Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920-2012) was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois. The extended family of his early years is remembered and transformed in much of his writing, especially in From the Dust Returned (2001 but cobbled together with stories over decades). The family had brief stays in Arizona, but Bradbury’s life was forever realigned when they moved to Los Angeles when he was 14. He was an Angeleno the rest of his life.

Bradbury hated to fly (preferred trains), but his imagination took him everywhere and everywhen. He pounded out some of the 20th Century’s most lyrical and visionary fiction on a rented typewriter at the Los Angeles Public Library. He wrote some of the most terrifying and fearsome stories ever, and in person he was gentle and kind and joyous. Bradbury embraced contradictions in the great tradition of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman, and I know he would approve of the company, as would they.

Bradbury wrote poetry, screenplays, and essays as well as short stories, but current publishing calculation has kept his fiction in print. He has only a handful of novels to his name, setting aside patchworked and stitched “novels” like The Martian Chronicles and the aforemention Dust. But what novels — Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Dandelion Wine — each one immortal in its perfection and each one guiding a reader back to the masterful short stories in many collections. Enjoy and appreciate the futurist who mined nostalgia, the chameleon of many writers who is unmistakably identifiable in his own voice, the chiller of hopes and ambitions who was also the poet of joy. The curtain rises — enjoy the carnival of Bradbury!

[In August 2020 I posted on the store’s Facebook page daily celebrations of Bradbury and his writing. I copied them to the website’s blog page as well.]