Bradbury, Ray
BORN: August 22, 1920, Waukegan, Illinois
DIED: June 5, 2012, Los Angeles
IDENTIFICATION: Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright, and poet
whose science fiction and fantasy writings sharply raised the public estimation of these
genres.
SIGNIFICANCE: Ray Bradbury, probably known best for the novels Fahrenheit
451 and The Martian Chronicles, was the first American writer of science fiction and
fantasy to break out of the confines of special-interest magazines and achieve
publication in mainstream periodicals and literary journals. The quality of Bradbury’s
work—which also embraced poetry and drama, horror and crime fiction—did much to
convince readers of the value of these forms. He was a prolific writer: after his first
stories were published in the 1950s, Bradbury saw more than 500 of his creations go
into print. His stories have been adapted for the stage and screen and as video games.
The Writer’s Life
Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920, the third of
four children born to Leonard and Esther Bradbury. Two older twin brothers, Leonard
and Samuel, were born in 1916. Samuel died in 1918. The fourth child, a sister,
Elizabeth, was born in 1926 but died in 1927. Leonard Bradbury was a telephone
lineman. The economic problems of the 1920s affected the Bradbury family, which
moved between Illinois and Arizona several times when Ray was a child. The family
finally settled in California in 1934, and Ray graduated from Los Angeles High School in
1938.
The Making of a Writer. Bradbury had begun writing stories when he was 12 years
old. Though he knew and worked with several professional writers before his own work
was published, he considered himself a self-taught writer. He read a great deal,
everything from comics to poetry, and he established a routine of writing every day.
In common with several other well-known science fiction authors, Bradbury started out
as a fan. While he was in high school, he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League.
He also wrote and published his own fanzine (a magazine written by and for the fans of
a particular genre, such as science fiction). A fanzine will typically publish both original
creative work and articles about famous exponents of the genre. Fans do not only create
fanzines, however; they attend conventions and communicate with each other and with
writers and editors who publish science fiction. Bradbury participated in all of the usual
fan activities.
The Forties and Fifties. Bradbury dedicated his professional life to writing. After
graduating from high school, he sold newspapers and lived at home while renting a
small tenement room to write in. In 1941 he began writing a story every week. Most of
his earlier stories were not published, and he said that he burned many of his bad early
stories before he got married. (In 1946 Bradbury met Marguerite Susan McClure in a
bookstore. They married in 1947 and had four daughters between 1949 and 1958.
Marguerite died in 2003.)
Bradbury frequently said that writers learn to write by writing regularly. He sold one or
two stories in 1941 and 1942. By 1943 he had resigned from the newspaper to write full
time. His earlier stories were primarily published in fantasy and horror magazines, such
as Weird Tales. By the end of the forties, he was married, had won recognition for his
work in science fiction and fantasy, and had begun to be published in mainstream
literary magazines, magazines that did not as a rule publish science fiction or fantasy
stories.
During the fifties were published what have become known as Bradbury’s most
important books: The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and Dandelion Wine, as well
as several major collections of short stories (he also wrote screenplays during this
period). With these works he moved from being known merely as a science fiction and
fantasy writer to being recognized and praised by literary critics, people who tended to
ignore or scorn those who wrote in these genres.
The Sixties and Beyond. Bradbury wrote most of his fantastic fiction in the first two
decades of his career. His later fiction tended more toward mystery or suspense. In the
sixties he began writing and publishing more poetry and drama, including stage plays,
adaptations of his stories, and television scripts. He also wrote nonfiction on a wide
variety of subjects.
A Life of Writing. Interest in Bradbury’s life tends to focus mostly on his writing.
However, Bradbury was also publicly involved in other work related to his passions, such
as designing for and consulting with Walt Disney’s company and even the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on creative and entertainment projects.
One important aspect of Bradbury’s life since childhood was his passion for various
popular enthusiasms: dinosaurs, stage magic and illusion, carnivals, space travel, Mars,
and movies and comics, especially science fiction or fantastic movies and comics. His
fascination with some of these activities and ideas is evident in the fact that he wrote
about different facets of them for more than 50 years.
Permission: AP Photo
Ray Bradbury stands behind his desk in 1986. Robots and rocket ships battle for space with
Mickey Mouse and much else. The clutter of toys was no accident: over his decades of writing,
Bradbury drew on a nonstop sense of wonder inherited from boyhood. The writer poured out
stories about joy and terror, many of them taking shape as tales of the supernatural or his own
rapturous variant of science fiction. "In quickness is truth," he advised writers. "The faster you
blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay
comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling
or tiger-trapping."
Writing about Time and Place. The love Bradbury felt for his birthplace of Waukegan
is shown in his creation of the fictional Green Town, the setting of Dandelion
Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as other small towns in his short
stories. In the small towns Bradbury described, families gather on the porch and talk to
neighbors of an evening; people walk or perhaps ride a trolley to work and know
everyone who lives nearby. Although his towns are small, the people, houses, and
events described are often larger than life—and hence not at all an "accurate" portrayal
of what Waukegan was like when Bradbury and his family lived there. Bradbury’s small
towns are part of a mythic version of an idealized American past, whether the town is in
the Midwest or on Mars.
The love Bradbury felt for Los Angeles, the city he moved to when he was 14 and in
which he became an adult, met his wife, and raised his family, is connected to his love
for the popular culture that the United States has become so well known for and to his
vision of Los Angeles as a city of the future. Bradbury’s experience working in film—
along with much other screenwriting, he wrote the screenplay for It Came from Outer
Space and adapted Moby Dick for John Huston’s film of Melville’s novel—was put to good
use in his later novels A Graveyard for Lunatics and Green Shadows, White Whale.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
Genre: Novel
Subgenre: Gothic fiction
Published: New York, 1962
Time period: A late October in the 1920s
Setting: Green Town, Illinois (fictional town loosely based on Waukegan, Illinois)
Themes and Issues. Something Wicked This Way Comes is a book set in the autumn
at Halloween time, a setting appropriate to the gothic genre. Gothic novels show an
ordinary world invaded by evil forces. This novel is often seen as a sequel of sorts
to Dandelion Wine and is even set in the same town. Its concern is adolescent boys
coming of age and dealing with the onset of sexual awakening and with the nature of
good and evil in their world.
The Plot. The novel opens with the two main characters, Will Halloway and Jim
Nightshade, both 13 years old, enjoying October and the prospect of Halloween. They
meet a lightning rod salesman, Tom Fury, who offers them a free lighting rod and warns
them that a storm is coming. As the boys and Will’s father, Charles, go home that
evening, they see posters for a carnival that will be coming to town that weekend,
Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show. When the carnival comes, however,
strange things begin to happen. The disappearance of Tom Fury is hardly noticed since
he is a traveling salesman. However, Miss Foley, Jim and Will’s teacher, has an
unsettling experience when she visits the carnival, and later Will and Jim find Tom Fury’s
bag of lighting rods abandoned on the ground at the carnival.
When the two boys investigate the carnival grounds that night, they see the owners
running the merry-go-round. The ride seems to turn one of them into a boy. The adult
owner, Mr. Dark, tries different ways of capturing the two boys. The attempts become
increasingly frightening and supernatural, and all seem to have something to do with
time. The owners promise the young a fast and easy way to grow up to enjoy adulthood
and older people a return to their carefree youth. In all cases the promises are lies. The
final confrontation of the novel comes when Charles, Will, and Jim go back to the
carnival and face their opponents. Only through their love and laughter are Charles and
Will able to save Jim. The novel ends with the freeing of the carnival people, who were
actually prisoners; Dark and Cooger are destroyed along with the merry-go-round, and
the father and two boys return home to their respective families.
Analysis. Something Wicked This Way Comes is a suspenseful and thrilling novel.
Instead of being a nostalgic story about a carnival coming to a small Midwestern town,
the novel focuses on a conflict between good and evil. Good in the novel is represented
by ordinary people who love their families and towns. Evil is represented by a sinister
carnival owned by two supernatural beings who capture and deform others. The carnival
people do not or cannot love. Only love and laughter can protect the main characters,
Jim Nightshade, Will Halloway, and Charles Halloway (Will’s father). The main focus of
the novel is on the relationship between a growing boy and his father, who are
separated at the beginning by a sense that youth and age are not able to communicate.
Only when they come together can they defeat the evil forces that threaten their friends
and family.