This year marks the 95th anniversary of Ray Bradbury's birth. While Bradbury grew up in Waukegan, his stories and novels took us far beyond his normal, Midwestern upbringing.
As Ray Bradbury's biographer, Sam Weller was able to learn much about the author's life, as well as the inspiration for his books. This unprecedented access to Bradbury's life makes The Bradbury Chronicles an essential read for anyone who wants to learn more about the author.
Bradbury's first published novel isn't really a novel at all. It's a collection of loosely connected stories. Bradbury used the colonization of Mars as a framing device to combine these stories into a cohesive whole. His description of Mars, with canals and lush landscapes, solidified 20th century imaginings of the Red Planet as a future home. The people and aliens that lived there, however, had all too familiar concerns. The Martian Chronicles forever changed how we viewed the planet most like ours, as well as the genre of science fiction itself.
The Martian Chronicles is available in other formats.
Arguably, Ray Bradbury's most famous book is Fahrenheit 451. Inspired by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, as well as the footage of the House Un-American Activities Committee he saw on television, the dystopian world that Bradbury created is still a relevant cautionary tale more than 60 years later. I read this book for the first time this year and enjoyed its stark portrayal of the near future. In my opinion, that's Ray Bradbury's greatest draw: His stories, no matter how peculiar they might be, always contain a strong streak of humanity.
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