for Lifetime Achievement in horror fiction
and the Science Fiction Writers of America
made him its 10th SFWA Grand Master. He won
a First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1996
and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of
Fame inducted him in 1999, its fourth class
of two deceased and two living writers.
In 2005, he was awarded the degree of Doctor
of Laws (honoris causa) by the National University
of Ireland, Galway, at a conferring ceremony
in Los Angeles.
On April 14, 2007, Bradbury received the Sir
Arthur Clarke Award's Special Award, given
by Clarke to a recipient of his choice.
On April 16, 2007, Bradbury received a special
citation by the Pulitzer Prize jury "for his
distinguished, prolific, and deeply influential
career as an unmatched author of science fiction
and fantasy."
In 2007, Bradbury was made a Commandeur (Commander)
of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order
of the Arts and Letters) by the French government.
In 2008, he was named SFPA Grandmaster.
On May 17, 2008, Bradbury received the inaugural
J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award
in Science Fiction, presented by the UCR Libraries
at the 2008 Eaton Science Fiction Conference,
"Chronicling Mars".
On November 19, 2008, Bradbury was presented
with the Illinois Literary Heritage Award
by the Illinois Center for the Book.
In 2009, Bradbury was awarded an Honorary
Doctorate by Columbia College Chicago.
In 2010, Spike TV Scream Awards Comic-Con
Icon Award went to Bradbury
In 2012, the NASA Curiosity rover landing
site (4.5895°S 137.4417°E﻿ / -4.5895;
137.4417) on the planet Mars was named "Bradbury
Landing".
On December 6, 2012, the Los Angeles street
corner at 5th and Flower Streets was named
in his honor.
On February 24, 2013, Bradbury was honored
at the 85th Academy Awards during that event's
"In Memoriam" segment.
== Documentaries ==
Bradbury appeared in the documentary The Fantasy
Film Worlds of George Pal (1985), produced
and directed by Arnold Leibovit
