Ray Bradbury

At 91 years old, Ray Bradbury physical status not available right now. We will update Ray Bradbury's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

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. Bradbury was best known for writing the iconic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953), as well as his science-fiction and horror-story collections, The Martian Chronicles (1950), and I Sing the Body Electric (1969), one of the twentieth-century and 21st-century American writers, and he was best known for his writing The Illustrated Man (1951).

Although the majority of his writing is focused on fantasy fiction, Dandelion Wine (1957), and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) are among his favorite subjects. Bradbury, the recipient of several awards, including a 2007 Pulitzer Citation, also wrote and watched screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space.

Many of his books were also developed for television, television, and film formats. Bradbury was "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream" following his death in 2012.

Early life

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1956), a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry. After the actor Douglas Fairbanks, he was given the middle name "Douglas."

During his youth and formative years in Waukegan, Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family. When he was a child, an aunt told him short stories. Both the author and his stories were based on this period. 1920s Waukegan becomes "Green Town," Illinois, in Bradbury's works of fiction.

During 1926-1927-1927 and 1932-1933, the Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, while their father remained in service, each time returning to Waukegan. Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School while living in Tucson. Bradbury was a 14-year-old boy when they first arrived in Los Angeles in 1934. The family arrived in Hollywood with only US$40 (equivalent to $810 in 2021), which covered rent and food until his dad's retirement, who found a job making wire at a cable company for $14 a week, allowing them to remain in Hollywood (equivalent to $284 in 2021).

Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He would often roller-skated through Hollywood in the hopes of meeting celebrities. Ray Harryhausen, a special effects pioneer, and radio actor George Burns were among Bradbury's most innovative and talented individuals. Bradbury's first paycheck as a writer, age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show.

Personal life

Marguerite McClure, born in 1922, died on November 24, 2003; they had four children: Susan, Ramona, Bettina, and Alexandra. Bradbury never obtained a driver's license, but he relied on public transportation or his bicycle to get around. He lived at home until he was 27 and married. Maggie, Bradbury's wife of 56 years, was the only woman Bradbury ever dated, according to her.

He was raised Baptist by his parents, who were themselves infrequent churchgoers. Bradbury, a young man, referred to himself as a "delicatessen christian" who resisted categorization of his faith and sought spiritual guidance from both Eastern and Western faiths. His work was "a God-given thing," he said, and I'm so grateful, so grateful. "At play in the fields of the Lord is the best description of my writing career."

Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams, and Addams illustrated the first of Bradbury's stories about the Elliotts, a family that looked like Addams' own Addams Family lived in rural Illinois. "Homecoming," Bradbury's first story about them, was published in Mademoiselle's 1946 Halloween issue, with Addams' illustrations. During a 2001 interview, Addams and he envisaged a larger collaborative project that would detail the family's complete past, but it never came true, and according to a 2001 interview, they split in ways. Bradbury published all of the Family stories he had written in a single book with a connecting tale, From the Dust Returned, which also included a wraparound Addams cover of the original "Homecoming" illustration.

Ray Harryhausen, an animator who was best man at Bradbury's wedding, was another close friend. Bradbury talked about his first meeting Harryhausen at Forrest J Ackerman's house when they were both 18 years old during a BAFTA 2010 awards tribute. King Kong's shared passion for science fiction, as well as Ayn Rand's written film The Fountainhead, was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. These early influences influenced the pair to believe in themselves and clarify their career choices. In a friendship that spanned more than 70 years, they stayed in touch at least once a month.

Bradbury, a late in life, maintained his dedication and passion amid what he described as the "death of many good friends" on his account. Gene Roddenberry, a veteran Bradbury's, was one of the deaths that deeply grieved Bradbury. He was a close friend for many years. They were close friends for almost three decades after Roddenberry asked him to write for Star Trek, but Bradbury declined to write about other people's ideas in any meaningful way."

Bradbury had a stroke in 1999 and was left partially dependent on a wheelchair for mobility. Despite this, he continued to write, and even wrote an essay about his writing inspirations that was published only a week before his death. Bradbury appeared at science-fiction conventions on a regular basis until 2009, when he resigned from the circuit.

Bradbury laid a headstone at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles with the words "Author of Fahrenheit 451." The house that Bradbury lived and wrote in for 50 years of his life, 10265 Cheviot Drive in Los Angeles, California, had been demolished by the homeowner, architect Thom Mayne, on February 6, 2015.

Bradbury referred to himself as a political outsider. Born a Democrat, he voted for the Democratic Party until 1968. In 1952, he ran an advertisement in Variety for a "left-wing" or "subversive" party, which Bradbury disenchanted, and as such, he voted for the Republican Party in every presidential election save 1976. Carter's inept management of the economy "pushed [Bradbury] permanently away from the Democrats," according to Bradbury's biographer Sam Weller.

Ronald Reagan was "the greatest president," Bradbury called Bill Clinton "the shithead," when he dismissed Bill Clinton as a "shithead." George W. Bush, who died shortly before the September 11 attacks, was "wonderful" in August 2001, and he said the American education system was a "monstrosity." He later chastised Barack Obama for ending NASA's crewed space flight program.

He blasted the government in 2010, saying that "too much government" in America and that "I don't believe in democracy"; "I don't believe in government." Politics are a bigote. I'm against it. And I'm hoping that this fall we can destabilize a portion of our government and then destroy even more. The less government, the better I will be." Bradbury condemned affirmative action, condemned "all this political correctness that's rampant on campuses," and called for a ban on quotas in higher education. "[e]ducation is simply a matter of education," he said, "we can no longer afford to have it polluted by skepticism."

Source

Career

"Hollerbochen's Dilemma," Bradbury's first published story, appeared in Forrest J. Ackerman's fanzine Imagination in January 1938. Ackerman and his girlfriend Morojo donated 19-year-old Bradbury's fanzine, Futuria Fantasia, to New York City in July 1939. The bulk of Bradbury's four issues were limited to fewer than 100 copies. He appeared in Rob Wagner's film journal, Script, from 1940 to 1947.

Bradbury was able to begin writing after being refused admission into the military during World War II due to his poor eyesight. Bradbury began publishing science-fiction stories in fanzines in 1938, having been inspired by science fiction heroes such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Forrest J. Ackerman invited Bradbury to attend the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, which at the time met at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. Robert A. Heinlein, Emil Petaja, Fredric Brown, Leigh Brackett, and Jack Williamson appeared on the radio.

Bradbury became a member of the Laraine Players Guild in 1939, where he wrote and performed in many productions. They were, as Bradbury later said, "too bad" that he ceased writing for two decades. "Pendulum," Bradbury's first paid piece, was published in the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in November 1941, for which he earned $15.

Bradbury sold his first solo book, "The Lake," for $13.75 at 22 and became a full-time writer by 24. Dark Carnival, Peter Derleth's first collection of short stories, was released in 1947 by Arkham House, a small newspaper in Sauk City, Wisconsin, owned by writer August Derleth. Will Cuppy, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, proclaimed Bradbury "suitable for general consumption" and predicted that he would be a writer of the caliber of British fantasy author John Collier.

Bradbury delivered "Homecoming" to Mademoiselle, which was discovered by a young editorial assistant named Truman Capote following a rejection notice from the pulp Weird Tales. Capote selected the Bradbury manuscript from a slush pile, which resulted in its publication. In 1947, Homecoming gained a place in the O. Henry Award Stories.

Bradbury wrote The Fireman, a classic tale about a book burning future in a study room with typewriters for rent in UCLA's Powell Library, about 25,000 words long. It was later released under the name Fahrenheit 451, costing the library's typewriter-rental rate of ten cents per half-hour.

Bradbury was given the opportunity to place The Martian Chronicles in the custody of a respected scholar after a chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood's glowing review was followed.

Source