Ray Bradbury

January 23, 2006

"We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out." ~Ray Bradbury

Who is Ray Bradbury? Ray Bradbury (born 1920) is one of America's great creative geniuses. As writer, he produced more than five hundred published works -- novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and poetry.

Talented and creative people befriended him as a teenager, including radio star George Burns. It was Burns who first paid Bradbury as a writer -- for contributing a joke to the George Burns & Gracie Allen Show.

Bradbury wanted to become an actor until his teachers encouraged him to write. His formal education ended with his high school graduation in 1938, but he continued to educate himself. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street corners all day, but spent his nights in the library and at his typewriter.

His reputation as a leading science fiction writer came with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950. As a description of man's attempt to colonize Mars, it was a work of both science fiction and social criticism, reflecting America's anxieties at the time: the threat of nuclear war, the longing for a simpler life, reactions against racism, and the fear of foreign powers.

Bradbury's stories have been adapted for television, including episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He still writes daily and occasionally lectures.