Ray Bradbury

Writer

Name at birth: Raymond Douglas Bradbury

Ray Bradbury wrote the 1953 science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451, a tale of a futuristic society where reading is outlawed and books are burned at the title temperature. Bradbury began publishing science fiction stories in pulp magazines like Weird Tales in the 1930s. Known primarily as a short story writer -- his most famous stories make up the collections The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951) -- Bradbury has also written the novels Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the semi-autobiographical Dandelion Wine (1957), among others. He also wrote episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and from 1985-92 his stories were retold in the cable TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater. He has won nearly every major fantasy fiction award for his work, including a Grand Master Nebula Award in 1988.

Extra credit: Bradbury worked with his lifelong friend, Ray Harryhausen, on the movie The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms... Fahrenheit 451 was made into a 1966 movie directed by Francois Truffaut.