Ray Bradbury Essay -- essays research papers

Ray Bradbury     Ray Bradbury was a dreamer. Bradbury had a skill at putting his dreamsonto paper, and into books. He dreams dreams of magic and transformation, welland evil, small-town America and the canals of Mars. His dreams are not onlypopular, but durable. His work consists of short stories, which are not hard topublish, and keep in the public eye. His stories have stayed in print for nearlythree decades.     Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in a small town of Waukegan,Illinois. His parents were Leonard Spaulding and Esther Moberg Bradbury. Hismother, Esther Moberg loved films, she gave her son the middle happen upon Douglasbecause of Douglas Fairbanks, and she passed her love of films to her son. "Mymother took me to see everything....." Bradbury explains, "Im a child of motionpictures." Prophetically, the first film he saw, at the age of three, was thehorror classic "The Hunchback of Notre razz", sta ring Lon Chanley. His teenageAunt Neva gave the boy his appreciation of fantasy, by reading him the Oz books,when he was six. When Bradbury was a child he was encouraged to read the classic,Norse, Roman, and Greek Myths. When he was old enough to choose his own readingmaterials, he chose books by Edger Rice Burroughs and the comic book heroesFlash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Prince Valiant. When Bradbury was in Waukegan he substantial his interest in acting and Drama. After seeing a magician, known asBlackstone, he became fascinated with magic also.     In 1932, his family moved to Tucson Arizona. With his talents he conditionedin Waukegan (amateur magician) he got a job at the local radio station. "I wason the radio every Saturday night reading comic strips to the kiddies and existencepaid in free tickets, to the local cinema, where I saw The Mummy, The Murdersin the Wax Museum, Dracula, .....and King Kong." His family only stayed inTuscan for a year, but Bradbury feels "It was one of the great years of mylife because I was acting and singing in operettas and writing, my first shortstories."     In 1934 his family moved to Los Angeles, where Bradbury has remained. Heattended Los Angeles High School, where he wrote and took vocalism in many dramaticproductions. His literary ... ...feild is. The demands of the commercialmarketplace and the need to confine a popular writer and his within an easyrecognizable depiction have resulted in Bradburys being jammed uncomfortably into abox labeled "Science Fiction". No definition of science fiction exists thatpleases everybody, and regular if it did, to apply it casually to the work of RayBrabdbury would be inaccurate and unfair. H.G. Wells, whom many regard as aclassical science fiction writer, had this to say near his own novels "They areall fantasies they do not aim to project a serious possibility they aim indeedonly at the sum total of convictio n as one gets in a good gripping dream. They haveto hold the reader to the end by art and illusion and not by proof and argument,and the moment he closes the cover the reflects he wakes up to theirimpossibility." Wells here is contrasting his stories with those of Jules Verne,wich he calls, anticipatory inventions." Viewed this way, virtually all ofBradburys stories are fantasies, with Wellss supposition of the "good grippingdream" coming closest to describing their effect. Even today Ray Bradburysplace in literature is not clear.