Ruled ineligible for military service by his local draft board because of his vision problems, Bradbury became a full-time writer by early 1943. I knew where I wanted to go.'īradbury sold his first professional piece, the story 'Pendulum,' in November 1941, just a month before the United States entered World War II, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 'I was still years away from writing my first good short story,' he later said, 'but I could see my future. Nearly every piece in the magazine was written by Bradbury himself he used a variety of pseudonyms to try to hide the fact that the magazine was a virtual one-man show.

The next year, he published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia. He published his first short story in a fan magazine in 1938, the same year he graduated from high school.

To support himself while he wrote, Bradbury sold newspapers. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.' Books and Short Stories When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression, and we had no money. 'I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. After graduation from high school in 1938, Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college, so he went to the local library instead. His first official pay as a writer came for contributing a joke to George Burns' Burns & Allen Show. As a teenager, he participated in his school's drama club and occasionally befriended Hollywood celebrities. He later said that he made the decision in hopes of emulating his heroes, and to 'live forever' through his fiction.īradbury's family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1934. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs.īradbury decided to become a writer at about age 12 or 13. As a child, he was a huge fan of magicians, and a voracious reader of adventure and fantasy fiction - especially L. Bradbury enjoyed a relatively idyllic childhood in Waukegan, which he later incorporated into several semi-autobiographical novels and short stories. Early LifeĪuthor Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman for power and telephone utilities, and Ester Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant. Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century. He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal.

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