quotes from books and interesting facts from the life of a great dreamer. Ray Bradbury. quotes from books and interesting facts from the life of a great dreamer Love of a lifetime

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 (the full name of the writer is 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 passion for achievements in modern science and his vision of the future formed a 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 of 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.

It is believed that he was one of the first authors who were able to arouse readers' interest in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

And we at Bright Side love him, so we've collected the best quotes from his works.

* When a person is 17, he knows everything. If he is 27 and still knows everything, then he is still 17.

* There are crimes worse than burning books. For example, do not read them.

* The first thing you know in life is that you are a fool. The last thing you know is that you're still the same fool.

(6 reasons why friends and colleagues may think you are a Fool... https://cont.ws/@vmrus1/910425)

* Kindness and intelligence are properties of old age. At 20, a woman is much more interested in being heartless and frivolous.

* To survive, you must stop asking what is the meaning of life. Life itself is the answer.

* Wars are never won. All they do is lose, and whoever loses last asks for peace.

* Evil has only one power - the one that we give it ourselves.

* When life is good, there is no point in arguing about it.

* Love is when someone can return himself to a person.

* Open your eyes wider, live so greedily, as if in ten seconds you will die. Try to see the world. It is more beautiful than any dream created in a factory and paid for with money. Do not ask for guarantees, do not seek peace - there is no such beast in the world.

* When you live all the time next to people, they do not change one iota. You are amazed at the changes that have taken place in them only if you part for a long time, for years.

* Looking for rabbits in hats is a disastrous business, just like looking for even a drop of common sense in some people's heads.

* Smile, do not bring pleasure to trouble.

* Human memory is like a sensitive photographic film, and all our life we do nothing but try to erase what is imprinted on it.

* Yes, we have enough free time. But do we have time to think?

* We have one duty - to be happy.

* Whoever ceased to be surprised, he ceased to love, and ceased to love - consider that you have no life, and whoever has no life - consider that he went to the grave. *

* And if living a full life means dying sooner, so be it: I prefer to die quickly, but first taste more of life.

* No matter what you do; it is important that everything you touch changes shape, becomes different from before, so that a particle of yourself remains in it. This is the difference between a person who simply cuts the grass on the lawn and a real gardener.

* Create yourself what can save the world - and if you drown along the way, at least you will know that you were swimming to the shore.

* Books are just one of the receptacles where we keep what we are afraid to forget.

* The main secret of creativity is to treat your ideas like cats - just make them follow you.

* Love is when you want to experience all four seasons with someone. When you want to run with someone from a spring thunderstorm under a lilac strewn with flowers, and in the summer to pick berries and swim in the river. In autumn, cook jam together and seal windows from the cold. In winter - to help survive a runny nose and long evenings ...

* I experienced the simplest and greatest happiness in the world - I was alive.

10 Interesting Facts About Ray Bradbury

1. Ray Bradbury had no education other than high school, which he completed in 1938. Bradbury could not go to college, he had no money. But he spent hours sitting in the library for books. Therefore, Ray himself called himself a man who graduated from libraries instead of college; this phrase became part of the title of his autobiographical article, published in 1971. By the way, as a young Ray sold newspapers, then for several years he lived at the expense of his wife.

2. In his memoirs, Ray noted that when he was taking his first collection of short stories, The Martian Chronicles, to a screening in New York, he did not have money for a train. On his second trip to New York, he was already overtaken by fans of his work: during a stop in Chicago, they wanted to get an autograph in the first edition of The Martian Chronicles.

3. The only case when Bradbury, who in his life refrained from strong words (but widely used them in his works), cursed in public, is described by his biographer Sam Weller. This happened when the students of one of the colleges tried to explain to the writer what he actually wrote the novel Fahrenheit 451 about and did not listen to Bradbury's objections at all.

Photo: Cover of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 edition.

4. In an interview, Bradbury admitted that he dreams of going to Mars, and even jokingly asked one day to bury him on the red planet in a can of cabbage soup.

5. According to the writer himself, the impetus for the idea of the novel "451 degrees Fahrenheit" was the story of the burning of the library in Alexandria. This event has at least four supposed dates, and Bradbury himself spoke of it as having happened "3000 years ago."

6. The first publication of Bradbury took place in January 1938 in a fanzine (amateur small circulation edition) "Imagination!". The story was called Hollerbrochen's Dilemma.

7. During his life, Bradbury wrote eleven science fiction novels (the first, "The Martian Chronicles" - in 1950, the last, "Goodbye Summer!" - in 2006), over 400 science fiction stories and novellas, published in 45 collections and two anthologies from 1947 to 2011, and 21 plays, excluding children's books, screenplays and other literary works.

Pictured: Ray Bradbury in Los Angeles.

8. One of the directors for whom Bradbury wrote scripts was Alfred Hitchcock. He, in particular, turned to the writer with a request to write a script based on the story by Daphne Du Maurier "Birds", but did not want to wait for two weeks, which Bradbury asked for this job, at that moment he was working on scripts for the series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", which included four movie.

9. There is a Ray Bradbury Award, periodically awarded for the best fantasy screenplay as part of the Nebula Award (Awards of the Science Fiction Writers of America). James Cameron won the first Bradbury Award in 1992 for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

10. Ray Bradbury, even at ninety, started every day by sitting down to write a manuscript because he believed that one more new story would prolong his life. Books were published almost every year: the last major novel was published in 2006, even before it appeared on the shelves, guaranteeing itself the glory of a bestseller.

On the night of June 5-6, one of the most popular science fiction writers, Ray Bradbury, died in the United States. The author of The Martian Chronicles died at the age of 92 at his home in Los Angeles.

Pictured: Ray Bradbury in Los Angeles.
(AP Photo)

Pictured: Ray Bradbury, despite being one of the most prolific writers and gifted storytellers in the US, didn't have a television presence until the Home Box Office television show Ray Bradbury Theater appeared. Pictured: February, 1986. Ray in his office in Beverly Hills, surrounded by toys and treasures.
(AP Photo/Doug Pizac)

Photo: Cover of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 edition.
(AP Photo)

4. In an interview, Bradbury admitted that he dreams of going to Mars, and even jokingly asked one day to bury him on the red planet in a can of cabbage soup.

Pictured: Actors Julie Christie and Oscar Wernera filming a love scene from the movie Fahrenheit 451 at Pinewood Studios near London on February 15, 1966. Fahrenheit 451 is a feature film about a dystopian future based on the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. Directed by François Truffaut in 1966, the film is his first film in color and the only one made in English.
(AP Photo)

Pictured: sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury examines a painting that was part of a school project that aimed to reveal the image of one of the main characters in Ray Bradbury's work. Hollywood, California. December 8, 1966
(AP Photo)

6. The first publication of Bradbury took place in January 1938 in a fanzine (amateur small circulation edition) "Imagination!". The story was called Hollerbrochen's Dilemma.

Pictured: Fiction writer Ray Bradbury smiles at reporters at a meeting at his office in Beverly Hills, California. February, 1982.
(AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)

7. During his life, Bradbury wrote eleven science fiction novels (the first, The Martian Chronicles - in 1950, the last, Goodbye Summer! - in 2006), over 400 science fiction stories and novellas, published in 45 collections and two anthologies from 1947 to 2011, and 21 plays, excluding children's books, screenplays and other literary works.

Pictured: Ray Bradbury, despite being one of the most prolific writers and gifted storytellers in the US, didn't have a television presence until the Home Box Office television show Ray Bradbury Theater appeared. Pictured: January 10, 1986. Ray in his office in Beverly Hills, surrounded by toys and treasures.
(AP Photo/Doug Pizac)

Pictured: January 29, 1997. Ray Bradbury is photographed after he signed his book Faster than a Look in Cupertino, California.
(AP Photo/Steve Castillo, file)

November 15, 2000. Ray Bradbury at the National Book Award in New York, where he was presented with an award for outstanding contribution to American literature.
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file)

Pictured: January 15, 1990. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury after an interview he gave while relaxing in the Alpine ski resort of Avoriaz.
(JM HURON/AFP/GettyImages)

Source: www.forbes.ru

Each of his works was a sincere story about small people and big worlds, about love and the future of mankind, about 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, 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," Bradbury wrote.

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.

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, there was no money for higher education, 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."

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.

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.

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"; "Outlandish wonder" - from the unfinished poem of 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 on the Earth"), Charles Dickens ("The Finest Time"), Hemingway ("The Kilimanjaro Machine"), Stendhal ("Escher 2"), Bernard Shaw ("Mark 5"). 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 science fiction writer, modern society wants to engage in consumption - drinking beer and watching 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.

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 he was confined to a wheelchair for the last years of his life, but retained his 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.

Do you know that 91 years ago, on August 22, 1920, the outstanding science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, USA?
Full name- Raymond Douglas Bradbury (second name in honor of the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks). Father is a descendant of the British pioneers. Mother is Swedish by birth.

In 1934 the Bradbury family moves to Los Angeles. The writer’s childhood and youth passed during the Great Depression, he had no funds for a university education, however, having decided to become a writer at almost 12 years old, Ray followed him with enviable persistence, never thinking about another profession. As a young man, he sold newspapers, then lived off his wife for several years, until his first major work, The Martian Chronicles, was finally published in 1950. Then (in the first issues of Playboy magazine) - the story "451 degrees Fahrenheit". After that, his fame grew to worldwide.

Ray Bradbury is often called the master of fantasy, one of the best science fiction writers and the founder of many genre traditions. In fact, Bradbury is not a science fiction writer, since his work should be attributed to "big", non-genre literature, and he has only a small proportion of truly fantastic works. However, Bradbury is the recipient of several science fiction awards in addition to many general literary awards.

The stories are made up the largest part of Bradbury's work. They contain, perhaps, everything for which Bradbury is loved, appreciated and recognized as the master of literature. Without belittling the importance of large, "serious" works, stories and novels, it is worth recognizing that it was in this form of literary creativity that the writer reached the height of his mastery.
Works by Ray Bradbury

Novels and short stories: Fahrenheit 451 Dandelion wine Trouble is coming All Saints' Eve Death is a lonely business Green shadows, white whale Farewell summer!
Martian Chronicles: There will be gentle rain
Author's collections of short stories: Dark carnival Man in pictures Golden apples of the sun October country Endless rain Cure for melancholy P - means rocket Mechanisms of joy K - means space Electric body sing! Long past midnight Murder memories West of October In the blink of an eye Driving into the blind Midnight dragon dance High into the sky. 100 stories Cat's pajamas Summer morning, summer night
Stories: Once upon a time there was an old howler Howler And thunder struck Hello and goodbye The smell of sarsaparilla The shore at sunset All summer in one day An outlandish wonder Tomorrow is the end of the world

A number of Bradbury's works have been filmed.

In the period from 1985 to 1992, the year was filmed, and then the television series The Ray Bradbury Theater was shown, in which many of his stories were filmed. A total of 65 mini-movies were shot. Bradbury himself acted as a producer and one of the screenwriters, participating in the process of filming and casting. The author also appeared at the beginning of each series, introducing himself and sometimes participating in skits, anticipating the story.

An avant-garde performance based on the novel Fahrenheit 451 was staged at the Moscow theater "Et Cetera" in 2007. Also based on this work was filmed Movie "Equilibrium"