Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 11, 2020

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial post. It is important to be mindful of how young Ray Bradbury was when he was first published. He "sold" his first story when he was 18. He had to skip college because his family could not afford it. His higher education was writing, writing, writing with the absurd and unlikely goal that he would be able to make a living being a writer. Three stories the first year, six stories the second year (most of them collaborations with fellow fans in the social life of science fiction and fantasy), slow and steady increases to slightly bigger markets, actually getting paid with that progress. Bradbury took a sharp turn into crime stories in 1944 (he's turning 24, remember), all of which are featured in the new publication, Killer, Come Back to Me. At the end of 1945 a young intern at Mademoiselle, a slick well-paying big market for fiction, picked up "Invisible Boy" out of the slush pile and begged that it be published. The intern was Truman Capote. The publication put forth the long plank that would be the bridge out of sf and fantasy and crime stories to the mainstream river of American fiction. Bradbury was 25. Dark Carnival, his first book, a collection of short stories, was published published two years later in a print run of 3112 copies.