Ray Bradbury (born 1920) was among the first authors to combine the concepts of science fiction with a sophisticated prose style. Often described as economical yet poetic, Bradbury's fiction conveys a vivid sense of place in which everyday events are transformed into unusual, sometimes sinister situations.

Bradbury began his career during the 1940s as a writer for such pulp magazines as Black Mask,Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales. The latter magazine served to showcase the works of such fantasy writers as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Derleth. Derleth, who founded Arkham House, a publishing company specializing in fantasy literature, accepted one of Bradbury's stories for Who Knocks?, an anthology published by his firm. Derleth subsequently suggested that Bradbury compile a volume of his own stories; the resulting book, Dark Carnival (1947), collects Bradbury's early fantasy tales. Although Bradbury rarely published pure fantasy later in his career, such themes of his future work as the need to retain humanistic values and the importance of the imagination are displayed in the stories of this collection. Many of these pieces were republished with new material in The October Country (1955).

The publication of The Martian Chronicles (1950) established Bradbury's reputation as an author of sophisticated science fiction. This collection of stories is connected by the framing device of the settling of Mars by human beings and is dominated by tales of space travel and environmental adaptation. Bradbury's themes, however, reflect many of the important issues of the post-World War II era--racism, censorship, technology, and nuclear war--and the stories delineate the implications of these themes through authorial commentary. Clifton Fadiman described The Martian Chronicles as being "as grave and troubling as one of Hawthorne's allegories." Another significant collection of short stories, The Illustrated Man (1951), also uses a framing device, basing the stories on the tattoos of the title character.

Bradbury's later short story collections are generally considered to be less significant than The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. Bradbury shifted his focus in these volumes from outer space to more familiar earthbound settings. Dandelion Wine (1957), for example, has as its main subject the midwestern youth of Bradbury's semiautobiographical protagonist, Douglas Spaulding. Although Bradbury used many of the same techniques in these stories as in his science fiction and fantasy publications, Dandelion Wine was not as well received as his earlier work. Other later collections, including A Medicine for Melancholy (1959), The Machineries of Joy (1964), I Sing the Body Electric! (1969), and Long after Midnight (1976), contain stories set in Bradbury's familiar outer space or midwestern settings and explore his typical themes. Many of Bradbury's stories have been anthologized or filmed for such television programs as The Twilight Zone,Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Ray Bradbury Theater.

In addition to his short fiction, Bradbury has several adult novels. The first of these, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), originally published as a short story and later expanded into novel form, concerns a future society in which books are burned because they are perceived as threats to societal conformity. In Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) a father attempts to save his son and a friend from the sinister forces of a mysterious traveling carnival. Both of these novels have been adapted for film. Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) is a detective story featuring Douglas Spaulding, the protagonist of Dandelion Wine, as a struggling writer for pulp magazines Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles are often included in the category of novel. Bradbury has also written poetry and drama; critics have faulted his efforts in these genres as lacking the impact of his fiction.

While Bradbury's popularity is acknowledged even by his detractors, many critics find the reasons for his success difficult to pinpoint. Some believe that the tension Bradbury creates between fantasy and reality is central to his ability to convey his visions and interests to his readers. Peter Stoler asserted that Bradbury's reputation rests on his "chillingly understated stories about a familiar world where it is always a few minutes before midnight on Halloween, and where the unspeakable and unthinkable become commonplace." Mary Ross proposed that "Perhaps the special quality of [Bradbury's] fantasy lies in the fact that people to whom amazing things happen are often so simply, often touchingly, like ourselves." In a genre in which futurism and the fantastic are usually synonymous, Bradbury stands out for his celebration of the future in realistic terms and his exploration of conventional values and ideas. As one of the first science fiction writers to convey his themes through a refined prose style replete with subtlety and humanistic analogies, Bradbury has helped make science fiction a more respected literary genre and is widely admired by the literary establishment.

Ray Bradbury's science fiction, unlike that of many of his colleagues, de-emphasizes the Buck Rogers-Flash Gordon variety of space hardware and gadgetry in favor of an exploration of the impact of scientific development on human lives. In general, he warns man against becoming too dependent on science and technology at the expense of moral and aesthetic concerns, contending that his stories "are intended as much to instruct how to prevent dooms, as to predict them." Writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, George Edgar Slusser notes that "to Bradbury, science is the forbidden fruit, destroyer of Eden.... In like manner, Bradbury is a fantasist whose fantasies are oddly circumscribed: he writes less about strange things happening to people than about strange imaginings of the human mind. Corresponding, then, to an outer labyrinth of modern technological society is this inner one--fallen beings feeding in isolation on their hopeless dreams."

"If you're too good a scientist, you're not a good writer," Ray Bradbury once told an interviewer. This quote summarizes his unorthodox approach to writing science fiction, an approach which has led some critics to insist that calling him "the world's greatest living science fiction writer" (a phrase which appears on the covers of the paperback editions of his books) does an injustice to the scope of his talent. As Damon Knight observes in his In Search of Wonder: Critical Essays on Science Fiction: "The purists are right in saying that [Bradbury] does not write science fiction, and never has." Donald A. Wollheim agrees with Knight's assessment. Writing in The Universe Makers, Wollheim states: "Only a very small percentage of Bradbury's works can be classified as science fiction. Although his most `science-fictional' book, The Martian Chronicles, is a classic, its s-f plausibility is slight.... It has the form of science fiction but in content there is no effort to implement the factual backgrounds. His Mars bears no relation to the astronomical planet. His stories are stories of people--real and honest and true in their understanding of human nature--but for his purposes the trappings of science fiction are sufficient--mere stage settings.... He is outside the field [of science fiction]--a mainstream fantasist of great brilliance, ... but certainly not `the world's greatest living science fiction writer.'"

Knight credits Bradbury with a greater range than the science fiction label implies: "His imagery is luminous and penetrating, continually lighting up familiar corners with unexpected words. He never lets an idea go until he has squeezed it dry, and never wastes one. As his talent expands, some of his stories become pointed social commentary; some are surprisingly effective religious tracts, disguised as science fiction; others still are nostalgic vignettes; but under it all is still Bradbury the poet of 20th-century neurosis. Bradbury the isolated spark of consciousness, awake and alone at midnight; Bradbury the grown-up child who still remembers, still believes."

Over the past five decades, Bradbury has managed to create a tremendous amount of work in several genres, including short stories, plays, novels, film scripts, poems, children's books, and nonfiction. He attributes this prolific production to a steady writing routine. "Every single day for 50 years," he tells Aljean Harmetz in the New York Times, "if I can get to my typewriter by 9 o'clock, by 10:30 I'm protected against the world." An incredible memory also helps. Bradbury claims total recall of every book he has read and of every film he has seen. This enables him to "cross-pollinate metaphors," as he once said, from hundreds of sources for his own fiction. He also utilizes a spontaneous writing technique similar to the automatic writing of the surrealists. William F. Touponce in Extrapolation quotes Bradbury explaining: "In my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head." As Touponce relates, Bradbury "advises the aspiring writer to relax and concentrate on the unconscious message. This way of writing shorts out the mind's critical and categorizing activities, allowing the subconscious to speak."

The Martian Chronicles, a lyrical and basically optimistic account of man's colonization of Mars, is widely regarded as Bradbury's most outstanding work. It blends many of his major themes and metaphors, including the conflict between individual and social concerns (that is, freedom versus confinement and conformity) and the idea of space as a frontier wilderness, a place where man sets out on a quasi-religious quest of self-discovery and spiritual renewal. In addition, The Martian Chronicles provides the author with an opportunity to explore what he perceives to be the often deadly attraction of the past as opposed to the future and of balance and stability versus change. As in many other Bradbury stories, this idea is expressed in The Martian Chronicles via the metaphor of the small, old-fashioned midwestern town ("Green Town, Ill.") which represents peaceful childhood memories of a world that man hesitates to abandon to the passage of time. In his contribution to Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, A. James Stupple writes: "Bradbury's point [in The Martian Chronicles] is clear: [The Earthmen] met their deaths because of their inability to forget, or at least resist, the past. Thus, the story of this Third Expedition acts as a metaphor for the book as a whole. Again and again the Earthmen make the fatal mistake of trying to recreate an Earth-like past rather than accept the fact that this is Mars--a different, unique new land in which they must be ready to make personal adjustments."

Russell Kirk feels that the greatest strength of The Martian Chronicles is its ability to make us look closely at ourselves. In Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormality in Literature and Politics, Kirk states: "What gives [ The Martian Chronicles] their cunning is ... their portrayal of human nature, in all its baseness and all its promise, against an exquisite stageset. We are shown normality, the permanent things in human nature, by the light of another world; and what we forget about ourselves in the ordinariness of our routine of existence suddenly bursts upon us as a fresh revelation.... Bradbury's stories are not an escape from reality; they are windows looking upon enduring reality."

In his essay for Voices for the Future, Willis E. McNelly concludes that Bradbury's works, especially The Martian Chronicles and the highly-acclaimed Fahrenheit 451, prove that "quality writing is possible in [a] much-maligned genre. Bradbury is obviously a careful craftsman, an ardent wordsmith whose attention to the niceties of language and its poetic cadences would have marked him as significant even if he had never written a word about Mars." In short, McNelly continues, Bradbury's "themes ... place him squarely in the middle of the mainstream of American life and tradition. His eyes are set firmly on the horizon-frontier where dream fathers mission and action mirrors illusion. And if Bradbury's eyes lift from the horizon to the stars, the act is merely an extension of the vision all Americans share. His voice is that of the poet raised against the mechanization of mankind."

In an interview with Future magazine, Bradbury admits that poetry does play an important role in his writing. In fact, he notes, "I've found inspiration for many of my short stories in other people's poetry.... There have been many times when I've taken a single line of poetry and turned it into a short story. Poetry is an old love of mine, one which is central to my life." Though he is most often called a science fiction writer, Bradbury considers himself to be an "idea writer" instead. "Everything of mine is permeated with my love of ideas--both big and small. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it grabs me and holds me, fascinates me. And then I'll run out and do something about it." Furthermore, he explains, "I write for fun. You can't get too serious. I don't pontificate in my work. I have fun with ideas. I play with them. I approach my craft with enthusiasm and respect. If my work sparks serious thought, fine. But I don't write with that in mind. I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people. I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring. I want to shun that role. My goal is to entertain myself and others. Hopefully, that will prevent me from taking myself too seriously."

Bradbury suffered a stroke in November 1999, but was expected to make a full recovery.

Historical Context

• The Life and Times of Ray Bradbury (1920-)
• At the time of Bradbury's birth:
• Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States
• The world's first radio broadcasting station went on the air
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise published
• The New York Yankees acquired Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox
• Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence published
• The times:
• 1930-1960: Modernist Period in American literature
• 1939-1945: World War II
• 1950-1953: Korean War
• 1957-1975: Vietnam War
• 1960-present: Postmodernist Period in American literature
• 1983: American invasion of Grenada
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• Bradbury's contemporaries:
• Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-) American poet
• J.D. Salinger (1919-) American writer
• Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) American actor
• Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-born American writer
• John Glenn (1921-) American astronaut and senator
• Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) American novelist
• Selected world events:
• 1927: Charles Lindbergh flew solo across Atlantic
• 1930: Gandhi led Salt March in India
• 1969: N. Scott Momaday's Way to Rainy Mountain published
• 1981: IBM introduced its first personal computer
• 1991: Soviet Union was officially dissolved

Further Reading

• Authors in the News, Gale, Volume 1, 1976, Volume 2, 1976.
• Amis, Kingsley, New Maps of Hell, Ballantine, 1960, pp. 90-7.
• Berton, Pierre, Voices from the Sixties, Doubleday, 1967, pp. 1-10.
• Breit, Harvey, The Writer Observed, World Publishing, 1956.
• Clareson, Thomas D., editor, Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Volume 1, Bowling Green State University Press, 1976.
• Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening Views, 1968-1988, Gale, 1989.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 42, 1987.