Ray bradbury was an outstanding authors english literature essay

Raymond Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, , which he’ll later use as a setting for one of his, Something Wicked This Way Comes. He had two parents, named Esther and Leonard Bradbury, and he had two brothers who were named Samuel and Leonard (Morgen 2). Samuel passed away before Bradbury was born so he never met him. He also had a sister, Elizabeth, who was born in 1926, passed away in 1927. Bradbury was only seven when this happened and he didnt understand he wont be able to see his little sister ever again (Morgen 2)His home town, Waukegan, Illinois, which he uses for the setting of some of his books, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, wasn’t the fastest town in the world.” I thought it was the most beautiful town in the world” (Bradbury ). He never noticed that the employment rate was really high in that town or all the run-down areas that were there. All Bradbury cared about was that he could play in the revine right next to his house and that all his relatives lived on the same block as him (Mass 20). While he was there, he became friends with someone who grew up to be very famous, Jack Benny. Benny use to play violin at concerts and Bradbury would open for him and together they got the nickname, ” The Boys from Waukegan” (Indick 40). Waukegan, Illinois was the setting for Something Wicked This Way Comes, he just changed the name to Greentown, Illinois (Bradbury 1)Bradbury first encounter with science fiction was when his mom took him to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when he was three (Mass 20). He saw various other science fiction movies, which greatly influenced him into writing science fiction. He would read anything by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, or Edgar Allan Poe he could get his hands on and found out about the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories when he was eight. ” His immesion in popular culture began at three, ” and included ” a wide variety of entertainment media: books, comics, movies, theater, museums, magicshows, circuses.” (Morgen 2). Leonard, Bradbury’s older brother, was the one who played sports and was athletic while Bradbury was never into sports and enjoyed spending a day at the library instead of being outside. ” I hid out there summers, hiding from bullies,” Bradbury said in an interview. Bradbury began to collect comic strips, mostly Buck Rogers, when he was nine. When the bullies at his school found out about this, they started to make fun of him and he ended up destorying all of them to show that he didn’t care (Mass 24). Later when he was by himself, he found out that he actually really cared about them. So from then on he promised himself to never let anyone’s opinion change his passion in life.(Mass 24)Turning twelve was a big year for Bradbury, because he found he next love which is writing. That Christmas he recieved a toy typewriter and he immediately started writing stories based off Buck Rogers and other characters. (Mass 25) This also gave him his first job, which was a radio station would let him read his comics over the air. Instead of getting paid, he recieved tickets to science fiction and horror movies. Two years later, his family moved to Los Anegelas, California and the apartment that they were living it was very close to Hollywood. Even though he didnt really fit in at the new school becase his shy and was always reading, he became really good friends with some of the movie theather owners who would give him free tickets to movies (Mass 29). When he turned seventeen, he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. He become friends with a very popular writer named Robert Heinlein. Bradbury once said this to the San Diego press in 2000, ” From the time I was 12 until I was 22 or 23, I wrote stories long after mignight- unconventional stories of ghosts and haunts and things in jars that I had seen in sour armpit carnivals, of friends lost to the tides in lakes, and of consorts of three in the morning, those souls who had to fly in the dark in order not to be shot in the sun.” While in the League, Bradbury was also extremely close friends with a man named Forrest J. Ackerman. Ackerman described Bradbury as, ” one of the worlds greatest literary talents and socially stimulating individuals of the twentieth century.” Later, Ackerman became famous for writing science fiction, became an editor for science fiction and an agent for other science fiction writers. Bradbury met Ray Harryhausen, who was a fantasty/fiction/horror film producer. Since Bradbury was writing things for those times of films and Harryhausen was producing them, they were a perfect match for each other. Ray Bradbury once said, ” We promised each other we’d always love dinosaurs. We’d grow old but never grow up.” Since he couldn’t afford college, Bradbury’s education past high-school was pretty much reading anything he could get his hands on. He picked up a job selling newspaper which payed ten dollars an hour, and this also allowed him to read and write at night. He saved up enough money to take a short story writing class and would read books that ranged from classic literature to things that were completely different. When he was in his late-teens, he joined a ” fandom” scence, which is a group of people who write science fiction magazines called fanzines (Mass 33). Writers were encouraged to publish their works and then the fans would comment by sending them letters. Bradbury first published was a story called, ” Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” which showed up in a magazine called Imagination!. By the time he was twenty-one, he published the first paying short story called ” Pendulum”, which payed him $13. 75. He then sold his very own story, called ” The Lake” for twenty dollars. By the end on 1942, he was a full time writer. (Bradbury 18)” I write for fun, 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 dont like serious people, My goal is to entertain myself and others.” Bradbury said this in an interview for Future in October 1978. After he sold his first story, he began to write every single and his stories were amazing. He wanted to join the army in World