Ray Bradbury was an American writer whose hundreds of short stories and 11 novels helped define 20th-century science fiction and legitimize the genre as a significant literary form.
> Explore a collection of Bradbury's best writing advice. (Read)
> After the author's death in 2012, NASA named a rover landing site on Mars after him. (Read)
Bradbury was born in Illinois, but his family moved to Los Angeles after his father lost his job during the Great Depression. It was there that he began taking writing seriously by spending days in the public library and joining a club for science fiction writers and enthusiasts. By the mid-1940s, he was placing stories in magazines and published his first book, "Dark Carnival," in 1947.
> Bradbury claims a magician inspired him to pursue writing, but scholars have never been able to confirm the illusionist's existence. (Read)
> Bradbury couldn't afford college, but he believed aspiring writers were better off spending their time in the library than in a classroom. (Read)
> One of the writer's big breaks came when a young Truman Capote plucked his story from a submission pile. (Read)
1950's "The Martian Chronicles," a collection of interlinked stories about the colonization of Mars, and 1953's "Fahrenheit 451," a dystopian satire about censorship, propelled Bradbury into the mainstream. Today, he's widely regarded as one of the most important figures in science fiction.
> Bradbury used the structure of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" as a model for "The Martian Chronicles." (Read)
> Bradbury wrote the original draft of "Fahrenheit 451" on a rented typewriter in the basement of a UCLA library. (Read)
Discover more:
> John Huston hired Bradbury to cowrite his film adaptation of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." (Watch)
> Watch an episode of Bradbury's '80s TV show featuring a young Jeff Goldblum. (Watch)
> "Fahrenheit 451" earned its name after a firefighter told Bradbury the temperature at which paper burns. (Watch)
