Jump to content

Ray Bradbury: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Line 137: Line 137:


==Notes==
==Notes==
{{Reflist|2}}He is an old crippled man that loves to kidnap little people
{{Reflist|2}}


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 15:10, 26 September 2011

Ray Bradbury
Bradbury in 1975
Bradbury in 1975
BornRay Douglas Bradbury
(1920-08-22) August 22, 1920 (age 104)
Waukegan, Illinois, U.S.
OccupationNovelist, short story writer, essayist, poet
Period1938–present
GenreScience fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, social science fiction, dark fantasy, poetry
Notable worksThe Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Signature
Website
http://www.raybradbury.com/

Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920[3]) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction and has been described as a Midwest surrealist. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films. Modern Library has listed two of his novels (Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes) among the 100 best novels published in the twentieth century[citation needed].

Early life

Bradbury is a ninja on crack and commate many hit and runs and was born he also drowned 3 of his children in the pool... in Waukegan, no life or friends,Illinois,[4] he was the brother of two older twin boys, (one of whom died in 1918[5]) to a Swedish immigrant mother, Ester Moberg Bradbury, and a father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury,[6] who was a power and telephone lineman.[7] His paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were newspaper publishers.

He is distantly related to the American Spalding family, owners of the Spalding sports equipment company.[citation needed] His central character Douglas Spaulding, from the novel Dandelion Wine, was reportedly drawn from this heritage. He is also related to the American Shakespeare scholar Douglas Spaulding.[8] Ray is also directly descended from Mary Bradbury who was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. She was married to Captain Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts.

Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth, spending much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, Illinois, reading such authors as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote novels such as Tarzan and Warlord of Mars.[9] Bradbury was pushed to writing by his aunt, who read him short stories when he was a child.[10] He used this library as a setting for much of his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, and depicted Waukegan as "Green Town" in some of his other semi-autobiographical novels—Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer—as well as in many of his short stories.[11]

He attributes his lifelong habit of writing every day to two incidents. The first, which occurred when he was three years old when his mother brought him to Lon Chaney's performance of the Hunchback of Notre Dame,[12] and the second, which occurred in 1932 when a carnival entertainer, Mr. Electrico,[13] touched him on the nose with an electrified sword, made his hair stand on end, and shouted, "Live forever!" It was from then that Bradbury wanted to live forever and decided on his career as an author in order to do what he was told: live forever. It was at that age that Bradbury first started to do magic. Magic was his first great love. If he had not discovered writing, he would have become a magician.[14]

The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, in 1926–27 and 1932–33 as his father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan, but eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen.

Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry and short story writing courses that furthered his interest in writing,[15] 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."[16]

It was in UCLA's Powell Library, in a study room with typewriters for rent, in which Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book-burning future, "Fahrenheit 451."[17]

Career

Having been influenced by science fiction heroes like 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.[citation needed] His first published story gjagjfkgjfkjgkdjgdkjskjksjjronicles|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.[18]}}

On another occasion, Bradbury observed that the novel 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.[19]

Besides his fiction work, Bradbury has written many short essays on the arts and culture, attracting the attention of critics in this field. Bradbury also hosted "The Ray Bradbury Theater" which was based on his short stories. Bradbury was a consultant for the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair and the original exhibit housed in Epcot's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World.[20][21][22] In the 1980s, he moved his writings to detective fiction.[23]

Personal life

Ray Bradbury married Marguerite McClure (1922–2003) in 1947, and they had four daughters. Bradbury never obtained a driver's license.[24]

Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams, and Addams illustrated the first of Bradbury's stories about the Elliotts, a family that would resemble 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. He and Addams 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.[25] 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.[26]

Critical reception

Critical opinion of Bradbury's work is sharply divided. In his review of The Martian Chronicles,[27] Christopher Isherwood wrote:

... the sheer lift and power of a truly original imagination exhilarates... His is a very great and unusual talent.

At the other extreme, science fiction author and critic Damon Knight wrote:[28]

Although [Bradbury] has a large following among science fiction readers, there is at least an equally large contingent of people who cannot stomach his work at all... His imagination is mediocre; he borrows nearly all his backgrounds and props, and distorts them badly; wherever he is required to invent anything—a planet, a Martian, a machine—the image is flat and unconvincing.

Bibliography

Main article: Ray Bradbury bibliography

muhahahahaha

Adaptations to other media

File:Rb451.jpg
Oskar Werner and Julie Christie in François Truffaut's adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

From 1951 to 1954, 27 of Bradbury's stories were adapted by Al Feldstein for EC Comics, 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 on a variety of 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 would later return 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.

Additionally, Bradbury was hired in 1953 by director John Huston to work on the screenplay for the 1956 film Moby Dick, which was faithfully based on the novel by Herman Melville and starred 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 semi-fictionalized 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 American TV series The Twilight Zone. The episode was first aired on 18 May 1962.

Oskar Werner and Julie Christie starred in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), an adaptation of Bradbury's novel directed by François Truffaut.

In 1969, The Illustrated Man was brought to the big screen, starring Oscar winner Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom and Robert Drivas. Containing the prologue and three short stories from the book, the film received mediocre reviews.

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".[29]

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 Ray Bradbury stories, 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 himself was responsible for the opening voiceover; Greg Hansen and Roger Hoffman scored the episodes. The series won a Peabody Award as well as two Gold Cindy awards and was released on CD on May 1, 2010. The series began airing on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 12 June 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 would begin 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.

Five episodes of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World adapted Ray Bradbury's stories I Sing The Body Electric, Fahrenheit 451, A Piece of Wood, To the Chicago Abyss, and Forever and the Earth.[30] A Soviet adaptation of "The Veldt" was filmed in 1987.[31]

The 1998 film The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, released by Touchstone Pictures, was written by Ray 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 video game for Commodore 64 based on Fahrenheit 451.[32] Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded Pandemonium in 1964, staging the New York production of The World of Ray Bradbury (1964), adaptations of "The Pedestrian", "The Veldt", and "To the Chicago Abyss."

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.[33] Short film adaptations of A Piece of Wood and The Small Assassin were released in 2005 and 2007 respectively.[34][35]

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. Bradbury asserts that he does not want any of the money made by the movie, nor does he believe that he deserves 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.[36]

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.[37]

Bradbury's works and approach to writing are documented in Terry Sanders' film Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963).

Honors

Bradbury receiving the National Medal of Arts award in 2004 with then-President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.

Notes

  1. ^ The Rough Guide To Cult Fiction", Tom Bullough, et al., Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2005, p.35
  2. ^ King, Stephen (1981). Stephen King's danse macabre. Macdonald. p. [page needed]. ISBN 0354046470. My first experience of real horror came at the hands of Ray Bradbury.
  3. ^ http://www.enotes.com/authors/ray-bradbury
  4. ^ p.141 Bloom, Harold Ray Bradbury 2010 Infobase Publishing
  5. ^ Mogen, David. "RAY BRADBURY (1920- )." Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story (2000): 162-166. EBSCO. Web. 30 Nov. 2010.
  6. ^ Touponce, William F. "Ray (Douglas) Bradbury." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement 4. Ed. A Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.
  7. ^ Certificate of Birth, Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22, 1920, Lake County Clerk's Record #4750. Although he was named after Rae Williams, a cousin on his father's side, Ray Bradbury's birth certificate spells his first name as "Ray."
  8. ^ The Spalding Family Memorial, 1899
  9. ^ Contemporary Authors Online. Ray Bradbury. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Web.
  10. ^ Paradowski, Robert J. "Ray Bradbury." Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition" 2001:1-5. EBSCO. Web. 8 Nov. 2010
  11. ^ Sites from these works which still exist in Waukegan include his boyhood home, his grandparents' home next door (and their connecting lawns where he and his grandfather gathered dandelions to make wine) and, less than a block away, the famous ravine which Bradbury used as a metaphor throughout his career.
  12. ^ Paradowski, Robert J. “Ray Bradbury.” Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition (2001): EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.
  13. ^ "In His Words". RayBradbury.com. Retrieved 2009-12-09.
  14. ^ Terry Sanders' film Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963)
  15. ^ Litz, A. Walton, and Molly Weigel, eds. American Writers (Supp. 4, Pt. 1). New York: Macmillian Library Reference. 1996. Print.
  16. ^ Steinhauer, Jennifer (2009-06-19). "A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-12-09.
  17. ^ http://www.spotlight.ucla.edu/ray-bradbury/
  18. ^ wil gerken, nathan hendler, doug floyd, john banks. "Books: Grandfather Time (Weekly Alibi . 09-27-99)". Weeklywire.com. Retrieved 2010-02-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ^ Quoted by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960).
  20. ^ Ray Bradbury. "In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World." http://www.raybradbury.com/bio.html
  21. ^ Ray Bradbury. "The images at Spaceship Earth in DisneyWorld's EPCOT Center in Orlando? Well, they are all Bradbury's ideas." http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_town_talk.html
  22. ^ Ray Bradbury. "He also serves as a consultant, having collaborated, for example, in the design of a pavilion in the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World." Referring to Spaceship Earth ...http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_book_mag.html
  23. ^ Litz, A. Walton., and Molly V. Weigel. American Writers: a Collection of Literary Biographies. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print
  24. ^ Riddle, Warren (2009-06-25). "Sci-Fi Author Ray Bradbury Trashes the Web". Switched. Retrieved 2009-12-09.
  25. ^ Interview with Ray Bradbury in IndieBound, fall 2001.
  26. ^ Bradbury, Ray, From The Dust Returned: A Novel. William Morrow, 2001.
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference CI50 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ Knight, Damon (1967). In Search of Wonder. Chicago: Advent.
  29. ^ Weller, Sam (2005). The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 301–302. ISBN 0-06-054581-X.
  30. ^ "State Fund of Television and Radio Programs" (in Russian).
  31. ^ Veld at IMDb
  32. ^ "Fahrenheit 451 (1984 game)".
  33. ^ A Sound of Thunder at IMDb
  34. ^ A Piece of Wood at IMDb
  35. ^ The Small Assassin at IMDb
  36. ^ Weller, Sam (2005). The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 330–331. ISBN 0-06-054581-X.
  37. ^ Chrysalis at IMDb
  38. ^ 2007 Special Awards from the Pulitzer Prize website
  39. ^ Icarus Montgolfier Wright at IMDb
  40. ^ Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award with his acceptance speech.
  41. ^ Wilson, Stephen M. (2008). "2008 SFPA Grandmaster". The Science Fiction Poetry Association. SFPA. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
  42. ^ http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2011-hugo-awards/

He is an old crippled man that loves to kidnap little people

References

  • Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. pp. 61–63. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
  • William F. Nolan, The Ray Bradbury Companion: A Life and Career History, Photolog, and Comprehensive Checklist of Writings, Gale Research (1975). Hardcover, 339 pages. ISBN 0-8103-0930-0
  • Donn Albright, Bradbury Bits & Pieces: The Ray Bradbury Bibliography, 1974-88, Starmont House (1990). ISBN 1-55742-151-X. Never published but available in manuscript at The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.
  • Robin Anne Reid, Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press (2000). 133 pages. ISBN 0-313-30901-9
  • Jerry Weist, Bradbury, an Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor, William Morrow & Company (2002). Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN 0-06-001182-3
  • Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, Kent State University Press (2004). Hardcover, 570 pages. ISBN 0-87338-779-1
  • Sam Weller, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, HarperCollins (2005). Hardcover, 384 pages. ISBN 0-06-054581-X
Wikiquote has quotations related to Ray Bradbury.

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ray_Bradbury&oldid=452531952"