Ray Bradbury

(1920 - 2012)

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920, citing among his childhood influences the film The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Buck Rogers and Tarzan stories, Douglas Fairbanks, Edgar Allan Poe, and a wide array of science fiction. In 1940 he took a writing class with Robert Heinlein; in 1941 he wrote fifty-two stories, selling only three. Between 1950 and 1953 Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451.