A Brief Biography of Ray Douglas Bradbury. Biography and creative activity of Ray Douglas Bradbury

Biography and episodes of life Ray Bradbury. When born and died bradbury, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. writer quotes, Photo and video.

Ray Bradbury life years:

born August 22, 1920, died June 5, 2012

Epitaph

“The southern night wanders through space,
Black holes, open doors.
Tonight we are exactly alike,
Whispering mantra: Bradbury-Bradbury.
From the song "Bradbury" by the group "Underwood"

Biography

When he was carrying his novel martian chronicles» publishers in New York, he didn’t even have money for the train, so he had to take the bus. And the telephone for communication with the literary agent was the telephone at the gas station next to the house. Three years later, he became a world famous writer, which even for himself was a complete surprise.

The biography of Ray Bradbury is a story of a long and happy life. This is the story of a talented man, in love with his family and his work. Born in Waukegan, he moved with his family to Los Angeles at age 14, where he completed high school and worked as a paperboy. The boy did not have money for college, so public libraries became his "universities", where he spent his days. As Bradbury himself later wrote, “at the age of 27, instead of the university, I graduated from the library.” The lack of education did not prevent him from becoming a famous writer who contributed huge contribution in American and world literature. True, at first the young writer had a hard time - for several years his wife supported him, since Bradbury's publications did not bring much money to the family. With Margaret Ray met, not surprisingly, in a bookstore, together they raised four children and lived in a happy marriage for 56 years - until Maggie's death. The writer dedicated his novel The Martian Chronicles to her.

He was only 33 years old when he was overtaken by worldwide fame - along with the publication of the novel that played important role in creative biography Bradbury, titled Fahrenheit 451. A few years later, the novel was filmed. Throughout his life, Bradbury had a special love for cinema - he wrote scripts for films, and was also the author and presenter of a series of programs based on his own stories, which had great success. Any writer could envy Bradbury's diligence - every year he released a new novel. Many of them became bestsellers immediately after the release. Quotes from Bradbury - from his books or interviews - were memorized. He became one of the most popular authors of recent decades during his lifetime, but he never lost his passion for writing and did not suffer from star disease. In 1999, he suffered a real illness - a stroke, after which he ended up in a wheelchair, but this did not stop him either. So, the last note of the writer was written a week before the death of Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury died on June 5, 2012. The writer's daughter called the cause of Bradbury's death "a long illness." Bradbury's funeral was held at Westwood Village Memorial Park. Bradbury purchased a site in this cemetery a few years before his death. In accordance with the writer's will, the words "Author of Fahrenheit 451" were carved on Bradbury's grave. The writer's birthday is celebrated by his fans as Bradbury's memorial day.

life line

August 22, 1920 Raymond Douglas Bradbury's date of birth.
1934 Moving from Waukegan, Illinois to Los Angeles.
1937 Join the Science Fiction League.
September 27, 1947 Marriage to Margaret Susana Maclure (Maggie).
1953 Publication of the novel Fahrenheit 451, which brought the writer worldwide fame.
1957 Release of the book "Dandelion Wine".
1962 The release of the novel "Trouble Coming".
1964-1965 The release of television shows based on the plays of Bradbury.
1967 An adaptation of the novel Fahrenheit 451.
1985-1992 The release of a TV series based on Bradbury's stories "The Ray Bradbury Theatre".
1988 Receiving the Nebula Award.
2000 Bradbury is awarded the National Book Award Foundation Medal for his contribution to American literature.
2003 Death of Bradbury's wife.
2004 Bradbury is awarded the U.S. National Medal of Arts.
2006 Release of Bradbury's latest novel.
2007 Receiving the Pulitzer Prize for "the career of the consummate science fiction and fantasy author's profoundly influential career in literature."
June 5, 2012 Date of death of Ray Bradbury.

Memorable places

1. The city of Waukegan, Illinois, USA, where Ray Bradbury was born.
2. Los Angeles High School, where Bradbury studied.
3. Los Angeles "League of science fiction" (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society), which was Bradbury.
4. Bradbury House in Los Angeles.
5. memorial park The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village, where Bradbury is buried.

Episodes of life

Bradbury himself and his relatives said that with all his talent and intellect, the writer retained the character of a child, distinguished by curiosity, the ability to be surprised every day by something new and interesting. Famous Bradbury quote: “I never listen to anyone who criticizes my space travel, my rides or my gorillas. When that happens, I just pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room."

Many fans of the writer believed that he had the gift of foresight - for example, in his works, Bradbury "predicted" the emergence of satellite television, ATMs, tracking devices, mobile phones, flat screen TVs and much more. Bradbury himself believes that he was simply born at the right time, in the era of electronics development, and all these inventions were only obvious assumptions.

Bradbury began every day of his life by doing what he loved. The writer believed that writing a new story prolongs his life and was sure that he would live to be at least a hundred years old. Bradbury died at the age of 92.

Testaments

"Death is a form of retribution with the cosmos for the wonderful luxury of being alive."

“One must constantly be in a state of being in love with something. In my case, in books, in writing.

“What is the Universe? This is a big theatre. Theater needs an audience. We are the public. Life on Earth was created to witness and enjoy the spectacle. That's why we're here. And if you don't like the play, get the hell out."

Ray Bradbury interview with Russian TV in 2005

condolences

“The news of Ray Bradbury's passing immediately brought to mind many Americans images from his writings, imprinted in our minds often from a young age. His gift for storytelling has changed our culture and enriched our world. But Ray also understood that our imagination can become a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for bringing about change, and an expression of our cherished values. Without a doubt, Ray will continue to inspire generations to come through his writings. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends."
Barack Obama, US President

“If I wanted to make a statement, I would say that I really miss it. I will be glad to hear words about him from all who knew him. So many artists, writers, teachers and scientists have experienced his influence. Their stories about him are always very touching and soothing. His work lives its life in a vast corpus of books, films, television series and theatrical productions and, more importantly, in the heads and hearts of those who read it, because to read it was to know it. He was the biggest kid I ever knew."
Danny Karapetian, grandson of Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is a legendary science fiction writer who managed to turn his childhood dreams and nightmares, poor eyesight (which forced him to refuse military service), and Cold War paranoia into a brilliant literary career that spanned 74 years and included horror, fantasy, humor, plays, short stories, novels and more. We present you a list of 10 best books Ray Bradbury, which we would recommend everyone to read.

10 best books by Ray Bradbury

1. FAHRENHEIT 451 / FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953)

Inspired by the Cold War and the meteoric rise of television, bradbury, a staunch supporter of libraries, wrote this dark futuristic work in 1953. His future world is filled only with televisions and thoughtless entertainment, people have already stopped thinking and communicating with each other, and such masses no longer need literature, therefore, in this world bradbury firefighters are needed not to put out fires, but to burn books. “This novel is based on real facts, as well as my hatred for those who burn books,” said bradbury in an interview with The Associated Press in 2002.

Fahrenheit 451, he wrote in just nine days at the UCLA library. It was printed on a typewriter rented for 10 cents an hour. So the total amount bradbury spent on his bestseller, amounted to $ 9.80.

2. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1950)

In 1950 debut novel Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles brought him worldwide fame. Here he talks about the militant human colonization of a utopian Martian nation. The work is built in the form of a chain of stories, each of which ridiculed the very real problems of humanity at that time - racism, capitalism and the super-struggle for control of the planet. Most likely with The Martian Chronicles, as well as with some other works bradbury, the reader gets acquainted in childhood. Adults, on the other hand, can easily see that all the fantastic worlds of the author are just our planet Earth, which is so amazing and mysterious, and which is destroyed not by strange creatures, but by man himself.

3. MAN IN PICTURES / THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1951)

In this collection of 18 non-fiction stories published in 1951, bradbury tries to look into the very human inside, in order to describe in detail the reasons for certain actions. The growing struggle between technology and human psychology, along with main story about the tattooed tramp, "the man in pictures", connect the new collection with the previous work bradbury. The writer took the character "man in pictures" from his previous collection "Dark Carnival". "Man in Pictures" is a collection of the flowering of creative forces bradbury. The ideas raised here will form the basis of the writer's further fantastic philosophy. It cost him many efforts to persuade the publisher not to call the collection science fiction. It is thanks to this Ray Bradbury managed to get rid of the status of a low-grade scribbler.

4 SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1962)

This fantastic horror film tells the story of two boys who ran away from home at night to see the carnival and witnessed the transformation of Kuger (a forty-year-old carnival participant) into a twelve-year-old boy. This is what becomes the beginning of the adventure of the two guys, during which they explore the contradictory nature of good and evil. The title of the novel comes from William Shakespeare's Macbeth: "Pricks the fingers./ As always/ Trouble is coming." This story was originally written as a screenplay for a film directed by Gene Kelly, but he couldn't find funding, so bradbury made a complete novel out of it.

5. DANDELION WINE (1957)

This semi-autobiographical novel is set in 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois. The prototype of this place is the hometown bradbury— Waukegan in the same state. Most of the book describes the routine of a provincial American town and the simple joys of the past, the center of which is the preparation of wine from dandelion petals. It is this wine that becomes the metaphorical bottle into which all the joys of summer are poured. Despite the fact that the book does not contain the supernatural theme familiar to the writer, the magic itself revolves around childhood feelings and experiences that can no longer be repeated in adulthood. Do not try to read this book in one breath: it is worth tasting it in small sips, so that each page can give you its own magic of your childhood.

6. THE SOND OF SUNDER (1952)

This story tells us about a passionate hunter who is tired of the usual safari. Therefore, he goes to the past for a huge amount of money to hunt a dinosaur. But to his misfortune, the rules of hunting are strict, since you can only kill one animal, which would have already died due to natural circumstances. The whole story is based on a theory that was later called the "butterfly effect". The essence of this theory is that small changes in the past can have catastrophic consequences for the future. But, at the time bradbury this term was not yet known, therefore, “And Thunder Rang” was most often attributed to the theory of chaos in its time. In 2005, this story was filmed under the same name.

7. DARK CARNIVAL (1947)

This is the first collection of stories Ray Bradbury. The "Dark Carnival" contains, perhaps, the largest concentration of "gloomy" horror films and fantastic stories from all of Bradbury's work. Which is not strange, because being the works of an unknown writer, it was these stories that brought Bradbury money. He originally wanted to call the collection " Kindergarten horrors", thus drawing an analogy with children's nightmares. Scary, grotesque and distorted images inhabited these stories. There are maniacs, and vampires, and eccentric people who are afraid of their own skeletons. Ray Bradbury he never returned entirely to this genre, but the images he created at the beginning of his work surfaced more than once in his more famous works.

8. SUMMER, FAREWELL SUMMER (2006)

This is the last novel Ray Bradbury, released during his lifetime, and is partly autobiographical. This is a kind of continuation of "Dandelion Wine", in which main character, Douglas Spaulding, gradually turns into an adult man. And during this period of growing up, the line separating the youth and the elderly becomes clearly visible. In the words of bradbury the idea of ​​this story came to him back in the 50s, and he planned to release it in the same Dandelion Wine, but the volume was too large for the publishing house: “But for this book, rejected by the publishers, the name arose immediately: “Summer, Goodbye". So, all these years, the second part of “Dandelion Wine” has matured to such a state when, from my point of view, it is not a shame to reveal it to the world. I patiently waited for these chapters of the novel to be overgrown with new thoughts and images that give liveliness to the entire text, ”said bradbury.

9 DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS (1985)

The setting and time of this detective novel is Venice, California, 1949. A series of brutal murders, no doubt connected, attracts the attention of an aspiring writer, no doubt copied from the very bradbury. He, along with Detective Elmo Crumley, are trying to figure out what is happening. This is one of the first works in which Bradbury develops his abilities for the detective genre, and also shows his first attempts to tie the plot on himself. The author was inspired to write the novel by a real series of murders that took place in Los Angeles from 1942 to 1950. Bradbury was present at the time, and kept a close eye on the story.

10. THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN (1953)

This is the third collection of short stories. Ray Bradbury. In it, the writer decided to move away from the sci-fi genre and focus on more realistic stories, fairy tales and detective stories. Of course, fantasy is also present here, but it is more reduced to the background. In total, the collection includes 22 wonderful stories, including "Howler", "Pedestrian", "Killer" and other stories. By the way, the "Golden Apples of the Sun" is dedicated to the woman who most influenced creative way writer - his aunt Neva.

greatest glory bradbury brought his fiction, creative and contemplative at the same time, in which he imagined a future world inhabited by Martians with telepathic abilities, book burners and sea monsters in love. And this futuristic writer categorically protested against the transfer of his books to electronic form. Maybe, Ray Bradbury he was afraid that such a passion for technology was the first step towards his dystopia of the future.

Each of his works was a sincere story about little people and big worlds, about love and the future of mankind, about the issues of life and death, and instantly became the property of world literature.

Sputnik Georgia talks about the 10 most little-known facts from the life and work of Ray Bradbury, a man who managed to arouse readers' interest in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, which were on the periphery of modern culture before him.

1. The proximity of death

Bradbury felt the proximity of death from an early age. He had two older twin brothers born in 1916: Leonard and Sam, Sam died at the age of two. Sister Elizabeth, who was born in 1926, also died in childhood from pneumonia, in the same year the writer's grandfather passed away. Such an early acquaintance with death could not but be reflected in many of the writer's future works.

"Death! I will fight it with my works, my books, my children, who will remain after me," wrote Bradbury.

2. Descendant of a sorceress

There was a legend in the Bradbury family that the great-grandmother of the writer Mary Bradbury was burned at the famous "Salem trial" in 1692. The sentences of all convicted witches were overturned in 1957. This fact is not reliably confirmed, but Ray himself believed in it.

© A.P. Photo /

3. No education - there is a future

Ray did not have a higher education. In 1938 he graduated from high school. Due to the difficult financial situation of the family, money for higher education was not, Bradbury was never able to go to college. The young man spent the next three years of his life selling newspapers on the streets of Los Angeles. But the lack of further education did not interfere with his life, as the writer mentioned in his article "How Instead of College I Graduated from the Library, or Thoughts of a Teenager Who Went to the Moon in 1932." Ray spent days in the library reading Shaw, Chesterton, Stevenson, Shakespeare, Dickens. The writer recalled: "Three days a week I read books. At the age of 27, instead of university, I graduated from the library."

© AP Photo / Doug Pizac

4. Love of a lifetime

Margaret (Maggie) Maclure Bradbury met his future wife and love of his life in 1946 at a Los Angeles bookstore where she worked. A year later, in 1947, Maggie and Ray got married, their marriage lasted until Maclure's death in 2003. During the first few years, Maggie worked hard so that Ray could be creative. Writing at that time did not bring him much income. The family's total monthly income was about $250, of which Margaret earned half. Four daughters were born in their marriage: Bettina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra. The dedication of the author in The Martian Chronicles is addressed to Maclure: "To my wife Margaret with sincere love."

5. Playboy fame

World fame came to Bradbury after the publication of the novel "451 degrees Fahrenheit" (Fahrenheit 451) in 1953. It is noteworthy that the novel was first published in the then recently appeared Playboy magazine. In the novel, Bradbury showed a totalitarian society in which any books are subject to burning. In 1966, director François Truffaut adapted the novel into a feature film called Fahrenheit 451.

© AP Photo / Katy Winn

6. Fear of car accidents

Throughout his life, Bradbury was terrified of car accidents. During the Great Depression, the family often had to cross the country in search of a place to settle, and Ray often witnessed nightmarish car accidents. Once he was very close to the broken car in which the dying woman lay, and for some time they looked into each other's eyes. The extremely impressionable young man fell ill on the same day and promised never to drive a car. He could not get rid of these painful memories until the end of his life, and sometimes they broke through in his stories.

7. Phenomenal memory

Ray Bradbury had a phenomenal memory. According to the writer, he remembered everything he heard and saw almost from the moment of birth. Later, with the same ease, he memorized everything he read. Bradbury wrote that he could mentally return to the hour of his birth: "I remember the circumcision of the umbilical cord, I remember the first time I sucked my mother's breast. The nightmares that usually lie in wait for a newborn are listed in my mental cheat sheet from the very first weeks of life." Some of his biographers believe that Ray could have been born premature, ten months old, as a result of which the baby could have developed sight and hearing in the last month of being in the womb.

© AFP / JM HURON

8. Appeal to authorities

In his work, Ray Brewdbury repeatedly appealed to authorities - he paid tribute to great writers and poets. "Something terrible is coming" - a line from Shakespeare's "Macbeth"; "An outlandish marvel" - from an unfinished poem by Coleridge; Yeats line "Golden apples of the sun, silver apples of the moon"; "Electric body I sing" - a reference to Whitman (I sing about the electric body; Legions of loved ones embrace me, and I embrace them); “And the moon still silvers the space with its rays ...” - this is Byron (... we don’t wander at night, even though the soul is full of love). The second title of the story "Sleep in Armageddon" - "And to dream, perhaps" - these are the words of Hamlet. "The sailor returned home, he returned home from the sea!" - these words begin "Requiem" by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story "The Happiness Machine" is titled with a line by William Blake. Thomas Wolfe ("On the Eternal Wanderings and the Earth"), Charles Dickens ("The Most Beautiful Time"), Hemingway ("Kilimanjaro Machine"), Stendhal ("Escher 2"), Bernard Shaw ("Mark five"). His characters constantly quote their favorite authors. As Granger said from Fahrenheit 451: "... when they ask us what we are doing, we will answer: we remember. Yes, we are the memory of mankind, and therefore we will certainly win in the end."

9. People are idiots

Ray Bradbury gave the following definition of fiction: "Fiction is our reality, brought to the point of absurdity." In the novel, Bradbury foresaw and described modern life, or rather the destruction of world mass culture. Years later, answering the question why many of his predictions did not come true, the writer answered sharply: "Because people are idiots." According to the fantasy modern society wants to engage in consumption - drink beer and watch TV shows. They came up with dog costumes, an advertising manager position, and useless "things like an iPhone." But it was possible to develop science and explore space, Bradbury believed.

© AP Photo / Mark Lennihan

10. Faith in the best

Ray Bradbury believed in the best to the last. Being already quite an elderly man, he began every morning by working on the manuscript of the next story or story, believing that one more new work would prolong his life. Books come out almost every year. The last major novel saw the light of day in 2006, receiving high consumer demand even before the release. At 79, Bradbury suffered a stroke, after which all last years life was confined to a wheelchair, but retained the presence of mind and sense of humor.

In one of his last interviews, the master said: "You know, ninety years is not at all as cool as I thought before. And it's not that I drive around the house in a wheelchair, getting stuck on corners ... A hundred just sounds Imagine the headlines in all the newspapers in the world - "Bradbury turned a hundred years old! "I will immediately be given some kind of award: simply for the fact that I have not yet died.

Judging by American literature of the 20th century, a strange impression is created: it seems that for the average American historical time started about two hundred and forty years ago. Everything before the Declaration of Independence is in a dull indistinctness. Only a few events from those eras evoke some kind of response in the memory - the Mayflower, the acquisition of Manhattan from the Indians, the Salem trials ...

The guardian of ancient American traditions, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, considered the second time to be the ideal and original time. half of XVIII century. Bicentennial houses in his stories are buildings of almost inconceivable antiquity...

For me, who grew up literally on the ruins of Chersonese (and its age exceeds two and a half thousand years), such shallow ideas about antiquity look funny and strange. Antiquity is the Scythian invasions, the wars of Mithridates, the branded Heraclean amphorae... Even the siege of Chersonese by the Kiev pagan Vladimir, which preceded the baptism of Russia, is closer in time to us than to the time of the founding of the first Greek colonies in the Crimea.

American history fits into such a small number of generations that antiquity is strikingly close.

The young Ray Bradbury was a contemporary of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And Edgar Rice Burroughs was the son of a retired American civil war contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe.

How amazingly short this chain is - only two or three generations, an incomplete century ...

But Ray Bradbury is our contemporary. He has grown into this time chain, added his link to it, became another living time machine that connects us with the now legendary world of the pioneers of magazine fiction - Hugo Gernsbeck, Abraham Merritt, Doc Smith, John Campbell...

Are all these historical characters practically our contemporaries? Jack Williamson was born before Edgar Burroughs began writing, published his first story the same year Doc Smith's Space Lark came out in 1928, became popular at the same time as John Campbell, appeared in the same magazines as Heinlein , Asimov and Sturgeon, received the same awards as Philip Dick, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin and William Gibson ... Now, as these lines are being written, Jack Williamson is alive, writing, teaching ...

One life - between legend and modernity. It seems unthinkable. Impossible.

Bradbury was right: people are living time machines.

It is worth realizing how short the history of genre fiction is - and the scale of the changes that have occurred in culture during the 20th century becomes obvious. What was called fantasy literature in Gernsbeck's time is very different from what is called fantasy literature today. But we habitually put these not much similar literary trends in the same basket, without thinking that in doing so we deprive the term fantasy of any intelligible meaning. The grandiose evolution that the literature of free imagination has undergone during this time seems to be hidden behind one petrified word, from under which giants one by one climbed out of the ghetto of mass culture into universally recognized classics.

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. The connection with American antiquity was secured for Ray - his father's English ancestors settled on the new continent as early as 1630. His mother was Swedish by nationality, so on the maternal side, Ray Douglas may well consider himself a descendant of the Vikings (our time machine goes deeper and deeper into the past). With her, the boy always had complete understanding. His father, on the other hand, kept him at some distance. Later, when Ray grows up, their relationship will improve, and then an unusual dedication will appear in the collection The Cure for Melancholy: To my dad, whose love, although so belated, surprised me so joyfully ...

Joyful surprise - perhaps these words can describe the attitude of many of Bradbury's works dedicated to childhood. It seems that he never stopped playing with this world.

But his imagination was also stirred by childhood fears. In an early autobiographical essay, he wrote:

Among my first memories are the following: I go up the stairs at night and see a vile monster waiting for me on the penultimate step. I scream and run as fast as I can to my mother. Then we climb the stairs with her. The monster always hides. Mom never got to see him. At times, I was even offended that she lacked imagination ... For the first ten years of my life, ghosts, skeletons, and other childhood fears constantly lodged in my head.

But not only children's horror stories lodged in this head - from early childhood, Ray had an irresistible craving for magical fiction. He listened with rapture as his mother read him The Wizard of Oz, and with exactly the same enthusiasm he listened to his aunt, who preferred the stories of Edgar Allan Poe to fairy tales. Adults took the boy with them to the cinema, where he watched the Phantom of the Opera and the Lost World. Once he got to the performance of the famous illusionist Blackstone. Magic made an absolutely indelible impression on Ray. He wanted to become a magician.

In 1928 (the year that would become the magical year of Dandelion Wine many years later), the world of eight-year-old Ray turned once and for all - quite by accident, an issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly, a thick quarterly science fiction magazine, fell into his hands. It was a paper treasure filled with magic. On the bright yellow cover, giant, more than two meters tall, red ants were chasing a man. What kid could look at something like that? The cover promised incredible adventures. The cover woke up exactly what became perhaps the main advantage of early magazine fiction - the feeling of the Miracle. Delight before this miracle easily blocked the fear of monsters. More precisely, the monsters themselves became part of the magic that pervaded the world ...

As if the pieces of a complex puzzle clicked into place, and from that moment on, Ray's life went in a strictly predetermined direction. However, until now, he had no idea.

But fate was already accelerating the flywheel of his fate. In 1932, the disasters of the Great Depression tore the Bradbury family from their place. From Illinois they moved to Arizona.

The day before the departure, Ray again fell under the influence of magic. Mr. Electrico, an illusionist from a traveling circus that pitched tents on the shores of Lake Michigan, told the boy that he recognized him as an old friend who died in 1918 in the Ardennes. According to the magician, Ray inherited his soul. It wasn't at a performance, the magician was just talking to him.

Why did he say this? Do not know. Maybe he saw in me a willingness to accept some new fate? How should I know ... But I remember that he told me Live forever - and gave me my future, and at the same time my past - many years of life until the day when his friend died in France ...

Bradbury himself is sure that he began to write precisely thanks to a meeting with Mr. Electrico. Why don't we believe him?

A real treasure awaited Ray in Arizona: one of the local guys collected a whole box of science fiction magazines, and Ray read them all. The stories of Tarzan and the Martian epics of Egar Rice Burroughs so shocked his imagination that he, unable to overcome the thirst for new adventures, began to create them himself.

That summer, his real Wonder Machine was a toy typewriter that had only capital letters.

Two years later, in 1934, fate and the Depression move his family to Los Angeles. By this time, Ray has turned into a bespectacled, overweight, traditional school outcast who is never called by his peers to play baseball. What is left for him? Only reading. And fantastic stories generated by his imagination...

Now, seven decades later (really seven decades? - a damned time machine, it is absolutely impossible to keep track of the years with it!), He remains the same fat man in glasses, with a childishly clean and not childishly sad smile. In 1950 he would write: No one can grow old until he fully realizes how alone he is in this world.

In a few more decades, it will become clear that he himself did not fully realize this.

Then, in the mid-1930s (our time machine travels back in time), he was only beginning to feel loneliness, but was unable to comprehend it. It was not an easy feeling. He, open to miracles, perished in everyday life. Mom understood him, but she could not rejoice at miracles - as before, she was not allowed to see the monsters that sat on the penultimate step of the night stairs.

Perhaps, over time, Ray, too, would have learned to ignore them, abandoned the magazines and became an ordinary hard worker. It went to that, and it would have come to that, if fate did not continue to spin its flywheel - if not for miracles.

Everything was possible in California. He once roller-skated in Hollywood and drove home in the limousine of former movie star and future Hollywood gossip queen Louella Parsons.

Ray has always been there - in the elusive gap between the past and the future, and never lost the ability to take in the look and what was already and what was not.

hasn't come true yet.

In the early days of September 1937, Bradbury accidentally met in a second-hand bookstore with some guy who drew attention to his passion for science fiction magazines and invited ... where? Can not be. He was invited to the next monthly meeting of the local branch of the Sci-Fi League.

Bradbury experienced the same shock that, about the same time, hit the New York sci-fi fan Frederick Paul and hundreds (only hundreds - all over the country) of others: he, a loser lost in imaginary worlds, found others like him, found like-minded people - and found them in a completely real, material, everyday world! Can not be.

First, there are no miracles.

Secondly, try to repeat it again - after such an undoubted miracle!

On September 5, 1937, Ray Bradbury finally entered the highway, along which his fate rushed forward - without traffic lights and refueling stops.

It was at that meeting that someone handed him the first issue of the amateur club magazine Imagination (typewritten, rotator-printed, and pierced at the spine with three paper clips), which contained stories and articles by members of the League. Bradbury suddenly realized that his stories could also be published in such a magazine. He would not have dared to offer them to a real magazine, but in this one - why not? ..

His first fan publication took place four months later - in January 1938, the story Hollerboken's Dilemma appeared in the next issue of Imagination. The story was painstakingly furnished with all the shortcomings of amateur prose, but at least its plot idea was fresh: the hero had accumulated an incredible amount of energy due to being able to stop in time, and this energy would immediately be released if he began to move again.

Time, energy of time, man and time - all this was already in his very first published story!

Three years later, on a strikingly similar idea, Alfred Van Vogt, a professional writer and one of John Campbell's favorites, will build the first of the stories of his weapon cycle. Was there something? .. or? .. Be that as it may, fantasy world remained incredibly tight.

But Bradbury was in this world so far almost nobody. He was a Jester. Joker. A noteworthy wit who joked in magazines, at meetings, on the street, always and for any reason. He spoke vigorously. He sent humoresques and notes to every amateur magazine he could get his hands on. But under all this uncontrollable fun, - wrote his close friend Bruce Yerke only five years later, - there was a deep understanding of human nature, and the notches left by time were already visible ...

At the same time, club life introduced Bradbury to some professional writers from Los Angeles. Henry Kuttner, Arthur Barnes, Lee Brackett, Robert Heinlein came to the meetings of the League. Energetic and insatiably thirsty for communication, a smiling young man at times frightened them with his impulsiveness, and with endless questions about how to become a professional and successful writer, he could simply bring them to white heat.

By that time, he had just finished school and began to look for something to do in adulthood. Theatre? Graphics? Literature?..

Humoresque soon ceased to suit him and he moved on to more serious forms. But amateur magazines, accustomed to receiving light jokes from Bradbury, took his serious stories not too willingly. Ray knew perfectly well that such publications were always experiencing a shortage of materials, and at first he was simply surprised at refusals, and then, with resentment, he began to suspect almost a conspiracy ...

But a way out of this situation was found - in the summer of 1939, Bradbury released the first issue of his own fanzine Futuria Fantasia. In this magazine, as a rule, he was not denied publications ...

With the preparation of the first issue (in total, Bradbury made four issues) coincided with the first (and last) political eclipse that befell the future classic - he became interested in the ideas of technocracy. In the 1930s, it was a very fashionable fad, a new chimera born in the swamps of general despondency from the marriage of the Depression to technological progress. The technocrats argued that the scientific methods of managing the economy would make it as efficient as possible, and society would have no choice but to immediately prosper. To do this, it was necessary to wait until the inefficient capitalist economy eats itself. Depression is only the beginning, said the ideologues of the technocracy. If all goes as harsh logic predicts, by 1945 America will be in ruins. The people will simply have no other choice but to hand their fate into the hands of the most advanced engineers, scientists and thinkers who will be able to rise above momentary problems and solve the problem of building an ideal society with united forces.

Bradbury in those days still quite cheerfully accepted proposals for the implementation of all sorts of utopias. But (time machine - click, click, click) - in a few years he will perceive technological progress as one of the many fantastic monsters bred by human short-sightedness. And utopias, especially those brought to life, will become almost the main nightmare for him ...

Because utopias are the same childhood dreams. Having become a reality, they immediately turn out to be unnecessary and die.

But then, in the 1930s, writers and fans of science fiction treated social experiments without any special prejudices - if you could fantasize in the field of science and technology, then why not dream up in terms of social order? Some of the young fans, helping to make the fairy tale come true, even decided to take the next step and become members of the US Communist Party - however, after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and a sharp change in the general line by this party (from total criticism of fascism to declaring Hitler the main ally), all of them, with rare exceptions, membership cards were handed over. With all their love for science fiction (and, perhaps, precisely because of it), they were still not completely naive young men.

Technocracy, although it offered an approach to social reorganization as scientific as communist theory, was still less of a scarecrow for Americans than the red threat. It wasn't a very scary thing. Some of the youth liked it.

It seems to me, Bradbury wrote then, that technocracy combines all the dreams and hopes of science fiction. This is what we have dreamed of for so many years - and soon our dreams may come true...

Ten years later, rereading these lines, he experienced only horror in front of the ideas he had once extolled.

Bradbury did not play with technocratic utopia for long - in the first issues of Futuria Fantasia, quite a lot of space was devoted to it, but gradually the topic faded away. He was more interested in publishing fantastic stories than social projects. In addition, there were certain achievements here: for example, for the fourth (and, alas, last) issue of the fanzine, Bradbury solicited a story from Robert Heinlein himself - almost incredible luck, even taking into account the fact that Heinlein set the main condition for the publication of the story under the pseudonym Lyle Monroe . Covers for the magazine were drawn by Hannes Bock, another friend of Bradbury's from the League, an amateur artist, then still unknown to anyone.

It was his drawings that Bradbury took with him when, in the summer of 1939, he went to New York for the very first WorldCon in the world - a world congress of science fiction lovers. This congress was called, frankly, for the sake of a red word, only Americans came to it, but nothing like it was held anywhere else in the world at that time. In addition to participating in the convention, Bradbury undertook in New York another important act for history - he went to the editorial office of the monthly Weird Tales and met with the magazine's editor, Fairnsworth Wright. First, he wanted to find out if there were any prospects for publishing his own stories in the journal (however, there were no prospects then). Secondly, he invited Wright to look at the work of Hannes Bock - and here the hit was accurate. Wright liked the style of illustrations, and soon, at the suggestion of Bradbury, Hannes Bock's graphics began to appear regularly in the magazine, and he quickly became one of the most popular science fiction artists.

Bradbury himself found in New York something more than an opportunity to publish: he found himself a literary agent. Julius Schwartz was then one of the few activists who took the time to add other people's stories to magazines. (Later, he would find a more prestigious and creative occupation for himself and remain in the history of popular culture as the lead editor of Superman and Batman comics).

Bradbury gave Shv

artsu their manuscripts and returned to Los Angeles - to work.

For lack of other means of subsistence, he worked as a paperboy. The future classic rushed through the streets screaming Latest news! for a good four years, from 1938 to 1942, simultaneously inventing new stories, observing people, noticing vivid details ... If he had the strength for it. Have you ever run through the streets with a heavy stack of newspapers? Try it. Very conducive to creative growth, if you can keep your breath.

Many years later, he wrote about this time: When I was selling newspapers, friends asked me: What are you doing here? I answered: I am becoming a writer. You don't look like a writer, they said. But I feel like a writer! I objected.

Only in 1941 (a year and a half after meeting Bradbury) did Schwartz manage to sell his story for the first time. The mint, written back in 1939 and later rewritten by Bradbury's friend Henry Hasse, brought the co-authors a total of $27.50 (minus the agent's interest). It was the story of a scientist who, during the demonstration of his invention, accidentally ruined two dozen leading luminaries of world science and was punished for this with immortality - and the contemplation of an endless change of eras. The story was frankly weak in literary terms, but, by some strange coincidence, it was again a story about time.

Time did not let him go.

In 1942, Bradbury decided he had had enough of his newspaper work. He chose from his manuscripts everything that could be read without risk to reason, and went to New York to Schwartz, counting on his friendly advice.

Schwartz, who by that time already had significant experience in dealing with magazine editors, helped not only with advice. For several days they lived together at a typewriter - Schwartz criticized what Bradbury wrote, and Bradbury obediently rewrote over and over again, running out into the street once a day to buy milk and a hamburger - he could not afford more, and Schwartz had things to do were not so brilliant that it was possible to feed at his expense.

Maybe the diet helped, maybe the advice of the wise Schwartz, but the story Piper, written by Bradbury during their joint sitting, managed to be attached pretty quickly. It was Bradbury's first published Martian story - decent enough for professional publication, but not good enough to merit inclusion in any of his important collections of authors.

Moving away from typing fever, Bradbury looked at his text from the side and was dissatisfied. He saw how, what and why he did it, he realized that the story had taken on a form more familiar to publishers - but it was clear that at the same time the Piper had lost something. Gone were the strange and unlike Martian cities. Youthful poetic elation has disappeared. Disappeared... magic?

Bradbury sat down at the typewriter and began to write - one story after another, not giving himself the slightest indulgence and issuing text dozens of pages a day. None of these stories were accepted into any science fiction magazine.

But he stubbornly continued to seek his voice, and the monolithic severity of the editors began to crack. A narrator in Thrilling Wonder Stories, another in Weird Tales - sometimes imitating others, sometimes inventing something of their own. He wrote the wind, keeping in mind the style of Hemingway. The crowd grew out of the style of Edgar Poe...

By the middle of 1943, his perseverance brought the first successes. His stories began to appear regularly in Weird Tales, less often in other publications of lesser importance. The most famous science fiction magazine was John Campbell's Astounding - he was the first to read each new story by Bradbury, but did not show the slightest desire to publish them. Such fantasy did not suit him.

Therefore, Bradbury gradually began to drift towards horror literature. Childish fears were memorable to him, and his typewriter turned them into stylish and unusual stories. Weird Tales already listed him as a regular contributor. And in 1947, he even published the author's collection Dark Carnival in the Arkham House publishing house - it was published and sold out in a rather large circulation for this publishing house of over three thousand copies.

But, of course, for the world of great literature, this was not yet the Real Book.

In 1945, Julius Schwartz submitted one of Bradbury's stories to the New Detective and suddenly received an absolutely rave review. Editor Ryerson Johnson wrote: Without a doubt, Bradbury is the most interesting aspiring author I have ever read. Send me anything he writes.

The wall of the genre corral was broken, the mustangs could go to the prairie. Bradbury's stories circulated in detective magazines, mysticism magazines, and there was a breakthrough in science fiction - in 1946, Planet Stories magazine published Picnic for a Million Years - the first fragment of what in a few years will gather under the cover with the title The Martian Chronicles - and a novel Forgotten by time (which will later receive a new name Ice and Fire), the story of a frenzied time (again time!), Devouring entire generations in a few days ...

More importantly, non-genre popular magazines became interested in Bradbury's prose. His stories appeared in American Mercury, Charm, Collier's, Mademoiselle. Martha Foley included one of these stories in the annual anthology of the Best Stories of the Year. Another was nominated for the O. Henry Award.

When offers to send a story began to come from the prestigious New-Yorker and Harper's, Julius Schwartz wrote to Bradbury that he could no longer help him. When it came to attaching stories to science fiction magazines, Schwartz was the undisputed specialist. he did not have responsible and expensive markets... Here he could not help - nothing ...

Bradbury grew up on science fiction, he was her direct literary descendant, her next generation and her pride. But the fantasy world was no longer the only world available to him. Now all paths were open to him. At the same time, his favorite fantasy still remained with him, but by his very existence he managed to change both her and her perception. outside world. Just think - glossy magazines with millions of copies did not consider it shameful to reprint his stories, already published once in Weird Tales! Serious critics have argued about his prose. His books were published by major publishing houses. He was invited to write scripts for Hollywood ...

The boy who had read Princess of Mars avidly now wrote The Martian Chronicles.

A teenager filled with delight, admiring living curiosities in circus tents, created the Man in Pictures.

A young man who was fond of technocratic ideas became the author of the brightest anti-technocratic novel 451 ° Fahrenheit.

A writer who used to make a living from horror stories has grown the Golden Apples of the Sun...

In 1950, when The Martian Chronicles came out - over half a century ago! - Ray Bradbury was only thirty years old. Ahead were long years life, exciting work, continued success, unfading popularity. Prizes, translations into all languages, recognition of contemporaries, the glory of a living classic...

In 1950, he remained the same boy who read Tarzan. In the same year, 1950, he wept like a boy when he learned of the death of its author...

It strikingly combines the fear of darkness and the ability to enjoy the light. His favorite holiday is Halloween. His best enemy is time. Fragile, like a butterfly's wing. Ruthless, like a young voice on the phone. Indifferent, like the tide that every night licks the old artist's masterpieces off the sand...

Another half century will pass (click, click, click - is it really a countdown of years, or are the wheels just powerlessly clattering against each other?), And he will write: When I look in the mirror, I meet the gaze of a boy whose head and heart are overflowing with dreams, delight and indestructible love for life. Yes, he has completely gray hair - but so what? People often ask how I manage to stay so young, how I manage to keep feeling young. It's simple: let your life be filled with all possible rhymes, all possible activities, all possible love. And be sure to find time for laughter - remember what gives you happiness - every day, without exception. This is exactly what I have been doing since early childhood.

I read these lines and think feverishly - the main thing, the main thing, where is the main thing? There is definitely something missing here!

Then I turn the page and see his face. The face of a man who lived both in the world of science and in the world of magic shook hands with the distant past - and the incredible future.

The face of a man destined to live forever.

The future science fiction writer was born on August 22, 1920 (according to other sources - on the 25th of the same month) in Waukegan. A small town located in Illinois, next to Lake Michigan. The parents named the boy after the famous silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks ( full name writer Ray Douglas Bradbury). When the whole country plunged into the Great Depression, the Bradburys moved to live in Los Angeles, where they were invited by one of their relatives.

Parents from childhood instilled in the boy a love of nature and reading books. They lived in poverty and could not provide Ray with a college education - Bradbury received only a secondary education. So for the next three years, the boy sells newspapers on the street.

Ray Bradbury

The beginning of creative activity

Ray Bradbury wrote his first short story at the age of 12. This work continued the famous story "The Great Warrior of Mars", one of his favorite writers - Edgar Rice Burroughs. Back in 1937, when he was finishing school, Bradbury became a member of the Science Fiction League of Los Angeles. It was then that the author began his first publications in journals.

With no money for a college education, Ray educates himself. The boy spends 3-4 days a week in the city library, reading a variety of books.

In addition to self-education, Ray Bradbury writes for hours, honing his literary skills. In late 1939 - early 1940, Bradbury is engaged in publishing the magazine Futuria Fantasy. On the pages of the magazine, he shares his thoughts about the future of mankind and the dangers that it is fraught with.

Already in 1942, Bradbury finished selling newspapers and was closely engaged in writing fantastic stories. Ray Bradbury publishes up to 50 works a year, literary earnings become the main source of income. The writer has always closely followed scientific breakthroughs, was a participant in two world scientific exhibitions in Chicago and New York.

Bradbury's fascination with achievements in modern science and his vision of the future, formed the further direction in the writer's work. Fantast wrote his stories and novels in the genre of technocratic utopia. In the future that Ray described, there were no wars, famines and lawlessness. In his works, he revealed the life of heroes, consisting of love and meetings, pain, separation and hope.

Personal life and world fame

In 1946, in a bookstore where he was a frequent visitor, the writer saw Margaret Maclure. She became the only beloved woman of Ray Bradbury. Over the next year, Margaret and Ray formalized their marriage. It lasted until 2003 - this year Margaret died.

Over the years family life, the couple raised four girls: Bettina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra. The first years after her marriage, Margaret was the main breadwinner in the family. The writer had not yet won worldwide fame and money was sorely lacking. But the wife put financial worries on her shoulders so that Ray continued to write stories.

Bradbury continued to write and in 1947 released his first collection, Dark Carnival. But the stories were lukewarmly acclaimed by critics. Three years after the publication, the famous "Martian Chronicles" of the writer are released into the world. It was the author's first successful project. Later, Bradbury admitted that he always considered The Martian Chronicles to be his best creation.

World fame came to Ray Bradbury after publishing the novel Fahrenheit 451. And for the first time the novel was published not in fantasy magazines, but in Playboy. In the novel, the writer shows a totalitarian society in the near future that fights dissent by burning all books. The work gained such popularity that in 1966 it was filmed, having shot the film of the same name.

The last years of Ray Bradbury and his death

Ray Bradbury believed that work prolongs life. The morning of the science fiction writer began with the fact that he wrote several pages for the next novel or short story. Now new Bradbury books appeared on store shelves every year. The novel "Summer, Farewell" was published in 2006 and became the final work in the writer's work.

The last years the writer spent in a wheelchair, after suffering a stroke at the age of 76. But, despite this, he was always in a good mood and with a great sense of humor. For example, when asked why Mars has not yet been colonized, Bradbury joked: “Because people are idiots. They only want to consume.”

Interesting facts from the writer's life

Ray Bradbury was an extraordinary person, his biography is filled with interesting and intriguing facts:

• At the age of 4, the boy watched the film Notre Dame Cathedral. In it, the forces of good were at war with the dark forces. The film so frightened Bradbury that after that he fell asleep only with the lights on, afraid of the dark.
• All his life, as the author himself claimed, he dreamed of flying to Mars. At the same time, all inventions not related to space caused him to panic - even with the advent of personal computers, he continued to write stories on a typewriter.
• Ray Bradbury created over 800 works. Despite the fact that the main focus of his work was fantasy stories, Bradbury wrote poetry and even drama. He also wrote several scripts for films and TV shows - "Trouble Coming", "Alien from Space" and others.
• There was a legend in the writer's family that his grandmother was a witch and she was burned during the infamous Salem Trial. There is no documentary evidence of the legend, but the writer himself believed in it all his life.
• Ray Bradbury never drove a car himself - he was afraid to get behind the wheel after witnessing two terrible accidents as a child.
• Bradbury was a devoted family man and lived his whole life with one woman. It was with her hands that the first copy of The Martian Chronicles was typed.