Interesting facts from the biography of Ray Bradbury. Biography and creative activity of Ray Douglas Bradbury The best works of Ray Bradbury

When you mention the name of Ray Bradbury, everyone thinks of the most fascinating science fiction novels. Ray Bradbury is one of the best science fiction writers, winner of a number of literary awards, including in the science fiction genre. However, Bradbury did not consider himself a science fiction writer.

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, USA. The father of the future writer, Leonard Spalding Bradbury (1891-1957) came from an English family, one of the first settlers in North America. Moved from England in 1630. The autobiography includes a family legend: Ray's great-grandmother Mary Bradbury was the "Salem Witch" who was hanged after a 1692 trial. Ray's mother is Marie Esther Moberg (1888-1966), Swedish.

In addition to Ray, there was another son in the family, Leonard. The other two (brother Sam and sister Elizabeth) died in infancy. The boy became acquainted with the death of loved ones early on, which left a mark on some literary works in the future.

The Bradbury family loved art. Attention was paid to the emerging cinema.

During the Great Depression in a small town, my father was unable to find work. In 1934, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, settling in the house of the boy's uncle. Life was difficult. After graduating from school, the young man worked as a newspaper seller. The family did not have money to continue their studies. Ray did not receive a higher education. According to the writer, studying at college was replaced by a library. Three times a week the young man sat reading books in the reading room. Then, at the age of 12, the boy had a desire to compose himself. There was no money to buy E. Burroughs’ book “The Great Warrior of Mars,” and the young writer came up with a continuation of the story himself. This is the first step of Bradbury the science fiction writer.

Creation

The boy decided to become a writer. The desire was finally formed after graduating from school. The first step in creativity was the publication of the poem “In Memory of Will Rogers” in a local newspaper in 1936. Ray wrote short stories imitating the style of . The young writer's critic and adviser was Henry Kuttner, an American science fiction writer.

At the age of 17, Bradbury became a member of the American community of young authors - the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. The stories began to appear in cheap science fiction collections. A literary style characteristic of Bradbury's works emerged. Since 1939, in two years he published 4 issues of the Futuria Fantasy magazine. By 1942, the writer completely switched to literature. At this time he wrote fifty stories a year.

Despite his meager income, Bradbury did not give up his creativity. In 1947, the writer’s first collection of stories, “Dark Carnival,” saw the light of day. The collection includes works from the period 1943-1947. The characters appeared for the first time: Uncle Enar (the prototype is Ray's Los Angeles uncle) and "Wanderer" Cece. The collection was received coolly by the public.

In the summer of 1949, Ray Bradbury arrived by bus in New York. I stayed at the American Young Christian Association hostel. I offered stories to 12 publishing houses, but no one was interested. Luckily, Don Congdon, Bradbury's literary agent, contacted Doubleday. The publishing house at this time was preparing a collection of science fiction. Bradbury became interested in the publisher Walter Bradbury (namesake). Walter agreed to publish Bradbury on the condition that the stories would be thematically combined into a novel.

Overnight, Ray outlined a general overview of the future novel in the form of an essay and submitted it to the publisher - it was a chain of plots from early stories about Mars, collected into a single work. In The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury invisibly drew a parallel between the heroes' exploration of Mars and the arrival of colonizers in the Wild West. The novel veiledly showed the mistakes and imperfections of humanity. The book changed the idea of ​​science fiction. Bradbury considered The Martian Chronicles his best work.

Ray Bradbury achieved worldwide recognition with the release of his novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. The novel is based on two stories: “Fireman” (not published) and “Pedestrian”. The debut publication was published in parts in Playboy magazine, which was just beginning to gain popularity.

The book's epigraph states that 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the ignition temperature of paper. The plot of the novel tells about a consumer totalitarian society. The writer showed a society that has prioritized the acquisition of material assets. Books that make the reader think are subject to burning along with the houses of owners of prohibited literature. The main character of the novel, fireman Guy Montag, who participates in the burning of books, believes that he is doing the right, necessary thing. Guy meets a 17-year-old girl, Clarissa. The acquaintance changes the young man’s worldview.

The novel was censored. Ballantine Books has revised and removed 70 passages from the novel for middle schools. In 1980, the writer demanded that the novel be published without cuts.

In the USSR, the novel, despite negative comments in ideological publications, was published in 1956. The 1966 film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 was directed by French director Francois Truffaut. In 1984, based on the book, a television play, “The Sign of the Salamander,” was released.

In 1957, a partly biographical book, Dandelion Wine, was published. This story by Bradbury is not like other works. It touches on the author's childhood experiences. The plot follows the summer adventures of 1928, brothers Tom and Douglas Spalding, living in the small town of Green Town. Ray is the prototype for 12-year-old Douglas.

Bradbury wanted to create a more voluminous work. Publisher Walter Bradbury insisted on dividing the story into two parts. The second part, called by the author “Summer, Farewell!”, was published only half a century later, in 2006.

Another novel that connects Ray Bradbury with his childhood is From the Dust Rising. This is the story of the quirky Elliot family, whose house is inhabited by amazing fairy-tale creatures. The novel includes the stories “Family Meeting”, “April Witchcraft”, “Uncle Einar”, etc. Ray’s vivid memories from childhood contributed to the writing of the stories included in the novel. As a ten-year-old boy, he and his brother visited Aunt Neiva on Halloween. They collected cornstalks and pumpkins. The aunt dressed the boy as a sorcerer and hid him under the stairs in his grandmother’s house to scare guests sneaking in the dark. The holidays passed in wild joy. The writer calls the most precious memories of that atmosphere.

The collection “A Cure for Melancholy” was published in 1960. It contains stories from the period 1948-1959. The stories included: “A Nice Day” (1957), “The Dragon” (1955), “A Wonderful Costume the Color of Ice Cream (1958), “The First Night of Lent” (1956), “Time to Leave” (1956), “It’s Time for the Rains” "(1959), etc. The collection is dedicated to psychology, the nature of human nature.

The writer criticized modern society all his life, considering it consumerist. Bradbury believed that the world does not pay enough attention to science and the development of the space industry. People have stopped dreaming about stars; they are only interested in material things. Bradbury's works appealed to humanity to stop its soulless attitude towards the future. A striking example is the story “Smile,” which takes place in the near future. People degenerated and burned all their books. The main entertainment is the public destruction of surviving works of art. There is a queue of people in the square who want to spit at the Mona Lisa.

Bradbury's most reprinted story is "A Sound of Thunder." The science fiction story is based on “chaos theory,” more commonly referred to as the “butterfly effect.” This work is about the precarious balance of nature on Earth. The plot of the story is the basis of the films and TV series “A Sound of Thunder”, “The Butterfly Effect”, “100 Years Ago”.

The writer’s work is inextricably linked with cinema and theater. Bradbury wrote screenplays, the most famous of which is Moby Dick. Author and presenter of a number of television programs from the Ray Bradbury Theater series, published from 1985 to 1992.

Personal life

The support of the wife of an aspiring writer is invaluable. Bookstore saleswoman Margaret McClure became the wife of Ray Bradbury on September 27, 1947. Income from stories did not bring in much money at first, so at the beginning of family life the main breadwinner was the wife.

The marriage was happy and lasted until the death of Maggie, as the writer affectionately called his beloved woman, in 2003. It was to her that the author dedicated the novel “The Martian Chronicles,” writing: “To my wife Margaret with sincere love.”

Ray Bradbury and his wife had four children - daughters Bettina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra.

Death

Ray Bradbury lived to be 91 years old. Life was full of incessant work. Already in old age, the writer began every morning at his desk. He believed that creativity would prolong his life. The writer's bibliography was replenished until death. The last novel was published in 2006.

Bradbury had an extraordinary sense of humor. Bradbury once responded to a question about his age:

“Imagine the headlines in all the newspapers of the world - “Bradbury is one hundred years old!” They will immediately give me some kind of bonus: simply for the fact that I have not died yet.”

At the age of 79, the writer suffered a stroke. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Bradbury died on June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles. The writer's family house was demolished in 2015.

Creativity assessment and awards

Ray Bradbury received the Nebula and Science Fiction Awards. Awarded an Academy Award and nominated for the Prometheus Award Hall of Fame (1984). The science fiction writer has a national medal in the field of arts (2004) and the title “Grand Master”. Ray Bradbury is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize (2007) and the Lifetime Achievement Award.

An asteroid is named after Ray Bradbury. NASA Space Laboratory has decided to give the name of the first writer who suggested the existence of life on Mars to the landing site of the MSL Curiosity rover on the Red Planet. On October 15, 2015, the International Astronomical Union approved the name “Bradbury” crater on Mars.

There is a star for Ray Bradbury on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Books

• "The Martian Chronicles"
• "451 degrees Fahrenheit"
• "Dandelion Wine"
• "Trouble is Coming"
• "Death is a lonely business"
• "Cemetery for the Mad"
• "Green Shadows, White Whale"
• "An orchestra is playing somewhere"
• "Leviathan-99"

Raymond Douglas Bradbury, Raymond Douglas Bradbury; USA, Los Angeles; 08/23/1920 – 06/05/2012

Ray Bradbury is one of the founders of science fiction. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the works of this author are represented in our ratings. And their numbers are truly impressive. There are more than 400 stories by Ray Bradbury alone, and if we add to this numerous poems, plays, scripts, musical works and, of course, novels and stories, then the writer’s creativity is truly enormous. It is not for nothing that such writers as and many others consider Bradbury their teacher.

Biography of Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was born in the small town of Waukegan in 1920. His family was not rich, and in 1934, at the invitation of relatives, they moved to Los Angeles, where the future writer graduated from high school. Since Ray’s family did not have money to go to college, the boy began to actively visit the library, where he spent a lot of time. It was there that Ray became addicted to science fiction.

By the age of 20, Ray Bradbury finally decided to become a science fiction writer and never turned back from this path. Even though after his marriage to Susanu Maclure in 1947 they did not have enough money to live, the writer did not give up his literary activity. And success came. Ray Bradbury became famous in 1953 with the publication of Fahranheit 451. Subsequently, the writer’s career developed very rapidly. He participated in numerous shows, wrote scripts for films and even plays. This brought Ray Bradbury's books worldwide fame, and his works were filmed in many countries around the world.

Ray Bradbury's books, along with his works, were approved for publishing in the USSR. This allowed more than one generation of our readers to get acquainted with his work and fall in love with him. And even after the author’s death, many readers want to download “Farangheit 451,” and modern youth find Ray Bradbury’s stories quite fascinating to read.

Books by Ray Bradbury on the Top books website

All books by Ray Bradbury

Novels:

1. Let's all kill Constance
2. Green shadows, White Whale
3. Rising from the dust
4. Cemetery for the Mad
5. Goodbye summer!
6. Trouble is approaching
7. Death is a lonely thing

Stories:

1. An orchestra is playing somewhere
2. Leviathan-99
3. Red Mist Lorelei
4. Firefighter

Ray Bradbury is a famous American writer. Traditionally, fans of the writer classify him as a classic of science fiction, but most of his works belong to the genre of fantasy, short stories or parables. The author also wrote plays that were well received by the public and poems that received less than satisfactory responses from critics.

The works of Ray Bradbury

During his long, rich creative life, the writer wrote about 800 different literary creations, including novels, novellas, hundreds of stories and short stories, a number of articles, dozens of plays, poems and notes. His works became the basis for several films, big stage productions and musical operettas. Ray Bradbury's stories are very popular among readers. We all constantly lack time for a full book, but reading something for the soul is simply necessary.

Brief biography of Ray Brabury

The future writer was born in 1920 in the small town of Waukegan, Illinois. In 1934, the family moved to Los Angeles and settled there forever. Bradbury's childhood and teenage years passed during the Great Depression, but, despite the lack of money, the writer continued to receive an education and, already at the age of 12, was clearly confident in his future as a writer.

At first, the writer’s work did not bear fruit, so Bradbury earned extra money by selling newspapers, then lived on the support of his wife. Life was completely turned upside down after the publication of the stories “The Martian Chronicles”. Then a utopian story about books was published and popularity began to grow at a tremendous pace.

Film scripts played a special role in Ray Bradbury's creative life. The most famous script written by the writer is “Moby Dick”, he is also the author of the series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. Since 1985, he has also been the host of the television program “The Ray Bradbury Theater.” The writer’s only wife was Maggie McClure, who strongly supported her husband in all his failures and successes. In their marriage they had four wonderful daughters. The great writer died in 2012 at the age of 91. The memory of him will always live along with his immortal works.

Ray Bradbury - books for fans of science fiction stories

If you like Ray Bradbury, you can find a list of the best books in this section. Readers love this writer primarily for the unusual worlds he creates and exciting plots. He gained great fame by composing the famous dystopia “Fahrenheit 451”, a story with elements of his own biography “Dandelion Wine” and the science fiction series “The Martian Chronicles”.

For those who have not yet encountered the work of this author, we suggest starting to get acquainted with Ray Bradbury himself, whose biography is full of interesting moments.

Ray Bradbury: biography of a science fiction writer

Ray Bradbury, whose books became classics during his lifetime, was born on August 22, 1920 in the USA. The beginning of his creative career is associated with the League of Science Fiction Writers. This organization originated in the first years after the Great Depression in America. His first publications were in magazines of dubious quality among mediocre science fiction novels by other authors. However, it was during these years that Ray Bradbury, whose list of best books would later become the property of American literature, honed his literary skills and created his own unique artistic style.

In the early forties of the last century, he created his own magazine, which was called “Futuria Fantasy”. As the title implies, in it he talked about what awaits humanity in the near future.

In those years, Bradbury made his living selling newspapers and magazines. But soon, making progress as a writer, he left this business and was busy writing stories. Interest in science and technology allowed him to constantly generate plot ideas for science fiction. He published more than fifty such works of small form per year.

In 1946, in Los Angeles, Bradbury met his future wife. Margaret McClure worked in a local bookstore, and she was to become the only love in the writer’s life. From this marriage four children were born, and Bradbury himself dedicated many novels to his wife. The income from the stories was not able to provide for the family, so at first the family budget rested on Margaret's shoulders. But in 1953, the writer gained worldwide fame when the novel Fahrenheit 451 was published. Also, Ray Badbury, the list of books you can see below, created a great many scripts. This explains, in particular, the large number of film adaptations of his works.

Ray Bradbury born August 22, 1920 at 11 St. James Street Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois. Full name - Raymond Douglas (middle name in honor of the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks). Ray's grandfather and great-grandfather, descendants of the first English settlers who sailed to America in 1630, published two Illinois newspapers at the end of the 19th century (in the province this means a certain position in society and fame). Father: Leonard Spaulding Bradbury. Mother - Marie Esther Moberg, Swedish by birth. By the time Ray was born, his father was not even 30 years old, he worked as an electrician and was the father of a four-year-old son, Leonard Jr. (his twin brother Sam was born with Leonard Jr., but he died when he was two years old). In 1926, Bradbury had a sister, Elizabeth, who also died as a child.

Ray rarely remembered his father, more often his mother, and only in his third book (A Cure for Melancholy, 1959) can one find the following dedication: “To my father with love, who woke up so late and even surprised his son”. However, Leonard Sr. could no longer read this; he died two years earlier, at the age of 66. This unexpressed love was vividly reflected in the story “Desire.” In Dandelion Wine, which is essentially a book of childhood memoirs, the main adult character is named Leonard Spaulding. The author provided the collection of poems “When the Elephants Last Bloomed in the Courtyard” with the following dedication: “This book is in memory of my grandmother Minnie Davis Bradbury, and my grandfather Samuel Hinxton Bradbury, and my brother Samuel, and my sister Elizabeth. They all died a long time ago, but I still remember them to this day.” He often inserts their names into his stories.

“Uncle Einar” really existed. It was Ray's favorite relative. When the family moved to Los Angeles in 1934, he moved there too - to the delight of his nephew. Also in the stories are the names of another uncle, Bion, and Aunt Nevada (she was simply called Neva in the family).

“I started reading Dostoevsky’s works when I was 20 years old. From his books I learned how to write novels and tell stories. I read other authors, but when I was younger, Dostoevsky was the main one for me.”

Ray Bradbury has a unique memory. Here is how he talks about it himself: “I have always had what I would call an “almost complete mental return” to the hour of birth. I remember cutting the umbilical cord, I remember sucking my mother’s breast for the first time. The nightmares that usually await a newborn are included in my mental cheat sheet from the very first weeks of life. I know, I know, it’s impossible, most people don’t remember anything like that. And psychologists say that children are born not fully developed, only after a few days or even weeks they acquire the ability to see, hear, know. But I saw, heard, knew...” (remember the story “The Little Killer”). He clearly remembers the first snowfall of his life. A later memory is about how, still three years old, his parents took him to the cinema for the first time. The acclaimed silent film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with Lon Chaney in the title role was on, and the image of the freak struck little Ray to the core.

“My early impressions are usually associated with the picture that still stands before my eyes: a terrible night journey up the stairs... It always seemed to me that as soon as I stepped on the last step, I would immediately find myself face to face with a vile monster waiting me upstairs. I rolled head over heels down and ran crying to my mother, and then the two of us climbed the steps again. Usually the monster would have run away somewhere by this time. It remains unclear to me why my mother was completely devoid of imagination: after all, she never saw this monster even once.”

In the Bradbury family there was a legend about a witch in their own family tree - a great-great-great-grandmother, allegedly burned at the famous Salem witch trials in 1692. True, the convicts were hanged there, and the name Mary Bradbury on the list of those involved in the case could have been a mere coincidence. Nevertheless, the fact remains: since childhood, the writer considered himself the great-grandson of a witch. It is worth noting that in his stories the evil spirits are just good, and otherworldly creatures turn out to be much more humane than their pursuers - Puritans, bigots and “clean” legalists.

The Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles in the 30s, at the height of the Great Depression. When Ray graduated from high school, they couldn't buy him a new jacket. I had to go to prom dressed as Lester's late uncle, who died at the hands of a robber. The bullet holes on the stomach and back of the jacket were carefully mended.

All his life Bradbury lived with one woman - Margaret (Marguerite McClure). Together they had four daughters (Tina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra).

They married on September 27, 1947. From that day on, for several years, she worked all day long so that Ray could stay home and work on his books. The first copy of The Martian Chronicles was typed with her hands. This book was dedicated to her. Margaret studied four languages ​​during her life, and was also known as a literature connoisseur (her favorite writers include Marcel Proust, Agatha Christie and... Ray Bradbury). She also had a good knowledge of wines and loved cats. Everyone who knew her personally spoke of her as a person of rare charm and the owner of an extraordinary sense of humor.

“On the trains... in the late evening hours I enjoyed the company of Bernard Shaw, J. K. Chesterton and Charles Dickens - my old friends, following me everywhere, invisible but tangible; silent, but constantly excited... Sometimes Aldous Huxley sat down with us, blind, but inquisitive and wise. Richard III often traveled with me, he talked about murder, elevating it to a virtue. Somewhere in the middle of Kansas at midnight I buried Caesar, and Mark Antony shone with his eloquence as we left Eldebury Springs...”

Ray Bradbury never went to college; he formally completed his education at the high school level. In 1971, his article was published entitled “How I graduated from libraries instead of college, or Thoughts of a teenager who walked on the moon in 1932.”

Many of his stories and novellas are named after quotes from the works of other authors: “Something Wicked This Way Comes” - from Shakespeare; “A Strange Wonder” - from Coleridge’s unfinished poem “Kubla(y) Khan”; “The golden apples of the sun” is a line from Yeats; “The Electric Body I Sing” - Whitman; “And the moon still silvers the expanse with its rays...” - Byron; the story “Asleep at Armageddon” has a second title: “And it may be possible to dream” - a line from Hamlet’s monologue; the completion of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" - "Home has the sailor returned, home has he returned from the sea" - also gave the story its title; the story and collection of short stories “Machines of Happiness” are named after a quote from William Blake - this list is far from complete.

“Jules Verne was my father. Wells - a wise uncle. Edgar Allan Poe was my cousin; he was like a bat - he always lived in our dark attic. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are my brothers and comrades. Here you have all my relatives. I will also add that my mother, in all likelihood, was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein. Well, who else could I become if not a science fiction writer with such a family.”

In Ray Bradbury's office, the license plate "F-451" is nailed to the wall, despite the fact that he himself has never driven the car.

“What about my gravestone? I'd like to borrow an old lamppost in case you wander by my grave at night to say "Hello!" And the lantern will burn, turn and weave one secret with another - weave it forever. And if you come to visit, leave an apple for the ghosts.”